I was a huge fan of Ally Mcbeal in the first two or three seasons. I sort of saw myself through her. Well, so did every girl in my high school, but of course I thought she was just so me!

We had endless arguments of ‘I am the real Ally Mcbeal’. That’s what you get when you take 300 bright chicks, lock them up with 50-something nuns, and tell them that boys are devil spawn.

Especially when said boys like to jog past your dorm windows at 5.00 a.m. singing rugby songs and calling particular girls by name. For some strange reason the girl[s] in question would then face the wrath of the nuns and their minions. Like it was somehow her fault that 50 devil spawned rugby players know her middle name…

[Note, that wasn’t me **grin**]

But I digress. My point was I have a lot of Mcbealesque … traits. And a few wannabe traits too. For example, how I wish I could wear her hankie skirts. But alas, le sigh, no guts, no heels [knock knees], no glory.

My first Ex used to say I remind him of Ally. I’m not sure it was a compliment, but hey, I can be naively positive when it suits me, and right now, it suits me. So I say muchos gracias.

[Eeeeeeew, Six pence none the richer’s ‘Kiss me’ in what sounds like Japanese!! Creepy!!]

One of my Mcbealesque-isms is to wish my life had a soundtrack, just like hers. My theme song would be … never mind that. I do sometimes hear songs in my head and dance to them, and I often lol to jokes no one else can hear. Probably a little-known effect of living in headphones, yes?

But more than a soundtrack, what my life really needs is a pause button. You know, some switch-controlled mechanism to freeze me before I do something stupidly CB. Because, clearly, not everything can be explained away by being INFJ. Sometimes, my blonde moments are just down to me being me.

[PS: Simple Plan singing a Beatles song inside my headphones is really very disturbing. **puzzled frown**]

Okay. So, let’s put this in a way I can comprehend. As an INFJ, my least developed function is Se. Extroverted sensing. That’s the spontaneity gene, the one that does stuff that feels good, just because. This is the function that rules impulse. It is also the one that strikes me least often, since I’m pretty solid and structured, and plan my actions months, sometimes years in advance.

But once in a while, I get the impulse to do something that would otherwise be considered stupid. Like call a boy four times. Yeah, I know.

See, I am not wooing this boy. I don’t do that anymore. No wait, I need to explain this in a little more detail. There are actually several boys involved. None of whom I am wooing. Some are new friends. Some are old friends. Some are almost friends. One is a boss. But they are all boys, and girls are generally not supposed to call boys. It makes them look, you know, stupid. Because boys are used to making the first move. They are used to calling girls, for whatever reason. So when a girl calls them up, 2 times out of 3, it is a booty call.

Enter me, who routinely calls boys because, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I have endless reasons for calling boys. I called one boy because I wanted to hear his voice, and because we have the same tariff and I had two hours of tariff-specific free talktime. I don’t know anyone else on that tariff … and we sorta-kinda had a thing … and I had to use the free minutes, they’d expire in seven days!

I called another boy because he called me then mysteriously got disconnected. Maybe he ran out of credit. Or network. What, don’t look at me like that. He had something I wanted. Head out of gutter please, it wasn’t like that.

Then I called the boss boy because he said I could call him anytime, and I needed his email, you know, to avoid giving off the wrong impression with endless cell calls.

I called a third [um.. fourth?] boy because he’s one of my best friends and we hadn’t talked in ages, and I wanted to bully him into doing something for me. Mweheheh. He never commented on the **ahem *ahem *several* cough ** missed calls. I called yet another boy because I needed advice, and it wasn’t the kind of thing you can ask on text.

So yeah, I routinely call boys. No, it’s not that I have a lot of credit, it’s just that sometimes I need to use my cellphone. Mind you I rarely get called myself. I never actually know where my phone is because if I’m not dialling, then it’s not active. That’s why I get so jazzed when a boy actually spends talktime on me.

Again, I digress. My point here is about flawed logic. See, I’m a handbag person. And a shoe person, as I recently realised. Which means I can’t resist a pretty bag or a neat pair of [mostly flat] shoes. My handbags are extreme. They’re either really tiny or really huge. And they are always always full of junk. Finding something in my handbag is like hunting for easter eggs.

As a result, the few times I get a phonecall, I have to scavenge my bag for ages before I give up and empty all the contents in search of my phone. Then I have to figure out which of the two identical phones [Nokia 1210 I think, the black one with the torch?] is ringing. So I usually pick my phone on the twelfth ring. Or I find the caller has given up so I call back.

Hence, I am very patient when I call people. If you don’t pick, I will assume you are rummaging in your bag, so I will call again. Then I will assume you have left your phone somewhere, so I will text. Then I will assume you forgot to respond, so an hour later, I will call again.

Then at some point it will eventually hit me that when someone, especially a boy, comes in from wherever, and sees four missed calls and two texts, they are probably thinking stalker alert!!

Eventually the person will text to explain why they didn’t take the call and what do I do? I immediately call again. And they don’t answer. It is at that point that I realise that perhaps calling is not such a good idea, yeah? Yet a few minutes later my itchy fingers will be dialling some other person’s number. This has happened four times in the last 24 hours … with four different people! Tsk tsk. This is not a good day for phonecalls, clearly.

Oh well, at least I am earning bonga points, yeah?

In related news, somebody needs to invent some kind of frequent flyer scheme for Safaricom and Zantel. Seriously. And I don’t mean postpaid…

PS: The police in Dar have issued a memo to international companies, banks et al warning about a gang of violent robbers. There have been three armed robberies in my hood in the last three months, and that’s a lot for Dar, where we mostly get petty thefts, and where any unusual crime is blamed on Kenyans. This time, the cops have stated clearly that the said gang includes Kenyans, and have issued hotlines for info leading to their arrest. For someone living and working in Dar, it just got that much harder to be Kenyan.

For more information on 3CB, click here.