I am forever in debt, oops.., make that indebted to her for the rest of my natural life for the excitement and energy she brought into my life. The thoughtfulness behind her actions is never lost on me and yet, I often find myself scratching my head in puzzlement following one of her great favors to me, hoping that one of these days, she’ll do me a favor and stop doing me favors;... like the time she went out and got us membership at Bally’s Health Club for which I continue to have the privilege of paying. How did she manage that? Easy! There is the joint account, which is my account and her account, and then there is her account, which is, well,...her account, off limits even to herself, because she is forever dipping into the joint account, my only account!

By the time it occurred to me that I had been railroaded into accepting this lopsided scheme, which left me without an account of my own, it was too late to raise an objection. In her disarmingly sweet and gentle way, she would have pointed out that it took me only three months to notice, knowing full well that she had come in with an impressive list of talking points about the folly of paying service-charge for unnecessary accounts, and, thus rendering my objections mute.

I remember how she had blind-sided me with a barrage of numbers I could neither verify nor refute and some cockeyed statistics about how many Ethiopian-born, Abuaré-Adég men under 42, weighing ke 70 eske 75 Kilo and circumcised by the resident dresser at Menelik Hospital after the Zemecha, coming out on the good side of the razor-thin difference between circumcision and castration by the skin of their teeth, were losing considerable sums of money to Banks to maintain accounts they didn’t need!.. Case made, she would then take her actuary-a.., I mean actuary-self out of the room faster than you could say “fuzzy math!” How did I get so lucky? Yarba Qen Idile´!.....(Hey, what’s up with us and this fixation with Arba anyway?...Wait a doggone minute! There is one that fits this moment perfectly. How aboooouuut Arba Megreff Neber? “Cherish the thought as long as you both shall live!”)

Of course, she had conveniently neglected to mention the harmlessly minor details of the payment arrangement she had made with this Health Club. Incidentally, if you are anything like a self-respecting, first Generation Immigrant from Ethiopia should be, Health Club should conjure up the pleasant image of the owners/operators being clubbed to death for ruining the mental health of perfectly self-satisfied men like me (our filling out a little around the tummy notwithstanding) by flaunting these muscle-bound Über-Menschen, who delight in rubbing your nose in this here fitnesss thing!

The good-natured teller at the Bank, by way of explaining the mysterious $45 monthly charge to my account said we had a 3-year membership at this place. Immediately, I thought “How presumptuous of her to think that she would be alive that long!” “Affer Tibla,” I mumbled under my breath. The teller, sensing my consternation, knew he was on to something here and was not about to let go before he had all the juicy details, so he could meskakat about me with Keenesha later during lunch ( ‘tato chips). He craned his neck over the counter, and with the greatest maganen he could muster said: “...Ahhhh! You didn’t know. Did you?” (And talk about auditory hallucination! I could have sworn I heard him add “You stupid mother------”....... Strike the good-natured part about this kid .)

He was right, of course. I was baffled by this charge for months before I worked up the nerve to look into it. I had hoped that it would disappear one day and I would let bygones be bygones. After years of negotiating, whining, complaining and “Get-The-Manager”-ing through life in this here sew belaw siriat, I am Mebt-Maskeber-ed out! My hell-raiser days are over and done with.

You want cliché ? I will give you cliché. I don’t rock the boat, I don’t make waves, I go with the flow! Kageru yeweTa, ageru Iskimeles!......Years of wrangling with AT&T, which charges you for the 15 minutes or so of absolutely no conversation while you wait for your uncle in Debre Zeit to come to the phone at a neighbor’s home a mile away (“Tamerika Néw, Eré Tamerika Néw! Irrrriiee”), .... the HMO nitwits, who send you a bill for exchanging God’s greetings with Dr. Satwant Singh in what had to have been Urdu,.... Bank-tellers, who call you mother------ in your face, … and post-pubescent associates at the department-store who, hands-on-hip, mewregreg on your ass for remaining in line at shift-change...... have left me a broken man. Resigned acquiescence, you might say. The assertiveness in me (she doesn’t think I ever had any) has fizzled out.

