MAVIS BECKLES – Long and short of life

Well, it ain’t a week yet dat I write ’bout mothers and what it must feel like tuh raise a good, level-headed sensible boy child and look what could happen just so the other day out there pon St Lukes Road.You could imagine dat? You see how things does happen just so?A li’l 17-year-old boy barely out o’ school, not hanging out pon the block all day, not walking ’bout looking tuh snatch somebody chain or handbag, not sitting around the place day in and day out waiting pon handouts but up in the Vocational Training Centre probably learning a trade, and look what could happen; look what a poor mother and in this case a father, too, gine have tuh go through now.As if dat ain’t bad enough, the driver of the very truck gone and dead off too. My Lord! You see this thing call life? Well.I came across an article the other day was talking ’bout the murder toll, not the death toll, ya know? Uh say the murder toll in Trinidad. It said dat the murder toll tuh the date dat it was announced was 335. You could imagine dat? Uh mean dat ain’t nutten tuh gloat at nor brag ’bout; as a matter of fact, it is very sad and at the same time quite frightening.LawlessnessI am sure dat Jamaica ain’t too far behind, ’cause duh got a lot o’ lawlessness happening over there all the time, and after the Christopher “Dudus” Coke episode when all o’ dem people died I think duh say over 70; and the other day when I read ’bout how some trigger-happy people just went pon a shooting spree and kill off a whole lot o’ people, I believe dat dem should be coming a close second. People lives cut short just so.But while lives all over the place are getting cut short, duh got a whole lot o’ people out there who living all past a hundred years old.Last Monday gone, there had a funeral service at the St Leonard’s Church for a man who was 106 years old. I think his name was Cardinal “Cardy” Terrence Trotman. You could imagine somebody living suh long? I ain’t know if he is the oldest man in Barbados but in the Wednesday paper now I see a woman, Barbara Alexandra Wickham, sipping communion from Reverend Fequel Laplante. The lady was celebrating her 107th birthday, if ya please!• Mavis Beckles was born and raised in The Orleans. She has an opinion on everything.