OISK

Sometimes things happen that are so unbelievable there are no good words to describe them. It’s during those times – when you find yourself standing in the grocery checkout line, staring blankly at the cashier as your brain tries to process if she REALLY just asked you that or not (or, more importantly, why she felt it was necessary to ask you) – that you have to resort to the alphabet to explain your predicament. That’s how we got OISK – Only In St. Kitts.

OISK, in my opinion, is not used nearly as often as it should be. You’ll usually find it at the end of Facebook statuses or in blog posts like this one, but I think it should really be tagged onto any and all ridiculous stories of life on the island.

For example: (some of the below are my experiences and some are taken from the stories told by others)

• While walking my kennel dog this morning, I had to keep him from eating three monkeys and a crab the size of a pizza. OISK
• Bought a car that a mechanic said was in great condition, and then the transmission all but fell out three weeks later. OISK
• Went to buy car insurance and took all my husband’s IDs with me to add him to our account. The lady threw a fit because she was convinced there was no way I could possibly know the answers to questions like “has he ever had an accident?” and “when did he get his first driver’s license?” When I told her the date, she entered it into the computer wrong. When I corrected her, she said it didn’t matter. OISK
• You can buy roll-on deodorant and toothpaste from vegetable stands on the side of the road. OISK
• School maintenance people are up at the crack of dawn to use a jackhammer to repair a window screen (Why? No Idea.), but they take a week and a half to put a new battery in the smoke detector. OISK
• It is considered acceptable for a dryer to burn half your clothes. As long as they’re dry, right? And no, you can’t have your eight dollars back. OISK
• You can drive drunk and likely get away with it, but pay heavy fines if your license plate is chipped. (Our car has two different license plate numbers, but apparently that’s not even the point.) OISK
• I asked [name withheld]’s office if I could come in to sign some papers. She said yes, that would be fine. Went by twice this morning and the person I needed was out; told to come back later. Went back later (3:10 p.m.) and found the person I needed, with the papers I needed SITTING ON HER DESK, and she said I could not sign them because the office closed at 3, come back tomorrow. (Office sign says they close at 4; apparently irrelevant.) Went back the next morning and saw the same woman, who gave me the papers to look over and sign, but then as I went to sign, told me that I couldn’t sign them because I’m not a student. And you couldn’t have mentioned that yesterday? OISK

Island kids – submit your own OISK stories! I look forward to hearing them. And be sure to check out the other blog I linked to above. Her OISK’s are great!

Advertisements