We all dislike the negative, right? ‘No’ is a dreaded word. As children, we learn its potent bitterness early. Especially when the sweet tooth is craving a bar of chocolate and mum says, quietly, but firmly, “No.”
As a child, one also learns that it is pointless asking mum, “But why?” This is because she has all her reasons, ready to trip off the tip of her tongue. Really scary reasons, too.
“Because too much sugar leads to hyperactivity. You’ll keep buzzing around the house like a bee and won’t settle down, and in the end, you’ll lose the little energy you have.”
Or, “Because chocolate will make you fat, and you want to stay slim if you’re ever going to be a sprinter like your uncle Chicko.”
Or, “Because it’s bad for your teeth and you already have two rotten ones. Would you like a third, tell me?”
One learns early that chocolate isn’t mum’s only ‘enemy’. She doesn’t like the outdoors, too. I mean, she likes it for herself, but it’s not a place for little children to be unsupervised.
“No, you can’t play outside. The Johnsons’ dog could come bounding in and catch you by surprise. It’s not as playful as it looks from across the wall.”
This is just after you thought you’d outgrown your fear of the bogeyman! Now, via the negative, you have a new phobia to try and nurse through the years. If one is drip fed cynophobia from an early age, chances are that the little boy — a senior man, now — will carry those fears with him through life.
Living in Western Sydney as I do, I swear there have been times when I’ve heard the sound of panting at my heels as I’ve walked home from the bus stop. Although there are rules pertaining to canine pets in most parts of New South Wales, not all of them appear to be applied in the area where I reside. To this day, I can walk nonchalantly past a shopping aisle stacked with chocolates and not suffer a single pang of desire, but my feet get rooted to the spot the moment I espy a dog on the loose even if it’s going about its business a hundred metres away. I fancy that it is, somehow, going to sniff my scent — my fear — in the breeze, and come bounding in my direction to investigate. I mentally prepare my now-ageing legs to take off in a sprint if the animal should show the least interest in me.
That I never ever went on to becoming a sprinter is another story. The most running I did was approximately 22 yards — the distance between two sets of wickets. And that too, at a gentle lope, for the kind of cricket I played (not just me, but my friends too, of that day) hardly resembles the frenetic pace of the game as it is today. I mean, commentators hardly ever mention an immaculate head-over-the-ball, elbow-pointing-upward, forward defensive stroke in these times, simply because it’s virtually ceased to exist and if someone did play one by accident, the commentators pretend they didn’t see it.
It’s too much of a negative in today’s positive stroke-infused environment. However, I’ll tell you one place where, when you hear the negative, you can permit yourself to bound up from the chair and do a little jig with delight: It’s at the doctor’s.
As gloomy a place as a hospital may be, the moment the doctor looks up from the sheaves of test results clutched in his hands and says, “They’re all negative!” you feel invisible sunbeams charge into the room. I remember reading about a man waiting on the phone for his doctor to reveal his results. When the doc pronounced, ‘Negative’ he almost fainted with fear until the doctor reminded him that ‘negative’ in this case was really a good thing.
It’s one of the only times when a ‘no’ really means a ‘yes’.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
