Every once in a while, a warm-blooded male will find themselves thrust, by circumstances, ever so forcefully into a supermarket. The initial reaction from a well-adjusted adult male is one of panic. Must leave right now.

This is followed by a very-hard-to-control urge to run for the exit, only stopping to hurl colourful phrases at anyone who tries to impede their fast exit. If, however, the male has to stay there longer than two seconds, here are some rules that govern man-shopping worldwide.

1.No man shall be in a supermarket for more than five minutes in his best-selling book “Male Shopper extraordinaire”, celebrity Erlington Gloom elaborates, “The law of shopping as a man states that one should be in and out of the supermarket in five minutes-tops. Anything over that and you are a shoplifter. Those people lingering close enough to see your nose hair aren’t trying to help you figure out which brand of cat food is better; they are watching you and reporting your every movement to their supervisor”

2. No list; Gloom goes on to say that shopping lists are a big no-no. If a man should have one, it should have all the hallmarks of something created hurriedly and without much thought going into it-like the list being written on a napkin

3.Sections no man can be caught in;The insanely popular book spoken of in the last point goes on to say that once a boy’s voice cracks and he develops some hairs on his chin, he is banned from certain sections in a supermarket. The hair products and make-up sections, the book goes on to say, fall in this category.

If said man finds himself in a banned section, he should raise his hands above his head and walk backwards in a slow, non-aggressive manner for any shopper passing by to know that the man is sorry for his actions and he is taking literal steps to address it. For those men with pizazz, the book recommends that you moonwalk out of the banned section

4.Sections that should be visited Gloom dedicates an entire chapter in his book to sections that every man should visit. Alcohol. Gadgets. Car stuff. Gloom insists every man should visit at least one of these sections on entering a supermarket. He says that even if it’s only to stand and stare.

If you have gulped in more than three breaths of “fresh” air in Kampala, then you have definitely used a boda boda before. If you are still trying to calculate how many breaths you have taken then let us, for argument’s sake, assume that they are more than three. If you have no doubt that you have taken more than three breaths and you still haven’t been on a boda boda before, then run for the hills-peril will befall you even before you are done reading this column. For those still reading, I will assume you have either been on one before or you spilled coffee on the part where I spelled all kinds of doom for you.

Boda boda guys ride very badly. The temptation to paint images of just how badly they ride is very overwhelming, but I know that you dear reader, are well-read and as such have been exposed to all kinds of descriptions of just how bad these men are. Shakespeare described their riding as “…the scumeth from whence doom spilleth…”. There is clearly no topping that.

From the first time we picked up that Peter and Jane storybook, (which for some happened on Campus), we have been shown just how bad these men are. They have been around since the earth was created, facilitating doom and all kinds of mayhem. The big bad wolf who blew the houses of the three little pigs into oblivion-how did he get from one house to the other so fast? You guessed it…on a boda boda. The other wolf that made an odd offer to Little Red Riding Hood, how did he get to her granny’s house so fast? You are a genius-you guessed it again! On a boda boda.

For kingdoms that didn’t have carrier pigeons or men gifted with extra lungs to run and deliver a message, how did they transport their intentions to invade or post-invasion “Sorry we beat you so hard” messages? Using boda bodas. The bikes have been here, carefully holding the thread-bare fabric of society together and slowly morphing into what we see today; stone-eyed, blood-thirsty individuals with a bone to pick with everyone. If space allowed, we would go into how this evolution occurred…but I have a word limit. And this last sentence here has helped me hit it.