No stranger to the Cayman National Cultural Foundation’s International Storytelling Fesival Gimistory, Ken Crosbie has performed at every one of the annual festivals since the event began in 1998.
Appearing on the billing of the hotly anticipated event, which runs from 30 November through 4 December, the gifted performer enjoys a special place in Caribbean theatre and has had a long and distinguished career in the performing arts both regionally and internationally. An originator and an innovator, the storyteller gleans material for his personally charged stories from the humour and irony of everyday life. Mr. Crosbie is one of 10 overseas storytellers who will perform alongside 20 or so local entertainers in all of Grand Cayman’s districts, as well as on the Sister Islands. Excerpts from two of his popular stories follow:
Full Blooded West Indian Stereotype
… and so we reach JFK and I make it to the arrival hall, I get through immigration with the correct state department visa, I collect my bags and get through customs, and a redcap wants to take my bags – I’m NOT going to start now by paying someone to carry my two bags.. oh no.. not this West Indian stereotype.. and I know from experience at the airport in Guyana, if you let a redcap take your bags, they could end up in one taxi and you in another and you never see your bags again. A family friend ask you to take all kinds of things, casareep, bottles of rum, a 5 lbs cake which I thought was just 5 lbs, but as it turns out, it’s 5 lbs flour, 5 lbs eggs, 5 lbs sugar, 5 lbs lard, 5 lbs raisins, and worst of all 5 lbs of icing with delicate red roses on top and green leaves around the edges, so it’s now about 30 pounds of cake.. I now have 120 lbs of bags, I’m under stress, my shoulders are ripping off, but I’m cool man, not letting these Yankees think that this is one of those dependent third worlders. No! So I move to the exit.. I know that if I can reach it without collapsing, I could keep my forward momentum, just lean against the doors, push them open with my shoulder and get outside. No problem.
I lean hard, and just 9 inches from the door, the AU-TO-MA-TIC doors open by themselves… never had I ever seen this before… and there I was stumbling, bumbling, tumbling, humbling on the pavement out with my three bags crashing, bashing, dashing, mashing all over the place… I hear a chuckle, I look up and back and there is a tall white fellow looking like John Wayne standing there, he looking straight at me, smiling that Mona Lisa/John Wayne smile..I know what he’s thinking – “That’s the thirteenth Arab to fall through these doors this morning” Well this FullBlooded West Indian stereotype wasn’t going to let Johnny get away this that. NO… so I quickly looked under my shoe sole, scraped in on the edge of the pavement, and muttered loudly and very disgustingly “These damn Yankees and their blasted chewing gum.”
… and as I walk away a song murmurs in my head – Dave Martins’ “W.I.Suitcase” about the scene at the departure lounge of the BWIA or Air Jamaica at JFK airport….
“and if you see a man with a suitcase,
the size of a Cadillac,
You can be sure,
it’s a West Indian going back”
Senior citizenship and Mixed Marriage Don’t Mix
When I walk with my wife, I dress young. Beth is 24 years younger than I am and I’m walking erect, slim chest out, stomach in, bouncing on my toes, but Beth is 3 inches taller than I am, and with one-inch heels she soars above me. I tell her “Slouch a little, love.” We’re going through the gate at a fair in Long Island, I’m pulling out my wallet (I try to get that done before she can reach for hers whenever we’re in a public place), but the gate guy waves me on and hands me a card. “What’s this?” “Senior citizens don’t pay and you get a free coffee and a tapioca pudding!”. I reckon they figure we don’t have teeth to eat a bagel! I vex all day. I pouting and muttering about “Idiot, and he’s looking ten years older than me, and how de hell he could tell?” and so on; the whole day was spoilt, we stayed less than an hour.
Now here’s the absolute worst part. When I first started going to the gym, Beth would very occasionally come in after work and do the bike and weigh thing (women ride the bike for five minutes and go and weigh, ride five minutes then weigh). I’m pumping iron, and I’m grunting ever so softly away, (men grunt, women don’t) and she comes and bends over me and “Ken, don’t overdo it.” It was a small one-room sized gym at that time, and everybody can hear her. I’m embarrassed, of course, but that’s not the end of it. About three months later, a guy whom I’d sort of struck up a conversation relationship with said to me “Ken, when you first came here three months ago, you came with a tall white woman, was she your nurse?”. I nearly want to kill the man.
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