Don�t tell me what I don�t know
Tumie Modise | Monday July 25, 2016 15:09
Personally I have hit information overload. It has reached the point that before I receive another piece of information I demand to know if it is: (a) important to staying alive, (b) important to my job or family, or (c) will have any impact on my dogs learning how to finally stop barking at 4am.
We already know that 4am is the time when unfaithful partners finally sneak back to their homes to sleep, not thieves. Thieves would have left an hour or so earlier. Well at least the ones in Gaborone.
Whatever it is, if it doesn’t involve any of these, I don’t want to know about it. If there is one thing I really frown upon, is suspense.
I hate being informed that I will be told something ‘very important’ at a later time. My close friends and family know this very well by now. If a person is going to tell me something, especially unpleasant news with the potential to ruin my day, the person better cut the suspense and tell me right away or just forget about it altogether. I have sent people back this way, several times.
In my fairly lived life, just like other people I have had my fair share of personal tragedies and bad luck. Like I have an inbuilt nonsense repeller, I have this ability to brush away negative thoughts and just move on. I never look back, I particularly never recall the bad things, I only soldier on. That’s me. Maybe its denial, but it sure has carried me this far!
There are many evenings I don’t want to know the news. In fact, I have long stopped watching BTV, except on some Sundays. The few times that I do, whenever the ‘BTVee, BTVeee..’ track plays I just change channels or switch off the television set altogether.
I have seen and heard that for ages and I can’t take it anymore. I just cannot wrap my brain around that. There are times I refuse to look at my children’s test papers until a later date. I just hate bad news.
Last year there was a furore in South Africa (our main exporter) after leaked news confirmed every meat eater’s worst nightmare; that there was evidence of ‘certain’ meat products found in meatballs and burgers.
I have always thought that burgers in that country tasted 10 times better than ours, even though we all know that ours is the best beef not only in the region, but the whole world too. Only the secret was on their special ‘ingredients’. But still I would have preferred not to know, never mind even if human meat was part of the mix. There are a lot of things I don’t want to know. Like I don’t want to know the cost of petrol and I never get the whole hullabaloo over people queuing up at filling stations whenever petrol prices increase. All I know is that I need my car and my car runs on petrol. Any further information is just heartburn.
I have now reached a point where I cannot take bad news anymore. More than anything, I hate bad news and I don’t know what excites people so much that they always feel obliged to be the bearer of bad news. Like there is this other common trait, where people see your name being dragged somewhere in the mud. They immediately run to you and with glee in their eyes (it always shows), they will then, like little children itching for a playground fight announce the bad news to you.
If you think it’s out of sympathy then you are mistaken. It’s usually because they want to see you agitated, lose your cool and come with your gun blazing to a fight which most of the time, they are architects of. So next time anyone wants to tell you bad news which have nothing to do with death of your family member, fake a heart attack or like me, turn your guns on them! Not knowing bad news has never killed anyone.