No stray bathtub is safe with Becky Jelly and Jay Pee Smurf to defend us

The law is an ass, as #SliceOfGasant columnist Gasant Abarder found out at great personal expense as he recklessly rear-ended a bathtub innocently left in the middle of the roadway on a cold, wet and dark night. Luckily, the insured among us can all feel grateful we have law enforcers like Jay Pee Smurf and Becky Jelly on our side.

Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here.

I hit a bathtub in the middle of the road with my SUV. I had only seen the tub right before I collided with it on a rainy and dark last Thursday evening. I had rear-ended the bathtub because I had hit the opposite side of where the taps are usually located (stay with me, this is obviously the front of the tub), so I was clearly at fault.

I cringed because I thought I had hit the driver of the tub. But when I got out of my car, I saw neither butcher, baker nor candlestick maker. There was only an angry man on the centre island on the peak of the Turfhall Road bridge gesturing wildly at me. Had I not seen his bathtub, he angrily inquired.

I was going to ask for his licence and vehicle registration, but he had neither. My SUV was badly damaged: the front grille, right-hand light cluster, bumper and radiator was leaking. There was no use protesting. The heavy cast iron bath in the middle of the roadway hardly had a scratch. I decided to let it go and continue the errand I’d been sent on.

When I returned from the pharmacy around the corner, I encountered an elderly man standing in the rain and looking like he was about to have a heart attack. He was having a full-on panic attack. When I saw the minibus he was driving, which he would later use to transport staff, I understood. Where there was once a driver’s side door was now a crumpled mess.

I stopped to console him and then heard the familiar voice of the third party in the collision shout at the elderly driver that it was all his fault too. The indestructible bathtub wasn’t far behind. Then, it dawned on me that the sheriff of the wild, wild, Western Cape, Mr Jay Pee Smurf, had been impounding unroadworthy vehicles like this tub. His manne have also been issuing fines for people who had sexy little bumper stickers on them. And he has taken a hard approach on anyone even trying to be a street racer with a modified car.

In the slightly better light, I surveyed the bathtub and wondered why I hadn’t seen it sooner. The wheels of the trolley it was placed on were wholly inappropriate for the road. If there was a tyre tread it was long gone. There was no visible licence disk or number plate. And it didn’t even have rear lights, headlights, a rear-view mirror or side mirrors. It was ready to be impounded. But alas, no sign of Jay Pee.

I thus promptly made a citizen’s arrest and led the bathtub driver to the nearby police station – bathtub and all. We needed the bathtub because I needed the police to see this because how else would Discovery Insure believe my ridiculous story?

Both us drivers were relieved too because had we hit the driver of the abandoned tub with as much force as we hit his vehicle either of us may have been in the tjoekie for hitting a tjoefie (because, there was clearly tik involved in this incident) because the law is an ass.

The police soon let our fellow go after we had our accident reports and case numbers for our insurance claims. The following day a friend recounted how he had seen a chap driving a bathtub at around 10pm – two hours after my collision. It would appear Jay Pee Smurf’s omnipresent ghost squad hadn’t spotted our man in the unroadworthy bathtub.

This all happened in the week that Becky Jelly reminded us that while crime in South Africa was marginally down, we needed to watch out for Tuesdays (please be safe today, folks!) and Wednesdays. It seems that crime had migrated from weekends to these two days in the week.

Becky Jelly told the wireless people in a soundclip that they had succeeded in ‘sanitising stubborn crime’ on weekends. Except for Saturdays. What?! I went cross-eyed in the school run from disbelief and nearly hit another damn bathtub!

We’re never too old to learn. I learnt in the past few days that Saturdays are only part of weekends if they’re crime-free Saturdays. I learnt that every citizen indeed has the right to the roads; I’ve always advocated for skateboarders and cyclists and now will include bathtub riders into the mix.

And I am happy, knowing that crime has no chance because we have Becky Jelly and Jay Pee Smurf on our side. We just don’t know how lucky we are. Be grateful!

Also read:

Taxi crisis: The real villains are not the ones behind the wheel

Picture: Gasant Abarder