THE SQUEAKY CHAIR INCIDENT OF 2010

Disclaimer: This is pretty unrelated to South Africa. It probably relates more to the perils of global warming and mayonnaise on Asian consumer markets… But as the song goes, “This is my blog and I’ll ramble if I want to.”

Today it was brought to my attention that I have the mental maturity of a 7^th grader. I noticed that whenever I do something that makes a noise that could be mistaken for passing gas, I feel the need to let everyone around me know that it was not actually my digestive system... I choose to communicate this by blurting out the name of whatever inanimate object actually made the noise. Case in point: In the shower when the shampoo coming out of the bottle makes a funny noise, I instinctively shout “SHAMPOO BOTTLE!!” Regardless of the fact that nobody else is actually in the shower to judge me for the noises that could have been misinterpreted as the aftermath of a baked bean eating competition. Anyways, this habit is fine when I’m alone…but not so much in public places. Which brings me to today… Today, I went to the UCT library for the first time. As someone who is on a first name basis with the graveyard shift cleaning crew at Leavey, I can say from experience that UCT has a great library: comfortable workstations, plenty of outlets, good lighting, collegiate ambiance etc. At first glance, everything is great, except for one fatal flaw that turned out to be my undoing. I walked in, did a lap to scope the territory, and saw an empty desk near an outlet in the middle of the main room. Jackpot. I beelined for this desk (all’s fair in love and library), threw my bag onto the table, and plopped down into the chair. From this chair, sounded the strangest noise I had ever heard. It was bad. And Momma didn’t raise no fool—I knew exactly what was running through the minds of the library patrons when they heard that ungodly sound… So what did I do?? I chose to clear the air (pun intended) by shouting “SQUEAKY CHAIR!!” at the top of my lungs…in a library.

On the bright side, I think it speaks volumes about the kindness of the people of Cape Town that nobody immediately escorted the poor, gassy, girl with Tourrets (read as: me) outside of the library. But to be honest, they probably would have if I hadn’t run out of the library at mach 4.