Maybe I should rather ceaselessly cry about Zuma

For 0.1% of Floyd Moneyweather’s match purse, I’ll go against him for a few rounds. Even if I come away with a face looking like it’s been hit by a runaway taxi.

Recently my face looked just like that. But no reward. Not because I ventured into the ring. I underwent an entropian repair.

My tear ducts were faulty, and the fatty lumps under my eyes were preventing proper drainage. So the puffiness had nothing to do with too much Coke on ice over the years.

No wonder I couldn’t stop crying when the ANC listed Jacob Zuma as a candidate for this year’s election. All right, so there were a few genuine tears, but the rest were a waste clouding my sight. So, no reading and writing. Misery personified.

The ophthalmologist assured me that after the “small operation” only real tears would flow.

The anaesthetist made sure I wouldn’t feel any pain, but I needed to be awake so my eyes remained open.

At first, all I could see were giant hands moving over my eyes. Ah, he’s saying a prayer with the laying on of hands.

Until I saw the needle and thread. Involuntarily my stupefied brain drifted to my Heidi and the way she sews up pieces of knitting. He was doing a stitching job on the eyes, and I wondered how good he was at it. Compared to Heidi. So I asked him whom he practised on while studying the sewing part. “On a pig’s eyes. Porkers’ eyes are the closest to that of humans’”.

A loud “Oink!” escaped my lips.

To shut me up, the specialist added: “And we used corpses – at least they don’t chat back.”

I took the hint and zipped my lips and the stitching continued.

Small operation, no pain. Wrong. While enjoying sarmies and tea in the ward afterwards, my eyes suddenly sprang to life with glass shards penetrating my eyeballs – or that’s how it felt. It went on for days.

I should’ve stuck with weepy tear ducts. So what if Zuma is elected and my eyes leak. Now I have excruciating pain and a face that makes Frankenstein look like George Clooney. Or Dilemma like Denzel Washington.

Not even Floyd’s opponents have sported a face like mine. And at least they were richly rewarded. Oink!

Cliff Buchler.

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