Ramblings of a slightly disturbed man.: Littlest Voice

Monday, June 25, 2012

Littlest Voice

I am back. And there are new voices in my head. And one of them speaks a lot, I have christened him/her/it littlest voice.

I can't quite figure out what gender this voice is... sometimes it talks in the context of a male, sometimes in the context of a female... sometimes in an amorphous mixture of both.

But most times, the voice raises valid questions that seem odd in the minds and thoughts of other humans other than me. And it does bug me a little that sometimes the voice talks in spanish, but its cool... I know it means me no harm. But it pisses the hell out of all the other voices in my head.

Ich and Ndeithi are also very jealous that the voices talk only to me alone. Everytime I start a conversation with littlest voice they go like "there he goes again, talking to those voices of his"... with their disapproving eyes and shit... but I don't care. I like littlest voice, it poses some very interesting question sometimes.

For instance, the other day someone posted a picture of the first camera ever to be built on facebook and littlest voice immediately went like "what the fuck?". So I asked why because I thought the camera looked quite cool. And the response? "Which camera took the picture of the first camera ever?". I had to agree that was a valid question.

Or the other day at new iMax movie theatre in town, I sat ready to enjoy MIB3 when littlest voice asked me how sure I was that the armrest I was resting my arm on was mine... could it belong to my neighbours... and which one for that matter? Littlest voice proposed that armrests should be numbered just like the seats... again I had to agree that this was a valid argument and I wondered why no one had ever thought of doing exactly that.

I recently had to ask a doctor a question they could not answer. I was admitted at nairobi hospital for a jaw surgery... some of my teeth had decided they were better off growing horizontally in the jaw instead of vertically through the gum. And that was fine and didn't bother me for years, until they met a nerve somewhere in there last month.

So, immediately after asking me to change into the gown that leaves the rasa's mwanya open to the world and stressing that I make sure I don't wear any underwear as I was going to theatre, the lady doctor/nurse leaves the room to give me privacy to change and littlest voice asked me why that was necessary when they were going to see my mwanya anyways... she could have stayed. So I asked her when she came back. Her response... "hehehehehehehe, aiiiiiii... wewe!".

A laugh. What use is a laugh as a response when such a serious question has been posed? So... yet another valid question from littlest voice remains unanswered.

In fact, so many questions have remained unanswered that littlest voice is starting to think it is in the wrong head. So I require help to unravel some of the mysteries before it decamps to Ndeithi's head. That would be a disaster... there is a rumour that Ndeithi psychologically tortures his voices.

For instance, does anyone know the answers to these questions:

In the mickey mouse cartoon, why does pluto live in a doghouse and is basically a dog... yet goofy lives in a mansion and drives a car? and how can a mouse own a dog and have a dog at the same time? drives littlest voice absolutely bonkers and i really sympathize.

When we were heading to Maasai Mara last december, littlest voice asked that if the earth was round, how far can you go in one direction before you automatically qualify as going in the opposite direction? i.e. how far east can you go before you find yourself in the west?

when i won an award from the worldbank, i was invited to washington dc for a ceremony with the worldbank president. ahem. as usual, i started drinking from jkia, where the legal limit to drink is under 21, continued while at heathrow, slept part of the way and landed in the states hangovered and possibly with an alcohol blood level over the limit. littlest voice claimed that technically, if I were under 21, they couldn't touch me for drinking as I had never drunk in the states. I was stumped.

Sometimes though littlest voice makes absolute sense.

Like the day it claimed that there is a management lesson in everything that happens in life. And in just that instance, the example it used was that when the tissue runs out after I had done my business, it meant that I should not have started that particular "project" without ensuring that I had "adequate resources" to complete it successfully. I sat on the toilet seat in awe.

Or the day it advised me to stop telling my friends who were thinking of getting married to think about why they want to buy the heifer when they just need the milk; because the heifer could also wonder why they need to buy a pig just to a get a little sausage. So I started congratulating everyone who came to me with a wedding card instead of falling on the floor laughing screaming "eti what? eti whaaaaaaat? lmfao!"

The other day I was watching a reality show on DSTv, and they were showing this about-to-be-mum who had tattoos and piercings like everywhere. And littlest voices asks, "do you think her nipples are pierced? and if they are, would the kid have the priviledge of suckling out of three holes in the tit or what?". My only response? "That'd be awesome!". And my wife immediately asked me why I had a big grin on my face bila reason.

