RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33463, 19 February 1974, Page 16

RANDOM REMINDER

The English language, our manner of expressing to others what we wish others to imagine our thoughts to be, is tremendously important not only as our means of communicating but also in keeping a vast number of teachers from the ranks of the unemployed, or worse. But we need no teachers to tell us how a woman shops. If she wants a bean slicer she will start off in women’s underwear, go through the shoes in the shoe department, then on to curtain materials, carpets, etc., until she finds herself alongside a stand of drastically reduced sunhats. And after trying every one on she will finally settle for the one most like the other four she already has back home. Then she will dutifully rush home to prepare husband’s dinner and

write a note for him to buy her a bean slicer the following day. But to get on with our story, which concerns a mother and her eight-year-old son who were in Rangiora for a day’s shopping which mother was enjoying. But young son was pestering to go to a toy shop. Mother, running late as usual, pointed to a shop straight across the road and told him she will meet him there in 10 minutes. And about that time she was there but her son was not.

She waited a further 10 minutes, then wondered if her son had gone to the car parked just round the comjr. No son was at the car, so back to the toy shop, where there was no son, so anxiously back to the car.

Some time later, her son appeared, with an excuse for being late.

He had crossed the road as directed, but seeing no toy shop had asked an old man who was leaning on a walking stick, if he could tell him where the toy shop was. The old man told nim to speak up as he was a bit deaf. So the boy spoke up, whereon the old man smiled knowingly, took the young boy's hand and lead him off along the footpath. They walked a long way, but at last the old man stopped and happily pointed to a sign above a doorway that said “Men Only”. Kindly he 'asked the boy if he could find his own way back. The boy said yes and hurriedly headed back to where they had come from, leaving behind a perplexed old man, no doubt meditating on the strange direction today’s youth was going.