Cold night as a child in the car
It was a cold night and we were on the freeway half way between Camperdown and Pietermaritzburg. My sister Rookaya and I were about 7 and 10 years respectively. Sitting in the back seat of my dad's valiant while he drove in silence.
Then literally in the middle of nowhere he pulled off and without another word left us alone in the car.
We waited in the dark. Not knowing what was going on and being so young the time felt like hours. Absolute agony and we were petrified.
Then all of a sudden he was back, fired up the engine and drove home without a word.
When we got home he asked us to stay in the car and a few minutes later we were back on the freeway going the other way.
Then once again he stopped and was gone, again, for the longest time and we were even more afraid than before. Nothing in our young lives gave us any idea of what was going on..
Then literally in the middle of nowhere he pulled off and without another word left us alone in the car.
We waited in the dark. Not knowing what was going on and being so young the time felt like hours. Absolute agony and we were petrified.
Then all of a sudden he was back, fired up the engine and drove home without a word.
When we got home he asked us to stay in the car and a few minutes later we were back on the freeway going the other way.
Then once again he stopped and was gone, again, for the longest time and we were even more afraid than before. Nothing in our young lives gave us any idea of what was going on..
Decades later I finally worked up the courage to find out what exactly was the story. And it went like this.
It was a really cold night and my dad spotted some poor guy in a thin shirt. Stopped the car, chased him until he caught up with him and asked him what his story was. The guy was probably as afraid as we were.
Then he went home got his coat and went back to the spot to find the guy.
When he did he gave him the coat and that was the end of that.
Clearly this poor guy must have been running for his life being pursued by this crazy guy who just wanted to give him a warm coat.
Some thirty or forty years later, just when I thought that I heard it all, and nothing could surprise me I heard that my dad who is now almost 80 had in incident a few months ago. Apparently he saw some homeless guy in town, and it really affected him. So the story goes that he gave all his clothes to the hobo and went home in his skivvies!! The actual story is that he pulled the poor bum into an alley and stripped off both of their cloths and dressed the guy in his clothing. I cant begin to think what went through the poor guys mind when he was stripped naked by this huge crazy man who was taking his own cloths off at the time.
Some things are better off left unspoken.
M Parak 2015
Some thirty or forty years later, just when I thought that I heard it all, and nothing could surprise me I heard that my dad who is now almost 80 had in incident a few months ago. Apparently he saw some homeless guy in town, and it really affected him. So the story goes that he gave all his clothes to the hobo and went home in his skivvies!! The actual story is that he pulled the poor bum into an alley and stripped off both of their cloths and dressed the guy in his clothing. I cant begin to think what went through the poor guys mind when he was stripped naked by this huge crazy man who was taking his own cloths off at the time.
Some things are better off left unspoken.
M Parak 2015
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