At the office in a senior management meeting (oh yes, am a Director now... ahem, ahem!), someone was describing a particular project that had caused nightmares and how they were trying to find resolutions. And I commented, "that sounds like it was an uphill task!". And he said, "yes, it all looked like it was going downhill from there!". And littlest voice went like "what the fuck? how can the two ways you can handle a hill, up or down, all mean the same thing in this context?". My CEO did not talk too kindly to my instinctive guffaw, but what the fuck?

Its like the other day when I was reading an article that had a part that went like "he almost died laughing. afterall, laughter is the best medicine." I almost threw it out of the window, how can medicine that kills you be the best? nkt! if only I was not at 35,000 feet I would have thrown it out I swear.

Speaking of planes, I hate it when they frisk me ten thousand times just because I look like I fit their profile of a terrorist. One day I agreed enough with littlest voice to ask them, "I am traveling first class. Why are you wasting your time and mine frisking me in so many ways only to hand me a real knife and a fork when I am seated in the plane two feet away from the cockpit?". I was asked to step aside and I spent the next half hour calling the head of security an idiot.

Or the day I got on a plane and out pilot was named Captain Butt. Littlest voice asked if he shouldn't be in the back of the plane instead of the front. I thought that was offensive... it smacked of the "back of the bus" thingie of the american-civil-rights-movement-days... but he was called Butt, so what to do?

I once found a website that had all those retro nintendo games... including donkey kong. littlest voice asked where the donkey was. I had not noticed in 30+ years that donkey kong had no donkeys in it, did you? why the fuck is it not called gorilla kong? or is donkey the chinese word for gorilla? haiya... did the chick we spent all our youth trying to save for mario end up marrying mario or did she just dump him for a better guy on playstation? I just nyamazad.

I was checking out a house three days back in riverside, it had three floors, multi-leveled ka mansionette on half an acre... beautiful. Then littlest voice asked while we were in the middle floor, "Are we upstairs or downstairs?" The agent said "upstairs", technically we could have been downstairs because we were in the "middle" of the house. "Is the glass half full or half empty?", said littlest voice as an analogy.

I went to smoke a cigarette and decided the house is too confusing for me to live in, I would never enjoy it. Just like the way I cannot sleep these days when I remember a question that littlest voice asked me, eti do I sleep with my chin under or over the duvet? Takes me hours to figure it out... neither feels right.

One day, something nice happened to one of my most difficult projects and I was deliriously happy. My boss calls to ask me if I liked the results and I answered "Yep! I am head over heels!". Littlest voice asked me if I am usually heels over heads and what the fuck I meant by using that phrase. I kept quite and I was sad for the rest of the day.

I was in traffic at the roundabout near the Nairobi University and I was looking at the interesting triangle-polygon-shaped church. It has a steeple... a cross on top of the building. And behind the cross there was a lightning rod. Littlest voice stated, "The pastor of that church must have an absolute lack of faith or he is evil and expects to be struck by lightning." I have never seen a lightning rod on a mosque... or a temple. Should these buildings have one? Again, architects hebu jibuni hili swali.

During a presentation I was doing in Rwanda to some government types, someone said we should "coin a phrase" that would serve as the rallying call to the project. Immediately littlest voice asked me who coined the phrase "coin a phrase" and why because it was stupid. I agreed.

And the conversations never end. Hence, insomnia. Today I spent the whole day figuring out how to build robots because littlest voice claimed it would be cool if I had a robot that could fetch me beer, switch on the TV, change the channels on voice command and scratch my balls. I found one... its called a NAO and it can dance thriller too!

Even now as I am trying to sleep, I have just popped open a bottle of sleeping pills and littlest voice claims that the pills may or may not work. I am like, how do you know and his response? Its written right there on the bottle in uppercase... MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS.

Littlest voice says, "MAY". Then it says, "What the fuck? Are these not supposed to be sleeping pills? So what if they 'may' cause drowsiness... they fucking meant to make you drowse till you are freaking asleep!!!!!!"

Littlest voice is now running around my head, talking in Spanish, smashing everything in its path and tearing its tiny invisible clothes off screaming "what a fucked up world!!!!!".

I don't blame it.