Back in the fold: the prodigal son returns

I’m ashamed of myself. While I was bandying about shopping malls and bonding with the lounge suite this weekend, my two managers were behaving like new arrivals to Spring Break in Cancun.

One was bounced from Bar Zar on Friday night for being on her ear. She’s ten years older than me. The other one went ballistic in Ibiza for the weekend. He is close to my dad’s age. And is clearly on a come-down today.

My family was reunited yesterday with the arrival of my (formerly) little brother, newly transformed from six months of freedom at Rhodes University.

Fresh from the plane, my mom brought him via my office on their way home. Firstly, I did not recognize him. He now looks like a giant galloping tapeworm, towering at least 4 metres above me, with a haystack of unruly, bushy, long hair. I almost walked past him and wondered how this gigantic string bean came to be transported to Dubai all the way from Woodstock.

He is super chilled as ever, and looking pleased with himself. He was wearing a graying Rhodes Rats cricket shirt. I think he slept in it last night too.
To extract all of the dastardly stories and smut reports of the past two terms in Corey res, philanders in the Rat and Parrot and escapades in the bright lights of Friar Tucks, the sole nightclub in Grahamstown, may take weeks. But I am going to keep on truckin’ and get all the good stuff out. My dad expressed distaste for a) the bloke’s ‘earmuffs’ (coils of unmanageable hair enveloping his ears) and b) for his declining a beer with us at supper. I remember those days well. You have been bending it for weeks, caning every drop of alcohol in sight, inhaling booze like some kind of human dust-buster, and you come home to rehabilitate, only to have more of it thrown in your face.

He hasn’t said much, but he needs time.

So far, this is what I know:

He doesn’t yet have a handbrake, although a few birds have clearly had their heat-seakers on him if his Facebook wall is anything to go by.

He has played one round of golf on the Grahamstown goat-track (compounding my dad’s distaste as membership fees were paid upfront).

He has made it to the Rhodes gym twice this year (compounding my dad’s distaste as membership fees were paid upfront).