A man is walking his little brown dog on a hot and strangely windless summer afternoon in January of 1987. He looks at a discarded polystyrene pallet with what looks like some dishevelled, withered, and dried-out bean sprouts. He turns to his little dog, whose name must for now remain a mystery, and tut-tuts. He wonders what the world has come to.
What the world had come to for me on that day was somewhat tumultuous and worthy of a tut-tut. That massacre of bean sprouts still gives me the shivers and makes me walk in a special way when the weather is cold and damp.
It seems like a strange place to begin my story of standing up again. But stranger things have happened before, and the bean sprouts are only the beginning.
I had been driving back from my mother’s errand to pick up bean sprouts for my father’s favourite salad. Father did enjoy his scheduled and planned dinner time: 19:00 on the dot.
Bean sprouts should be fresh, the lasagna hot, and the child quiet.
I was on my Suzuki 650 Katana motorbike. “Vroom ba ba” went the 650 cc motorbike engine as I cruised gently down the road.
The bean sprouts that I had just purchased from the shop were flapping around between my shirt and my chest on this exceptionally warm but strangely windless January afternoon in the beautiful Eastern Cape of Southern Africa.
It is strange and lovely to experience an afternoon in the Eastern Cape where there is not a breath of wind. It makes the residents a bit crazy. Today feels like a lazy crazy day. People are driving in a slow, lazy way.
As I was approaching a road to the left, I could see a beach buggy in front of me, indicating to turn right. I began to overtake in a lazy way on the left, as people do from time to time.
The driver was not turning right, and herein began the difficulties in our short-lived yet impactful relationship. He was turning left, and he was turning left before I got past him.
It is an immutable fact of science that two objects in the same physical dimension can’t simultaneously occupy the same physical space.
We entered into a form of dispute over that little space in the universe.
I lost.
It could have been a very nasty knock, but I was lucky he only tapped the side of my engine, and I bruised my knee on the side of his car.
I would have been OK if it were not for my mother’s hairdresser’s husband, Al, and his Toyota Corolla, who now both, bizarrely, enter the story.
Al also happened to be shooting off to the shop to buy some bean sprouts to go with his own lasagna that night.
Al presented me and my motorbike with a bit of a conundrum. He was now in the way of my errant beach buggy-influenced trajectory.
There is a silence that occurs mentally during that split second of an accident. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just forgot everything. It’s a blissful silence.
And then you wake up.
My first memories were of seeing the bean sprouts. What those poor things had been through. I have to pick those up, I thought distantly.
Even more distantly, I was trying to figure out why I was no longer on my motorbike — something about my mother’s latest hairdo…
I tried to get up.
I didn’t.
To say that the pain was excruciating would be an understatement overshadowed only by that of the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail.
“It’s just a scratch.”
“It’s just a scratch, Miles.”
“Get up.”
“Can’t.”
“Hurts.”
“Need help.”
The standing-up thing was perhaps ill-considered and did not match the external environment.
Oh look, a distraction. There is Johann, my best friend. He looks worried, and he is not coming any closer. Peering at me from a distance.
He has seen a commotion on the way to come and see me at my house. We were going to the beach.
The news is now spreading through my little hometown: Cedric Harrop’s son has been knocked down; he is hurt.
He is hurt badly.
Am I hurt? I think. Just can’t get up.
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Get up.”
“Can’t.”
“Hurts.”
Some truth bombs begin to land a little too close for comfort. I have a problem here. I can hardly breathe or move.
“It’s time to get up,” my mother would tell me when I lay in too late.
“I mean it, really, it is time to get up.”
“Can’t.”
“Hurts.”
“Need help.”
Today is the 27th of January 1987. Just one week into my new school year, one which I had mentally prepared for.
I had to stay focused. I have a goal. I have to pass my matric. It was not going to be an easy task. I had not actually passed my previous year. As an undiagnosed ADHD child, I was regarded as disruptive and a slow learner.
My schooling was poor. My friendship groups were, at best, interesting; at worst, morally dubious.
I had one thing going for me, though. I had started doing really well in the amateur bodybuilding scene. The skinny little boy from the UK, the one who used to get bullied, the one that looked like a little twig insect, had become well-known and respected in the bodybuilding and physique competitor world.
I didn’t play the normal sports that boys should play. I was a problem, my father would tell me. He was very disappointed in me a lot of the time.
“You’ve got this, Miles. Get up.”
“Can’t.”
