BEEN watchin’ an old video of the Chinese Olympic opening night over a decade ago, and been gazing spellbound at them eleven thousand sports people from all over the world, stampin’ their footprints on huge parchment paper at Beijing. Remarkable idea what?
Maybe huh, just maybe years later they tell children, grandchildren, “You know that parchment paper, it’s got me footprints on it?” And lil’ children, they giggle, then whisper to all and sundry, “Our granddad’s left his feet marks in China!”
But then suddenly me ole brain it start to think, oh yes it do, of ordinary you and ordinary me, also recording our own smelly footprints every single day of your life and mine. “Recorded on parchment paper?” I hear you askin. “No, no on the lives of everyone we touch!” But folks unlike those that be imprinted in Beijing, our footprints they don’t just stay put on parchment paper, oh no, they sprout, they blossom, and ohmygosh explode and destroy. Our prints, they ain’t dead prints; no they ain’t, ours change forever, what they touch man! Watch them prints you be making at home everyday: “Dad!” shouts yer little one, “Your boss is on the line! Are you at home or not dad?”
“I’m not!” you shout and then I see, oh yes man, I see you proudly look at yer little lad or is it yer girl, how they calmly explain to big boss nobody be at home, that there’s no dad under them covers, nobody takin’ the day off! Man, what a nasty footprint on an impressionable mind!
And one day it’s gonna explode: “Please come down to the school right away!” And you go. “Your son was found cheating and we is expelling him!” “My son!” you shout as your feller, he looks at you, “it can’t be, he don’t cheat!” And then on the way home you look at yer little feller and you say, “Who taught you to cheat m’ boy?” And in his eyes you see your own footprints, huge, grotesque, and ohmygosh, smirking.
Sometime it just be conversation, you know what I mean? You mutter at neighbor who park his car in your parking slot, “Christians, they be no good people,” you mutter, “Muslims they be just as bad, Gujarati’s they be worse!” And one day a call, “Sir,” the voice, all respectful like, but you know it’s the same headmaster of the school your child is studyin’ in, “Your son thrashed his classmate! We had to call the police!”
“Hey me boy where you learn to hate?” you ask as you watch him in prison cell and in his eyes you see no retina, oh no, you see your own giant footprint! Ah! You want a happy ending, what? Your friends, they say, “We’ve not seen a girl so loving, so tender than your doctor daughter at the hospital, she’s got such caring hands!” That’s when you see yer footprint, smiling joyfully back at you..!
