In the mid 1970s, my family was living in South Africa, the country of our birth, on a farm just outside Johannesburg, when my ten-year-old sister had an idea that should never have made it out of her head and into reality. It was a classic kid’s plan: adventurous, ludicrous and madly dangerous.
I was under a brolly by the pool eating watermelon with my beloved granny who was up from Durban. Our pool was a deep blue drop of paradise in the shape of a jellybean by the house, a ranch-style place that my dad built before I was born. The peach trees and beehives were on the other side of the house beside a long driveway down to the road. Honeydew was the name of the place and these days it’s a busy suburb, no longer acreage.
My sister Jean was in her navy blue and red string bikini, and she arrived pool-side with all the confidence of an under qualified white man going for a job interview. Life was grand and had not chipped at her confidence one bit. Not yet. I was only three and I remember this scene clearly with my sister’s total belief in herself. What was not to love? She was tall for her age, lean and strong.
Then, without a word, Jean jumped into the deep end of the pool with floaties on both ankles. In the States they call these water wings. In South Africa, arm bands. All over Planet Earth, they are not designed for the ankles.
Her feet pinged to the surface and her upper-body sank fast. She laughed her head off under water, which I can confirm doesn’t help you swim for your life. She started to scramble with her arms, ran out of air in her lungs and then she panicked. That all took about fifteen seconds. Peace and relaxation had been replaced with terror.
Granny hollered to my mum, who had been to the hairdresser that morning with her locks beautifully blow dried and set in place. Mum sprinted to the pool and had to quickly assess her choices: save the kid and destroy the hairdo or protect the locks and go half-arsed on the rescue. She chose to save the blow dry and not jump into the pool. Somehow she managed to reach my sister from the edge of the pool and haul her in for a wee chat about flotation theory and doing stupid shit when Granny was in town.
The entire near-death experience for my oldest sibling was over in under a minute. Mum to the rescue, kinda. I had not moved a muscle. Three-year-old me was still sitting in the shade with a wedge of watermelon in one hand. Granny was stunned. Mum was pretty mad. When we tease my sister about this episode we joke that she was named Jean because she’s from the shallow end of the gene pool.
Oh what a metaphor this is for making a dangerous decision with a kid-brain, not foreseeing the bleeding obvious and basics of the world as we know it. We are failing to think things through and look ahead at the unintended but dire consequences.
More than 75 million voters in the USA gave their vote in the latest federal election to a man who has a proven track record of lying, rape, infidelity and fraud. What a candidate. All those voters blew up their floaties and popped them on their ankles even though they knew this man was a convicted felon with a rotten history who had lied to them before. And they jumped.
The only US president in history to be impeached twice, let alone elected as a convicted criminal, won an election because 75 million Amercans believed his hype, were able to get to a polling booth and couldn’t stand the thought of the alternative: an experienced, qualified black woman. Maybe that’s too simplistic. He may have won because the previous government disregarded the quality of life for most Americans.
Some commentators believe POTUS won a second term because he made a deal with Musk – get me elected so I can skip prison for that pesky conviction and I will hand you the reins to the kingdom. Elon Musk, fellow Saffer, is now literally and metaphorically marching about with a chainsaw. You can’t make this stuff up.
We are now witnessing the violent, accidental drowning of a rather big nation. It is horrid, urgent and terrifying but ABSOLUTELY OBVIOUS TO US ALL. Some might find this inevitability very funny. You voted for this train wreck, now lay on the tracks. Your floaties are always going to out-float your lungs, ya goose. But this mess isn’t funny at all. Millions are suffering in the mayhem, dying due to the overnight increase in the cost of basic medication, displaced and deported, fired and defamed. A vast majority of those 75 million voters are feeling the pain as their lungs run out of air and they start to panic.
Give someone like this any authority at all and you have strapped on the floaties. You cannot out-float this kind of ego, madness, mayhem and disregard for law or humanity. Even if you buy his branded Bible and pray the gay away.
Now what? We need Granny to holler to Mum and Mum to forget the blowdry. We need every nation on earth to come to rescue with tit-for-tariffs, refusal to comply with idiotic decrees, with a focus on peace, calm, restoration and human rights. The USA needs every single qualified, experienced politician and litigator to step right into their power and stand up to this man. Like New York Attorney General Letitia James (fancy that, a black woman) who successfully won an injunction against Musk’s data theft-frenzy.
In Australia we need everyone to slam dunk their vote in the upcoming federal election to any party except for the Dutton-led right who have inconceivably referred to the felon at the helm in the US as ‘shrewd, reasonable and a big thinker’.
The Dutt-plugs are all looking at their US counterparts with dreamy eyes like teen fans of Top Gun who want in on the cancellation of all things good and fair. Especially women and minorities. The Liberal party boys have put five floaties on each ankle and are ready to jump.
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Lucy Bloom is an international keynote speaker, author and creative leadership expert.
If you liked this article you will really like Lucy’s memoir, Get the Girls Out and her 2023 novel, The Manuscript: a story of revenge.