“Hurts.”
“Need help.”
The muscles in my back, which had for two years consecutively won me a bodybuilding title, had turned into knots of molten hot lava.
More people are arriving, stopping on the side of the road. More mutterings.
I notice that my brand-new top is torn; it’s only the second time that I have worn it. It is white with large multi-coloured lips painted on it in psychedelic colours. There is some blood seeping into it. Hmm, I think, I wonder where that is coming from?
I am feeling very vulnerable right now; I can see feet and legs. It hurts to even try to look up.
“It’s just a scratch, you sissy.”
“Get up.”
“Can’t.”
“Hurts.”
“Need help.”
I hear a fast-moving car suddenly slam on brakes, spewing up the gravel verge. The panicked opening and slamming of a car door, the definitive and authoritative stomping of definitive authoritarian feet.
The separation of the crowd like the Red Sea and the unashamed entrance of a dramatic and imposing figure. Father has arrived.
The military uniform with the requisite set of pilot’s wings, the single surname badge “Harrop”. My father’s stint in the Air Force meant a uniform that commanded respect, most fitting for Father.
The rubbernecked observers are peering and looking and chatting and comparing notes.
“So glad it’s not me.”
“Bloody motorcyclists are windgat.”
“Hello John, long time no see, how are the kids?”
“It’s not my fault; he turned into me. Stupid motorcyclist.”
And now a different voice, a different tone that demands to be listened to: “Which bloody stupid little twit is responsible for this?”
For once in my life, I know the answer to this question. I’ve had to answer that one many times.
I can feel my right arm wanting to rise and take full responsibility. My right arm won’t move.
“Bloody stupid people”, father sneers.
Thankfully, he has not noticed that my top is torn; I would hate to be reprimanded in front of all of these people, especially in my vulnerable fetal position.
He has a short fuse, does Father. In fact, that doesn’t do it justice. Father has no fuse whatsoever. He could move from analytical scientific observation to a volcanic earth-destabilising explosive venom-filled supernova in milliseconds. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of Father’s tongue when he is displeased.
Father has not said anything about the bean sprouts, which I have spilt on this barren ground. They should be in the fridge, I think distantly to myself. I try to clear them out of the way of Father’s polished shoes.
My arm is still being disobedient; it’s not doing what I tell it to do. The other arm seems to be at a strange angle. I don’t remember being able to do that yesterday, I thought.
Father slowly bends down to bring his face closer to mine. I know what he’s thinking. Miles did not shave today.
If there’s something worse than having a motorbike accident on a hot summer’s day and making a spectacle of myself, it would be doing all of this in an unshaven state. The sheer embarrassment.
But Father is not looking at me; he’s looking at my motorbike, which until recently had been lying on top of me. He “tut-tuts” in disappointment.
I try to speak. I can't. Not only does it hurt, but I have also now developed a stutter for the first time in my life; I seem to be lacking compression every time I try to speak.
Cedric’s eyes widen; his pupils constrict; he’s not happy, and he is not getting bean sprouts tonight. He stands back up again with ease, something I won’t be doing for quite a while.
Like a Cape vulture, he surveys his territory, looking for his prey, and like a Spanish inquisitor, correctly hones in on the one person who seems to be oddly out of the group.
He nails it.
The man in the overalls was, in fact, the driver of that beach buggy. He blinks. Father sees him blink.
The driver of the beach buggy has embarrassed Cedric and inconvenienced him.
Cedric booms in a sneering, teasing, derogatory, and condescending way, emphasising each word, perfectly enunciated in his cultured London accent.
“Which stupid little man knocked my son over?”. He ties the question into a double bind. Whoever puts their hand up to admit that they knocked me over is simultaneously admitting that they are, in fact, a stupid little man.
The tribe of bloody stupid people were not having any of it. There were no immediate volunteers to answer the particular question. But as we all know, a blink is as good as a nudge to a blind man in the dark.
All eyes sadly shifted to poor blinking Mr Blue overalls, whose name was Phillip. None of us knew that at the time, except perhaps his parents, but they weren’t there, so like the name of the dog at the beginning of the story, Phillip’s name remained a mystery.
Mr Blue overalls shifted nervously, looking desperately at the ground for some form of defence or inspiration. Neither arrived, but Cedric did, right up to his nose.
“You are a stupid little man! What are you?” asks Cedric rhetorically.
