Today is my birthday but that’s not what I want to talk about.
Last weekend was not the first time a man took off all of his clothes and streaked across the field with everything outside at Kensington Oval.
As you know, the youngster who should have been awarded the man of the match prize for stealing the show during that T20 semi-final, was released on $10 000 bail. Now we all wait to hear what will be his fate when he returns to court.
If he has to be sentenced, I definitely would not wish for him to be sent to Dodds, not even for one night. For having more than likely created a lot of excitement inside those confines with his exposure, he might end up having to spend a lifetime out of prison keeping his tail cool.
I seriously believe that if the magistrate before whom he appears was not present at Kensington to see the action first-hand, he more than likely would have seen some of the many photos that were flashed across the Internet for the whole world to see. As a result, he would pity the youngster and impose a very small fine in keeping with the length or more appropriately, lack thereof, of his streak.
If this happened to be your first experience with a streaker, you might be inclined to believe, as I heard many men and women saying afterwards, that it is something only a man would do with his head full of drinks. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The first person to streak at a cricket match anywhere in the Caribbean was a woman. It was in Trinidad during a match between England and the West Indies and although the only piece of cloth she had on at the time was the Trinidad and Tobago flag in her hand she was not from these parts. She was whiter than wrestling superstar Sheamus.
Our young streaker in Barbados last weekend was also white, although his name is definitely Bajan, which triggered me into doing some research online, which brought me to the conclusion that black people don’t streak, at least not in public. White men can’t jump and black men don’t streak.
So can you imagine a black man, naked as he was born with everything exposed, running across the hallowed grounds at Kensington in front of about 12 000 people, the majority of them women?
First of all, if he were the stereotypical black man he would start with the disadvantage of not being able to run too fast, if at all, for fear of stepping on it or tripping himself up over it. But we all know that most black men don’t live up to the stereotype and that probably is the reason why they don’t streak.
After seeing pictures from last weekend’s incident I had to tell myself that if I was a policeman or security guard I would not be running after any naked man. This one guard was trying to grab the man, the man fell and landed on his knees with his face on the ground and his backside up in the air. And guess in what position the guard found himself!
