Friday 5 February 2016

The Tonsil.

It states in all the religious creeds and commandments that we are supposed to refrain from hurting others. No slapping, smacking, hitting, pinching, biting, bruising, strangling, stabbing, dismembering or killing our fellow humans. We’re not supposed to hurt each other. As an alternative we resort to hurling abuse in order air our contempt for them or their actions. It’s a lot harder to supply evidence of verbal atrocities than physical ones without visible bullet wounds or missing appendages.

Among the thousands of names available on the verbal abuse front, apparently, 
is Tonsil. Until now it wouldn’t have been first on my list of profanities. Until I had children and experienced first hand the power the tonsil commands over misery and pain and loathing. The word does lend itself to rolling off the tongue with vehemence which is strongly characteristic of most insulting adjectives. When you’re yelling out the car window in a blaze of fury, you need something short and hard sounding. Like Dickhead. Or Fucktard. Or Plonker. It’s the “k” that makes it blast forth with fury to recipients ears, but Tonsil does have a certain hardness in the T that could pass. 

Calling someone a Dickhead is to liken their facial features to a penis - not the prettiest thing to have on your shoulders- or being compared to a retarded or mentally deprived individual in the act of copulation as a Fucktard - being imagined as an uncoordinated couple banging uglies would be awkwardly unflattering - or even being referred to as something useless or inept as well as large and ungainly would be a successful slap to the ego with Plonker. But Tonsil? 

In our house, tonsils are not just useless lumps of lymphatic tissue but superhuman, vindictive little beings viciously clinging to my usually content and happy toddler’s unsullied little throat. They lie in wait for any passing smidgen of bacteria to foster and mutate into devastating proportions of fever and pain within a matter of hours. Their power to change the environment of our home from harmony to miserable discord akin to a war torn country’s battle for peace is unfathomable. They are evil to the core. A super hero villain equivalent of Darth Vader, Voldemort and Sauron all rolled into one. Just as attractive too. 

I’ll never forget the vision of horror as I peered down into my baby’s throat on the request of the doctor to share his amazement and wonder at the size of those lowly cretins oozing puss from their bulbous, veiny bodies of fleshy tissue- like some kind of alien life form from a horror movie dissimulating their presence as protective glands while colluding their next attack.

Tonsillitis (the physical eventuality of the evilness of The Tonsil) makes even the most benign of toddlers normally opposed to all reason obstreperously impossible to manage. With a fever always and undoubtedly over 39 degrees their aching little bodies and minds refuse every single item in the daily chain of events from not running up and down the dining room table for fear of concussion or not climbing into the toilet for fear of drowning or contracting a life threatening infection to eating dinner to wiping a food blasted face to a nappy change to getting into the bath to getting out of the bath to getting dressed to brushing teeth to getting into bed. Everything. Melted into pure, unadulterated chaos. 

To liken another being who is influencing my life negatively by either blatantly bumping me in a queue or stealing my parking or giving me the finger when they were clearly behaving abominably on the road behind me or driving at 120km an hour down our dog and cat and children infested suburban street without stopping at the stop street to a tonsil, would be apt. 

The tonsil who parks his car in the disabled parking at the gym door because he doesn’t want to walk too far, who makes a dash for it out of turn when an out of order robot turns an intersection into a four way stop during peak hour, who stuffs a cigarette butt into a pot plant, who parked over two parking bays on a Saturday morning so his car doesn’t get shopping-mall-dimples, who was your boss and who suddenly came up with an salary increase after you handed in your resignation.

The tonsil I met in the dentist waiting room who pulled her child out of a school because the teacher was gay, my neighbour who won’t spay their cat because it’s too expensive, the other neighbour who pruned my tree hanging over his wall to a stump while i was on holiday, who set off fireworks for an hour at new year and drove the neighbourhood animals to a state of terrified frenzy. That type that throws his bag of empty Macdonalds packaging out his car window. 

The absolute tonsil, who tells his people that a shower will rid them of aids, who advocates safe sex and then fathers twenty children, who blatantly steals taxpayers money to fund his own palace, who single handedly is destroying an entire nation for his own personal gain and who will stop at nothing to confirm his top seat as a stupid, uneducated thief too drunk on riches and power to realise the consequences of his presidential terms and the subsequent chaos. The absolute tonsil. The ugly, disgusting, puss oozing, chaos colluding motherfucking, tonsil.

It’s maybe not as good as a slow and un-anaesthetised dismemberment, but spitting it out through clenched teeth instead could save a whole lot of time and energy trying to stay out of jail which might sway it as a successful substitute.

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