My mind drifts once again. It wanders to Japonica and a poem by Henry Reed on the “Naming of Parts”. On this hot summer’s day, yesterday was what to do after training; tomorrow will be what to do after motorbike accidents, but today, today will be the naming of parts, and in my case, the naming of broken parts. I don't know which bits are broken. It's a tad awkward.
My poetic meanderings have been interrupted for a second as I hear a nervous “Hello; Major Harrop…Cedric?” It breaks Father’s concentration and the death gaze.
It’s Eric, the policeman!
If you’ve grown up in a smallish town, you know the dynamics. You know the postman’s name, the butcher, the baker and the police. We didn't use candles in those days, so I didn't know the candlestick maker's name. You were about to ask; I can tell.
I stare at this gathering tribe of people now being shuffled around by Constable Eric. The tribe had entered into relationships of somewhat redundant intimacy, staring at this boy on the ground with his bean sprouts withering like his breath in front of him on a hot and strangely windless summer’s day.
Nowadays, I describe myself as an executive performance coach, and I take pride in asking well-thought-out and good questions.
Eric was not an executive performance coach. He was not proud of asking good questions.
“How are you?” asked Eric, demonstrating his apparent inadequate question-asking abilities.
You have to be kidding, I thought; what the actual flip? Do you mean existentially how am I? Well, that’s a question mark, so if it’s OK with you, let’s move on to the next question. How am I in a general wellness way? Well, perhaps you could take into account some of the evidence in front of you.
I did not say any of that.
I could not talk, remember? I said that earlier. Go and look.
What I did actually do was sort of grunt through my clenched teeth as if I were trying to squeeze something very big out of something very small. I was squeezing due to the chest injury (currently not diagnosed). I was indeed struggling to breathe, and breath, you may agree with me, is the Genesis of many a good word and speech.
“Let me help you get up,” said Eric.
“Can’t. Hurts,” I squeaked.
Eric abandoned his attempt at pulling me and dropped me back on the ground. Thump went Miles, with a suspicious grinding sound in my back.
“Oopsy doopsy,” he said cheerfully. But not before tugging on my arm and seemingly bending my shoulder into an even more uncomfortable and unseemly position, and relief.
He then puffed up his substantial chest for the audience of rubbernecks. For the first time, he seemed to realise that there was, in fact, an audience, and Eric did love so much to play to the audience.
There he was with his shiny gun and shiny shoes and policeman’s hat; the police had now arrived, and everything would be OK.
Well, not everything; there was the matter of Cedric’s bean sprout salad.
The police were fun; they were friendly; they were accessible. Not particularly efficient at being policemen, but you can’t have everything, can you?
“Bloody stupid people,” sneered Father to no one in particular.
“Indeed,” replied the hairdresser’s husband, Al.
“Look at that,” said Cedric, gesticulating to either the broken motorbike or the withering bean sprouts. “What a waste.”
“Pam sent the odd one to the shop to get my supper,” he said.
“I don’t like bean sprouts,” said Mr Blue overalls, stupidly, I thought, but who am I to judge?
Mr Blue overalls continued, “They remind me of imperialistic hot cuisine scoffed by privileged bourgeois elitist slave drivers, and as such, I distance myself from them.” Mr Blue overalls did exactly that and stepped away.
But before anybody could continue to deepen the conversation on salad dressing, there was the Pee-paw of an incoming ambulance.
Although the Pee-paw poor was, in all honesty, not totally necessary, as most cars capable of movement in the areas were pulled up on the side of the road to watch the show.
Eric’s chest had puffed up to monumental proportions as he paraded himself in front of a new lady audience member.
She has a very short skirt, I thought to myself from my particular view. I can nearly see her…
“Where does it hurt? How are you? What happened?” asks one of the paramedics.
“Bloody stupid people,” I hear Father uttering under his breath once again. For once, I must concur.
“Which question do you want me to answer first?” I try to say. Of course, by now, if you’ve been following, you know that I asked something sounding like “Ugg?”
“Would you like to get up?” asks the paramedic, continuing his litany of stupid questions and solidifying and cementing for eternity my view of stupid people.
Can’t stand, can’t breathe, can’t talk.
A blessed and welcoming dark coat of unconsciousness flows over me after the effort of trying to answer those questions. After what feels like a few seconds, my eyes open again; more people have arrived for the afternoon’s festivities.
Father is not in control. I am not in control. We are both certainly not in control right now.
All of that’s of minor importance and not worthy of consideration, thought Cedric to himself; I have three problems to solve.
