Temperature is the instrument used in measuring thermometer. True or False? Now go back and look at the question again. Hahaaaa!

Oh how I miss those days when the thermometer is put inside my armpit to check my temperature by a beautiful nurse.

As a small boy, the nurses used to see me as not a ‘serious’ sick person anytime they tried to put it in my armpit because I would start laughing in joy as if to accept it and as if not to but at the same time avoiding it and craving for more of it. At least it was better than chloroquine.

Ei! Chloroquine those days was something else. My doctor would ask whether I was allergic to chloroquine or not. When I answered YES, he would still go ahead and give me chloroquine injection. Those were the days we used to fight ourselves.

When your stomach top would be itching you and you would try to scratch. As you did, that was when you felt like visiting the washroom and at the washroom, the ‘exit point’ will bite and itch hard while in the process.

Torn between two devils – to scratch and scoop something and not to scratch and faint from itches everywhere! Alla! Chloroquine in the 80’s? Hmmm!

Do you know that when you talk about sexually explicit things before your children, chances are that some other fathers would represent you at PTA meetings at the university?

See, anytime you are in town and complain that the traffic in town is terrible, remember you are contributing to the traffic; every other motorist or commuter in the traffic has the same complaints! I dey lie?

As I was not saying, anytime I am about to start my car engine, I brake down and push start and then vroooom…away! I once noticed that my little girls were also struggling to start the engine by push-starting.

Anytime they did, it did not start. Apparently they didn’t know that without braking down, the push-start alone wouldn’t work.  One day, I left these little kids and the car key in the car with the engine off.

Then I heard the engine start…vroom! Whaaat! Confused was I. Still amazed, I’d wanted to observe in a reasonable distance how they managed to start the engine because to the best of my knowledge, their legs could not reach the brake pedal. 

Then I got closer only to see the 5-year old using her hand to press the brake and asking the two-year-old to press the push-start button and she did…voila! Engine was on.

I opened my mouth in awe but must I? Not really. What I immediately imagined was that one day they could put this car into motion and then when the undesirable happens (God forbid) I would be the first to blame them or?

Children observe and live by what adults do before them and emulate. If you use abusive language as an elderly person in the comfort of your home, trust me, chances are that your children may get out there and do same or even worse with another elderly person and will think it’s fine to do so.

Na who cause am? Just listen to some radio and you would understand the ‘language of the language’!

We are often quick to say today’s children are indisciplined. True, but…are they entirely to blame when we are the ones giving them ‘training’ in our various homes?

I am tempted to advise myself to watch the way I talk about our elders at whichever level including the church when I am with my children. We run commentaries about personalities in society including our neighbours based on A, B, C and D and expect the children to do otherwise!

The children are listening and watching our commentaries too. Is it not possible to trace the root cause to our generation and not necessarily theirs all the time? Sadly, ‘present posterity’ is not judging us for not guiding them well with our utterances and actions but ironically we are the ones judging them by what we have directly or indirectly taught them and they are practising it.

Let’s mark it, it won’t be long and we would realise that, we, the supposed ‘disciplined generation’ are indeed the root cause. Is it difficult to conjecture why a 10-year old has won a kids’ competition because she has the ‘talent’ of giving commentary the same way adults give sports commentary?

That is on the positive side. You don’t say ‘Satan’ and expect ‘Jesus’ to appear! Nope! We say nasty things about people in the presence of our children, by way of our adult reasoning based on various lines of biases; the children are listening and would replicate it.

It won’t be long and you would hear them passing same comments and remarks about other people older than their fathers and mothers and feel good about it. Mama Awony3, is it necessary to remind us that children learn by observing and by the examples we set?

It is often said that ‘If you always defend your children’s mistakes, one day you will hire a lawyer to defend their crime’.

Now it looks like it’s getting to that point where, our children may have to hire lawyers to defend our ‘crime’ because many of us talk and do things loosely about some personalities in the presence of these children! They shouldn’t copy? Oh Bra Yaw! How?

I remember the day a parent pushed her 5 or 6 year old daughter to jump a queue in front of me at a shop and this parent did not see anything wrong with it. Hmmm!

That girl may grow up and may have the tendency to cheat in whatever form and think it’s her right to do so! Lord God have mercy on, not only our children o, but parents too!

I know some parents are insulting me in their heads by now but that is my conviction that we bred this current generation. Only God knows the ones they would breed! Many of say and do the wrong things before them and expect them to do the right things! How? Let’s remember we are as good as the current generation!

Anyway, that’s just by the useful way. Now let’s go ‘useless’ small with my abstract…hahahahahahaha!

Following my useless column article last weekend, some of my friends are advising me to advocate PTA meetings to be organized in universities. The reason is that it is only there that, all things being equal, you would have more 18 year olds plus who are independent in their halls and hostels of residence.

Some fathers would comply fully with face masks and even add head masks and leave some small space for their eyes so they don’t get easily identified. It will be easy to say it’s double protection against COVID 19 but it’s a lie o. I will let them remove the top one p333.

I am also sure that if it so happens, the number of fathers who will attend such PTA meetings will be more than the female populations of the universities because the possibility of 4 fathers attending one PTA meeting in respect of one innocent lady at the university is high so there is the likely ratio of 4 mystery fathers to one ‘innocent daughter’.

Truly, the real fathers would not attend the meetings in the universities where their daughters are. They would also go and represent some other fathers who are attending the PTA meetings of their actual daughters in some other universities.

While some of us will head towards University of Kasowa, others will be on their way to Universities of Tema and Madina. Exchange is no robbery, after all! Just make sure your wives don’t see the notification messages to you inviting you to a PTA meeting of ‘your daughter’ who is not known to her or else…chaos!

Please remember to send provisions like cars, eye phones and millo because whatever you send to your ‘daughter’ after a PTA meeting, will be the same some other may be sending to your daughter in the other university. The law of karma and equality; you offer a gift to a stranger and your own relation will be taken care of elsewhere. If you don’t, your guess is as bad as mine!

I propose such PTA meetings to take place Friday nights into Saturday so some of us can hide!

Tsofats3, as you are hiding somewhere behind your house making such romantic calls to young ladies, your daughter at the university is eavesdropping. Worse still if she has access to your whatsapp messages. She will not tell your wife about it; she may feel justified and find solace in the arms of a man as old as you are!

Remember as sin fascinates and assassinates, it is the reason it thrives better in darkness! Don’t think about it; just sin! Hell is right here waiting for you and I!

Happy new year!

The Writer, Mawuli Zogbenu, is an Insurance Practitioner, Communicator and the Weekly Author of the INSURANCE BAKERY Column in the Graphic Business Newspaper. He is also the weekly Author of the humorous page ‘USELESS COLUMN’ published in the Business & Financial Times newspaper and on myjoyonline.com.