Commemorating…Good Friday

To express his frustration at the young Eyewitness’ unwillingness to put his nose to the grindstone, his father would often exclaim disgustedly, “You don’t care if Good Friday falls on Sunday morning!!” But the truth be told, the young Eyewitness actually DID care – because Good Friday actually offered him an approved way to be a slacker!! It provided one of the charms of living in the “land of six peoples” since we’d inherited stories and superstitions multiplied by six!! While some of his friends found it pretty difficult to tell which was which, his position was whichever interpretation allowed him to take it easy; that one became his!
Good Friday, he was taught in Sunday School he attended under duress, was “good” because on that day Jesus was crucified and nailed to a wooden cross. While that clearly wasn’t “good” for Jesus, your Young Eyewitness was been assured he’d willingly accepted his crucifixion because he was doing it for the salvation of mankind – so it was “good” for us. Young Eyewitness appreciated this rationale since it gave even a dissolute wretch like himself – whom his Sunday School teachers had assured him and his friends were – a chance to redeem themselves before they croaked!! Kind of a “get out of hell card”, no?
One of the stories concerned the donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. It later followed him to Calvary Hill, where he was crucified. Grief-stricken by the sight of Jesus on the cross, the donkey turned away but couldn’t leave. It was then the shadow of the cross fell upon his shoulders and back – and there it stayed!! Since that fateful day on God’s calendar, all donkeys have borne what has come to be known as the cross of Jesus on their backs. Your Young Eyewitness and his friends dutifully checked out this claim on the donkeys in their village and confirmed the legend was true!!
But the story that really resonated with him was that folks SHOULDN’T WORK on Good Friday! Now, all grown up, he figures this probably arose from the exhortation for Christians to spend the day reflecting on the significance of Jesus’ crucifixion on this day. But it was highly unlikely that the Plantation Massas were particularly pious. Excepting, of course, for “saving the souls” of the poor Africans by enslaving and working them to death!! In that, they were most diligent! But more prosaically, it was likely that accidents in the fields or factories occurred with greater frequency on Good Friday – because the overseers and managers were absent – and correlation became causation.
Your adult Eyewitness has impressed upon the missus that he shouldn’t be asked to even lift a finger!

…and childhood memories
Hope you dear readers now appreciate your Eyewitness ain’t only consumed by politics!! Around now, he’s flooded with memories of his father making those “pointer” kites for him. And then taking the family to the sea wall to get those Icaruses into the skies!! His mother would be laden down with her basket of potato balls, pine tarts and various other homemade goodies – not to mention the “swank” to cool down throats parched from whooping and yelling as kites were manoeuvred to bring down each other’s kites!
The tail of the kite was the secret: the shorter ones would ensure that your kite swung and veered like a whirling dervish, which, combined with skilful tugs and jerks of its “twine”, was guaranteed to make your kite into a modern-day Spitfire bringing down enemy aircraft like the Red Baron!! Now, to your Eyewitness’ disgust, all the youngsters are running around with those Chinese “plastic kites”.
This kind of behaviour is another reason for the decline of our national fibre!!

…Diamond Jubilee?
Your Eyewitness noted the officials gleefully announcing that overseas Guyanese visitors were up by 17 per cent in January, and this is indicative of the interest in commemorating our upcoming Golden Independence celebrations.
Heck…they’re all coming for the cash grant!!