It was
the era of BMX and we were out as boys to display our skills to the community
members that never understood why we’d put ourselves in the line of danger.
According to most people I knew when growing up thought doing tricks on a BMX
was dangerous, yes maybe it was by that time because I broke 2 of my hands at
the same time with the first accident I had. As a young boy all I wanted to be
was a stunt-man hence it came with a lot of pain & fractures, unforeseen
circumstances that gives me a chill on my spine now as an older man. I am
grateful to be alive & in one piece, now being older & more cautious I
look back to my dreams to a realization that I was made for something else. It
was 1988 when I first got my first BMX trick-bike, it was my aunt who bought it
and she thought it would help with me when being sent to the shops time &
again. It would mean that I will always come back sooner and also give me more
time to exercise since I was a fat/chubby kid when I was growing up, my aunt
would go jogging with me riding my BMX just in front of her.
Just a
decade after being injured by my first bicycle I got involved in a car accident
that could make an old man cry like a baby, it would make creative minds want
to make a movie about it. It was my best friend driving & only one person
was physically injured out of the 4 of us in that Ford Laser 1.6i sport - 1996
model, we were hit by a truck that smashed us against the bridge wall on Jan
Smuts Avenue going into Randburg. That was trauma & a half, the ambulances
came after an hour and none of us had a cell-phone to call our families or
close relatives hence it was in the middle of the night where we were on our
way to an after party of a Hip-Hop Summit that was help in Germiston the East
of Johannesburg. I know you are reading & thinking the driver was obviously
drunk & NO you are wrong to think that, we went out of our way to find a
sober driver which didn't change fate of us being involved in an accident. We
were all taken to Milpark Hospital along with our injured friend, it was just
for safety for us to be checked for internal injuries or fractures. Sitting on
one of those non-comfortable hospital chairs at the waiting area I heard a
nurse call out my name, I tried so hard to stand up to approach her only to
find that I couldn't stand or walk. I felt a pain on my spine towards the waist,
as if something had just cut me in half. A few seconds later I couldn't feel my
legs, horrifying as it was I screamed to the nurse to call my house. My imagination
took a wrong turn & saw me bound to a wheel chair that left me crying for
those walks I said no to. Yes I was crying, tell me which man wouldn’t. Yet I
could only remember my uncle telling me that I’m a tiger, which I guess most of
us boys when we grow up being told that we’re tigers & we should know that “Tigers
Don’t Cry”. From that moment on I had my twist it all, I agree with them when
they say “Tigers Don’t Cry” but “Men Do. What would be a man without tear drops
in his past if not the present, a smile on his face time & again and that
laugh that expresses the intellectuals of identifying that crazy joke. What
would be a man without loving a woman, being alive & knowing what it feels
like to be in love? I know at times we need to be brave & endure the pain
hence the biggest pain I know is the one of a man keeping his pain a secret.
Yes Tigers Don’t Cry, Men Do…Men do love, live, smile, talk, sing, dance & etc.
Men do that because they are men & yes they can be Tigers but Tigers can’t
be men, so go on & share your pain. #SomeoneCares
