Product Recall
Ah yes, the fresh smell of an in-flight magazine. I would say I missed it, but I never really left.
Maybe you missed my last column, and perhaps that’s for the best.
To recap: I said I was leaving the in-flight humour column profession to concentrate on solving other mysteries of the world (world hunger, the true length of my right foot, etc.); I was quite sentimental and a wee dramatic; I even quoted two lines from the Russian poet Pushkin, like a bit of a tool. What I didn’t anticipate was that I’d come back. There is some kind of divine comedy to my situation that I can only respond to by laughing.
Fate and laughter are bedfellows.
I wish I could say it was difficult to get me back, that I had them on their knees begging for me to return. The reality was something like this:
Editor: Hello Sebastian. We are truly sad to see you go. Is there any way to convince you to keep writing for us?
Humour Columnist: A company car?
Editor: We can offer you a branded company flask?
Humour Columnist: Dang it, I’m in.
What can I say? Winter is here, and cold tea is one of my chief worries; plus, I am a sucker for branded storage containers. But apart from appreciating fate and flasks, I have also been thinking: by being recalled to this humour column, I’ve inadvertently entered an often-overlooked list of luminaries – the List of The Recalled.
Usually, it is not all too positive when something is recalled. Think of a paediatric cough syrup recalled due to safety concerns, a car with a combustible steering wheel that led to eight million vehicle recalls, or the United States of America withdrawing from Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq after failing to do whatever America attempts to do overseas. The list goes on. This got me thinking: am I a faulty product that needs to be returned, and if so, to whom? I doubt that Nkwazi will always be here, willing to receive me with a branded flask in hand. And I think my go-back-home coupons are now finished – my parents have taken me back one too many times.
These questions could, admittedly, lead me to the kind of existential musings that forced me to quit in the first place. I am susceptible to a sort of existential questioning that borders on conspiracy theories. For example, I find passages by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard illuminating. After asking the heavens, “Who am I? How did I get into the world… why was I not informed of the rules and regulations?” Kierkegaard asks to see the ‘manager’: “If I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager – I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?” But we all know who the manager is – it just seems that Kierkegaard was a couple of centuries early. It turns out, as the prophet Beyoncé declared in grammatically dubious terms, “Who run the world? Girls (girls).”
However, not all self-questioning has to lead to Beyoncé (although this is debatable). Indeed, there are positive recalls as well. Think of significant historical returns or the remake of the film Dune (the original, 1984, is something of a trip). But perhaps my favourite recall concerns the great Russian novelist Dostoevsky, who was sentenced to death for treason, sedition, or whatever people get sentenced to death for. Just before he was to be shot along with his co-conspirators, an order arrived staying the execution. Apparently, it was merely a ruse – a little bit of harmless psychological torture before being sentenced to four years of hard labour in a Siberian gulag. Which got me thinking, did I actually fool myself by leaving? Was it a carefully constructed ruse conducted by myself, against myself?
Actually, where is the manager? Beyoncé? Anybody?
