Acute and chronic Barrelitis

Bar -rel -it -is

-noun

1. a term I stole from my friend Camara in 1995.


2. has nothing to do with guns.


3. an illness crippling more than 75% of Jamaica's population (figure completely fabricated).
   

Word origin: Perhaps Camara's Mother

Synonyms: americanization, cultural assimilation

Much in the same way our Peter Pan peanut butter and Tide laundry detergent were transported from "foreign" to Jamaica in a barrel, so too were cultural aspects of the American society. As the satellite dish numbers increased, so did our love for rap and pop music, kid and play haircuts and baggy jeans, barbie and cabbage patch dolls. As our parents provided us with more and more America, they scoffed at the strangers we'd become. Whose fault was this?

At the beginning of the school year, we would appear freshly adorned with our new school bag and shoes, pens and pencils that arrived last week, just in time for school. There were always conversations about which brand our parents said was better or about the audacity that some kids had to return to school with the same bag and shoes from last year. Some of us carried a little more than new stuff. There was the added prestige that accompanied our newly acquired accent with the ts sounding like ds. This accent was from a full two months' stay in Miami or New York or simply from watching too much tv. After all, we had enough material to fabricate a story about foreign even if we hadn't been there.

It is very difficult to find the sole entity responsible for this cultural robbery. After all, Jamaica is only one of many countries affected by this phenomenon. Perhaps our culture was not strong enough to withstand the pressure, some critics may say, but I blame the barrel.