How too much explanation killed the monkey — A lesson from a tout.

So yesterday at the driver’s licencing office I got a big tutorial from an unexpected source — a tout!

A tout that came to renew his driver’s license put me through a quick tutorial. It is one of the deepest I’ve ever got. I still can’t really tell why his words hit me so hard - was it his husky voice, his tout-ish smirk or his unique hand gestures?

Honestly, I can’t really tell.

It was a simple scenario, the tout had asked someone to print his temporary driver’s licence twice before laminating it. The sales man was startled, so he asked, “why do you want it re-printed twice before lamination?”.

Almost cutting him off, the tout replied in the deepest huskiest voice I’ve heard all month “na too much explanation kill monkey” . Translated to English, that simply means “Too much explanation, killed the monkey”.

My first thought was that this must be the Obalende version of the popular saying “Curiosity killed the cat”. But then out of curiosity I asked him to explain further, at first he was like “Guy, leave me alone”.

A lot of things raced through my mind as I froze at there at the counter trying to sort the new quote out mentally. Few minutes later, he turned and saw me still lost in thought and decided to help out a bit further.

I’ll write the English equivalent of his words

“The monkey was explaining too much to a friend, he didn’t know that the branch of a tree he was stretching his hand out to grab was still a little bit further. So he missed the branch and fell all the way to the ground and died. My guy, don’t explain too much.”

He grabbed the now 3 temporary copies of his driver’s licence and walked away like a boss! Well, a tout boss!

Since yesterday, I’ve been thinking of where on the walls of my room to write those golden words “Na too much explanation kill monkey”. Or at least, “Grab the branch before starting to explain anything”. I’ve had a reflection on that event all night and now I’m awake by 2AM thinking to myself, he was right to a great extent.

In reality, We don’t really owe most people any explanation to our actions, because (in my husky voice) “na too much explanation kill the damn monkey!”