After my kid brothers smashed all the plates playing stupid war games, I had to search the whole house to find them. I was a man on a mission. I found the little punks hiding under the bed, dragged them out and told them to go and clean up the mess.

Now I’m totally not in the mood to play video games anymore, basically because I’m a dead man. I was meant to look after them and now the parentals are going to blame me for the disaster. I’m SO screwed. I’m going to chill out here in my room and do my writing, and wait for my parents to come home and kill me.

AFTERNOON

So I was waiting for my parents to come home and destroy me when Anele and Xolo told me to come outside with them. I asked them why, and they said I should just come and they’d show me.

We went across the street to our neighbour Mrs Magwaza’s house. She opened the door and Anele started talking to her.

You should have heard him speak! He told her the whole story of how they broke the plates and how much trouble they were going to get in. He talked so fast that she didn’t have a chance to get a word in edgeways, but he told the story really well.

He made her laugh when he told her about the fake fight, and when he told her about what was going to happen when our parents got home, he nearly moved her to tears.

When he was finished, Xolo held up one of the broken plates, and Anele asked if she had any plates like that which she could give us to save our lives.

She didn’t have any, but she wished us luck. We said thank you and went to the next house where Xolo spun the same story.

All I’m saying is you can tell these little punks are the brothers of DJ AIRTIME. They can spin stories better than me!

We went all the way down the street. I didn’t know this before today, but it looks like my brothers are tight with every single person in our neighbourhood.

So we stopped at one door after the other, and either Xolo or Anele would tell the story, and each time it got better and better.

By the end of it they were talking for ten minutes each, and the story had changed so they weren’t just fighting an imaginary war, but a full-on real one. My parents had become terrifying creatures a mile high who would breathe fire and destroy the city unless someone could help us out with replacement plates.

The last house we got to was Gogo Miriam’s. She took a long time to answer the door, and when Anele told her the story, not a single muscle moved in her face. It made him very skaam. He started stuttering, and in the end he stopped talking, and just asked her straight if she had any plates like ours.

She looked right at him for a while, and then she looked right at me, and it was like looking into a furnace. She’s one scary old lady.

“Is it true, what he says?” she asked.

I told her it was.

She snorted out of her nose, and went back into the house. We heard her clattering around inside, and after a minute she came back out carrying five plates. All of them were exactly like the ones my brothers had broken.

We were so hyped! But she hushed us before we finished thanking her.

“I’m not going to hand these over just like that. I need you to do something for me, too. I’ve got a sore hip, and I need someone to help me carry my shopping. Can you do that?”

My brothers agreed.

“Every week?” she said.

They agreed again, and she handed over the plates.

“Starting tomorrow,” she said.

On our way back to our house, we decided that we’d take it in turns. Anele would carry her shopping tomorrow, and Xolo the next time she asked, and I’d do it the time after that.

I was so chuffed with my little bros that I didn’t want to play the PS2 after that. I wanted to spend more time with them. But when I asked them what they wanted to do, they said they wanted play video games too!

So I put on Mario Party, which I thought would be a bit too much of a kiddies’ game for me, but it was fun. Anele and Xolo picked it up quickly, but I still kicked their asses – most of the time.

It’s lucky they were playing with me, because the punks heard my parents coming home long before I did, so we had time to unplug the PS2 before they came in.

You know, they’re a’ight. I’m cool with them being my li’l bros. The only problem is that they forgot to mention that they also broke the lamp in my parents’ room during their fight. You know, the one my moms really, really loves.

Eish. We got into. So. Much. Trouble.