A failing flycatcher

The fly is a spy

One of the nursery rhymes, if it were a rhyme in my childhood, was about the lady who swallowed a fly and then a spider, and many more predators to go after the each subsequent prey she ended up swallowing and for each ingestion, I bet she died, but she seemed to have more lives than a cat. [Wikipedia: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly]

I have been trying to get at a fly, just one fly and it has been a menace. I do not intend to swallow the fly, but anything that can help me kill it would be a joy beyond measure. Last year, I bought an electronic fly swat racket and that was ambitious of me if I were to recognise my limitations.

Hand-eye mis-coordination

My parents took me for tennis lessons when I was 8 and I was completely useless at the game, I could not even hit the ball, much as my dad was an avid tennis player. Whilst I cannot say I was ever a sportsman, the main reason I could not hit the ball was because I had astigmatism, my right eye was not aligned for stereo vision, though it was not diagnosed until I was in my late 20s.

The lazy eye meant I could not track speed and distance, my awkward handling of the racket in trying to hit the ball was simply with funny eyes, my hand-eye coordination was off. At that age, something could have been done, like my wearing an eye-patch for a period of time to correct the alignment, but in my 20s, the best that could be done was to attempt a correction in the lenses of my glasses.

Not seeing too clearly

However, I was not suddenly going to be a tennis professional once I began to see as I was apparently supposed to see things. My brain had already programmed some compensation into having a dominant eye and I managed the rest by not risking life or limb crossing roads when I was not sure, though there was one time I did cross the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway at the Isolo flyover completely oblivious of the car speeding towards me, everyone screaming and I none the wiser until long after the event. It could have been the end of me.

This eyesight deficiency has also informed my decision not to drive because of the necessity of judging the speed of approaching vehicles and how fast the vehicle is closing the distance between us is one that could make me both a poor and dangerous driver. There is nothing I need to prove in that area, I will not be able to drive. My fly-swatting racket is a dud, not so much because it cannot swat flies, but because somehow, the fly also has a mind of its own, if I do get it, I might just play the lottery too.

Saving my uninsured legs

Static I see

Having astigmatism in my right eye, I have learnt that my perception of distance and speed is very poor. It explains why I was useless at the tennis lessons I took when I was 8, my lazy eye working with my better eye just could not track the ball.

This knowledge also comes in useful when crossing roads, I would rather I saw the whites of the eyes of a driver approaching a crossing with an acknowledgement before I cross.

I remember vividly about 23 years ago; rather than walk the almost 1 km Isolo flyover with the 300m walk to the bus stop, I decided to cross the 10-lane Apapa-Oshodi expressway, everyone was calling out and I did not know I was centimetres from becoming a bloody rag-doll result of a horrific accident – I did not see the car that whizzed past the front of me.

In fact, I was once subjected to the socialist punishment of doing squats in public whilst pulling at my ears for crossing the same expressway during the Muhammadu Buhari’s War Against Indiscipline crackdown on jaywalking delinquencies.

That same crossing witnessed the possibility of religious unrest but for reason that prevailed, when a lady had her burqa ripped off by another man because she crossed seriously endangering the lives of her family that included two children, one strapped to her back.

Road crossings

My friends who drive, cross busy roads like they are still in their cars, I really take care of number one in these matters, I would rather use a pelican crossing, zebra crossing or some designated pedestrian crossing than skip like a listless buck across the road.

Sometimes I quip that my legs are not insured and since I still need to get around with them more often than not, I owe them a duty of road-crossing care.

However, I have feared for one thing and it happened this evening – pedestrian crossings with traffic lights but allowing for discretionary access to vehicles turning into a T-Junction.

Much as I have right of way, I still require that drivers notice me, they have to stop for pedestrians to cross and then even when the lights are green for pedestrians, and they can drive through if no one is present to cross.

I was crossing and this was after 3 cars had sped through, the 4^th noticed me and stopped, but as it stopped, the third car in line bumped into the second – the makings of a traffic jam and anything else that transpires.

No cause, real effect

Now, that accident happened because I was crossing, but the cause it was because the driver was not being attentive or the car brakes were defective – I did not witness the accident, so there was no need for me to wait around as an eye witness.

I was glad that the bump did not create a domino-cascade that could have affected me, sorry as I felt for the situation, I really could not throw a guilt-fit and feel at fault – just as the butterfly happily flapping its wings at one end of the world cannot necessarily be responsible for the tornado somewhere else – I am NOT the purveyor of chaos even if I happen to be coincidentally in the vicinity of the same.