Say ‘hello cruel world’… and get cracking

Most of the world’s top scientists, entrepreneurs, and artists started life this way.

Gauteng Premier David Makhura (L) and MEC for Health, Dr Gwen Ramokgopa (R) are seen interacting with Zelda Byleveldt’s newborn son Christo at the Tshwane District Hospital where they visited to congratulate mothers of new-born babies admitted in the maternity ward in celebration of Mother’s Day, 13 May 2018, Pretoria. Picture: Jacques Nelles

Drawing the short straw is something that happens to all of us. You know what I’m talking about: when you get called to work through the Easter weekend, or when it’s you who drives over a nail and gets a flat while a thousand cars have passed before you, unscathed.

But many people believe it starts at birth – that magical moment when you open your eyes for the first time.

Instead of seeing some billionaire hand your trophy-mother a diamond the size of your left foot because she bore him a son, you get a klap on the backside that opens your lungs and your ears and you immediately realise: you are not a trust-fund baby.

Thankfully, you don’t look back, because no amount of money or therapy will get you to deal with that trauma.

Instead, you look your mother in the eye and, boy oh boy, you know this is not a movie. If it was, the make-up artist would have been fired. No woman looks like Joan Collins in Dynasty after giving birth. More like Godzilla.

That’s also more or less the moment you realise the hyperventilating dude lying in the corner, foetal position and sounding like a drowning puppy, is possibly your dad.

But you don’t judge and you don’t grudge because, statistically, he’s the one out of 10 dads who actually made it to his child’s birth. So, the straw isn’t quite that short any more.

Then, after a day or two, you get to go home – and not comfortably tucked into a baby seat with classical musical in the background. No, you find yourself hanging on for dear life while some kamikaze bus driver tries to prove he doesn’t need a siren to do 150 through town at peak hour.

Before you even get home, you know it’s not going to be the mansion you were hoping for, but at least you won’t be tainted as sarcastic when you call it your humble abode.

If this is your story, you most definitely didn’t draw the short straw. Most of the world’s top scientists, entrepreneurs, and artists started life this way.

Like them, I also believe the short straw is a smaller hurdle to cross.