It has been about nine years since this column commenced. The most repeated and continuous refrain used to describe it is something along the lines of "a most welcome respite from the depressing hardcore news in the main pages".
This is usually prefixed by "It's the very first page I go to after I get my paper". We like this. And by "we", I'm referring to the Sunday Times, the ancestors from my AmaQadi people who walk with me wherever I go - and yours truly.
When I was first approached to write the column by (then) Lifestyle editor Lerato Tshabalala and Nadine Dreyer, the brief was simple. Write about anything under the sun and beyond. There was only one catch; don't depress anyone in the process because the inhabitants of the Union Buildings, political analysts and double-chinned PhD types from the Research Centre for the Study of Pompous and Lofty Thoughts or the other have got that market covered.
At the end of the discussions, I summed up what I thought I was being asked to write in the column: "So you're asking me to write a column about nothing? A written version of Seinfeld? My friend Eusebius McKaiser referred to this column as "insightful nonsense". I get the "nonsense" part.
If I've been consistent about anything over the years, it is this; my capacity to worry about all the wrong things knows no boundaries.
It is for this reason that I often find myself worrying about the storyline doing the rounds that the Rainbow Nation mirage evaporated around the time Madiba Magic expired.Apparently, South Africa has never been as racially charged as it is right now. Folks point to the political rise of the Red Berets, the mooted expropriation of land without compensation and the fall of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes as signs that the "masses" are getting impatient.
It is no wonder, then, that I recently watched a doccie where an Afrikaner woman looked a British interviewer in the eye and said there were only two options for "my people": flight or fight. And then they showed a group of white people practising their target shooting and other survival tactics. All sensational stuff for TV ratings, of course, but you catch my drift.
I say that thinking about these things is worrying about all the wrong things. I think we're a tad paranoid about this. It is very possible that I am wrong because I am wrong about 50% of the time. And this may be because I place too much emphasis on my personal observations.
Regular readers know how I love to gloat about the fact that I live on the wrong side of the Boerewors Curtain.
A few weeks ago my wife asks me to pick up two of my youngest boys' mates from their home. On our way home I decide to make a pit stop at East Rand Mall. It is only as I'm ushering them back into the car that it occurs to me that a black male putting two young white boys into a car might not have gone down quite as seamlessly 20 years ago.
In fact, about 17 years ago I remember walking through the same mall with a white female colleague when two gentlemen (I use the word loosely) actually called her aside and asked her if "everything is alright?"The real issues around racism in this country are institutional and systematic but I tell you what, I'm far more comfortable in a whole lot more spaces than I ever was before.
For instance, this past Friday I'm waiting for my son who is on a school bus from Durban. I walk into a pub on Parktown North's Bolton Road that also just so happens to be a barbershop. My head is looking like the fur of a black cat that's just had a bubble bath. But the barber is a white bloke. Oh well, there goes that idea.
We've all read about barbers and "black hair". The fellow behind the bar tells me, "Actually, he's a black dude in a white skin, that one". So there I am, getting my very first haircut from a white oke.
Not only does Dwayne give me one of the best haircuts I've had in months, we have a fascinating conversation about Tupac, Biggie, Dr Dre and gangsta rap from the early '90s.
Look, I'm not saying we're not nutsack-deep in problems. And I'm not saying we're living in Kumbayaland with ebony and ivory in perfect harmony. I'm just saying there are baby steps.
I promise that next week I'll be back to Seinfeld mode...