RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29797, 13 April 1962, Page 16

RANDOM REMINDER

SECOND THOUGHTS

A good many people spend a good many j years trying to become the centre of attention. Children sometimes do it flinging themselves on to the floor and kicking; ; adults merely strike I poses, with paint, or pen, or the spoken word I designed to offend those about them. But when one becomes the centre of attention inadvertently, it is not always so gratifying—a situation rather like that of the stage extra who rushes on stage without anything covering his resplendently striped

underwear. He wonders why the audience is laughing. So there is a Christchurch woman w’ho told her husband she would collect their daughter from school and go home by bus. But, woman-like, she later thought she would drive home after picking up her daughter. She thoughtfully decided to let her husband know he would have to catch a bus. so drove off from the school to his place of business. Her progress through busy city streets was marked by a series of loud explosions, which mad« her very definitely

the centre of attention. Pedestrians stopped, stared, grinned and told their friends. If she had had sense of history, she would probably hae had images of the Gatling gun. and the colonel dead and all that. She arrived at her husband's office like a large firecracker. He, all too well aw»re of her arrival, examined the car and found that the explosions were caused bv a fault in the exhaust pipe. She quietly handed him the ignition key. remarking that she would walk to the stop and catch the bus home, as arranged.