Even senior citizens don’t annoy me anymore. I have made my peace with my luck that invariably places me behind exactly two of them at the check-out counter, staring at ill-fitting purple wigs twisted every which way and shocking-red lipstick that somehow finds its way down to the chin. There was a time when I would demand that the manager open another aisle. Today, I patiently stand there and admire the nerve of the Methuselahites as they rummage through a stack of expired coupons only to find that they don’t need that Pepto Bismol after all. Gimme Immiye Itoppia, where seniors know their bounds, where our Grandfathers, in an act of sanctimonious self-deprivation renounce the pleasures of the flesh (read : Impotence! ...Abet Kunené ) and while away the hours neatly nestling in the crevices of the august edifices of Qidus Selassie and Bahta Mariam ;......Immiye Itoppia, where the waiter (who is also the manager) will pick you up with Gilmicha and go about his bidness.

She thought I had given in to her incessant urging when I dropped in on her at this Bordello D.B.A. Bally’s one day. It wasn’t so! If it weren’t for the dmmét gedai curiosity that tormented me, wild horses couldn’t drag me into this place. Strange place indeed! Far removed from the time and place decent, God-fearing humans live in: perfectly emaciated women bench-pressing ten times their pre-anorexia body-weight to gain upper-body strength. Upper body? Give me a mother... make that, give me a break! Now, I can think of a deeper meaning (get your mind out of the gutter) that might accrue to lower body exercise, but that material is for a future AL, AC Seleda issue on Dreaming of Horses. Sampling: Asseleffu to Tesfaye:“Tesfaye, Abiet Yeferess Menga, Tinnant Behilmie.........Innnnnndihu Assaderegn!” Tesfaye to Asseleffu: “Isuma Menged Néw Asseleffu, Menged!...IrrruuuuuuuuQ Bota Likeji Néw.” (You wanna bet, Tesfaye?)

As for the mens of Bally’s, (Balleee, not Ballé, ‘cause there ain’t no husbands here) all younger mens (Oh, Oh!) sporting washboards for abdomen and muscles galore oozing out of their ears. Well, they put things in the proper perspective for you with quickness. Suddenly, you find yourself much less worried about a measly $45, concentrating your energy instead on ways you could keep your QelQala, ye-séw QelQala wife out of this place. If only you had taken the vows of Priesthood back then when you could, you would easily have dismissed this situation with an amused shrug and a “Ahiyam YeleN, ke jib AliTala”.

I ain’t talkin’ no regular -ceps of yesteryear neezer. I am talking the kind of muscles even you might have developed if only your parents had had the foresight to know that dressing you in your sister’s balabeba Qemiss for the black-and-white family picture y’all took 35 years ago was not a good idea. (To make matters worse, the picture finds its way into the hands of your worst enemy, your best buddy, who considers it his prized possession...priced possession?)

I am talking ‘bout the entire male physique having metamorphosed into an alarmingly Michelangelesque form within the last 15 years, while all along you were having trouble getting your feet wet when you showered. If there is a way to encourage men like me to pump them weights, this sho ‘nuff ain’t it. I feel like someone owes me some damn muscles dating back to, say, the middle eighties. Throughout the fifteen summers gone by, I could have been a contender down on the waterfront. All you Marlon Brando fans say: “Ay Cilima, ay cilima! Im’mamlakn!... Cilima b’lo zim! (Cilima: etymologically Ethiopian. Usage: Diktetive Cilima, Ye Bis Colby Cilima, Ye Bom Barley Cilima . )

So, where was I?

Yes, another matter of no less concern… here at Bally’s it is permitted that these male gigolo-types prance around the facility in skin-tight shorts revealing a prominent bulge, lest one’s wife take to the crazy notion that she’s missing out on something and stuff. Das hatte mir noch gefehlt! (Translation: Revenge of a former German School student for being written out of SELEDA’s unequal opportunity offensive against less deserving Adisaba schools. We don’t ‘preciate being rendered irrelevant when all three of us, with a combined 39 years of German under our belts, have managed to hang on to the five words in the above phrase. You may question our sanity, but never our...let’s see,..... perspicacity?....... Oh, the perspicacious, persnickety nature of Bill Gates and his pertinacity in making perspicuous words available at the click of a mouse!.....Back in a minute. Note to myself: Copyright tongue twister.)

So, you say I am digressing, eh?.........Well, what does it say about you that damn near three meandering pages later, you’re still looking for clarity of thought, smooth transitions and a coherent theme?.......All you thoroughly SELEDAfied readers know how it be. The rest of you, turn off your PCs and go check out the latest on PC, DC and SC. (Pregnant Chad, Dimple Chad and Swinging Chad, that is.) It almost certainly makes for better entertainment.If it’s any consolation, I’ll gladly admit to my own difficulty finding a title to this here thing. In the exercise of my discretion, therefore, I cede that right to the editors in recognition of their remarkable talent for Seled-ad-libbing .