Number one: get the unshaven odd one off the grass and out of sight. He is unseemly and certainly unparliamentary, not good for the Harrop name.
Secondly, how am I going to fix that bike?
And lastly, perhaps most importantly, worthy of extreme consideration, what is for dinner tonight? It’s getting late.”
How did I know what my father was thinking?
Good question, because I’m also wondering the same thing. I was indeed beginning to hear voices.
Could it be that, as you were looking over there at the lady with the short skirt and the bean sprouts withering away on a strangely windless summer’s day, that there has been certain attentions applied to my general state of unwellness through a gas mask and syringe?
I had been field-dressed, injected, dripped, splinted and prepared for the journey to the hospital. I was shovelled unceremoniously onto a cold stretcher and once thereupon was slid into an awaiting ambulance.
Pee-Paw ambled the ambulance up the near-empty road, leaving behind a temporary tribe of rubbernecks staring at a haphazard scattering of bean sprouts screaming their last into the universe on this strangely windless hot summer’s day.
I had been put on my side because they could not stretch me into a lying flat position that would have been more appropriate. The medic used his foot to try and straighten me out a bit, but it hadn’t worked, so they left me in that snail-like fetal position.
The painkillers continued their work. I continued the journey, striking up deep, meaningful conversations with family members both dead and alive; there was also a large talking rabbit at one stage with a large pocket watch and a man with a large hat. I didn’t catch their names, though.
Once I had been ceremoniously delivered to the casualty unit, I was handed over to Nurse Andrews in her starched and tight-fitting nurse’s uniform. On another day, I might be so inclined as to cast a young man’s scavenging and critical eye over the topography of her nurse’s uniform; today, I didn’t.
“How are we today?”
Are you related to Policeman Eric? I thought.
“Can’t move. Arm won’t work. Can’t speak.”
I pulled up my shirt to show her my stomach muscles, which had stopped working on half of my body.
I said to her, “Look, stopped working.”
We both looked at my stomach muscles not working; quite interesting, very interesting; it was. One side did not flex at all; its asymmetry added to the general lopsided appearance of my body.
My head was still sort of facing towards my crotch as if I were looking for something interesting there. The something in my crotch area had retracted somewhat, although it still seemed to be there, fortunately.
“Never seen that before,” said Nurse Andrews, not so reassuringly.
“It’s a penis,” I said. I can’t just see it right now, I said.
“I mean your stomach muscles, silly,” she said, pulling back her shoulders and pushing out her ample chest in my direction. She is related to Eric, I thought. She winked. Some of her parts wobbled whilst she administered another stronger something-something into the drip.
I thought back to my departure from the tribe on the side of the road. My lasting memory as I departed was seeing Johann’s forlorn and worried face. He did worry a lot.
I think he was the only person who remembered why the temporary tribe had gathered and found themselves in that semi-permeable and accidental tribe state on the side of the road with a tray of bean sprouts starting to bake in that strangely windless summer afternoon in East London.
This temporary tribe that had gathered for one accidental purpose, never to be put together again, to share with me from both biased and unbiased perspectives the changing of my life.
A truly unique day for me; my first rebirth had been witnessed by as many as 40 people, all of them victims, observers, and perpetrators in their own right.
All gathered for this one event, which heralded in such a substantial change in my life. All witnesses are oblivious to the impact of this trauma and how it would affect their own future interactions.
Did they all look a little more carefully when driving home?
Did they look out for motorbikes?
Did they exaggerate the injuries that they witnessed?
The sight of the man flying over his handlebars.
The smash of the bike rider with the white T-shirt as he hit the Toyota waiting at the intersection.
The sound of the thump of a 250-kilogram bike landing on a boy with a tray of bean sprouts.
Were you there that day? Who can say what you might have witnessed out of the corner of your eyes as you drove to the shop on that hot summer’s day devoid of breath?
When you went to bed that night, and your mind drew back to what you saw, you may have decided to proffer advice on certain matters.
How to drive.
How to be defensive.
How to pay attention.
How to avoid things falling on you.
How to get up when you’ve fallen and can’t get up again.
How to recover from an oopsy doopsy and where to store fresh produce when driving home on a motorbike.
You may similarly proffer tips on how to fall.
And how to stand up.
I am really interested in how to get up after a hard fall. It might not always be possible straight after a fall. If you are badly injured, you may need some time, and you may need some help.
“There, there”, advised Nurse Andrews, slipping a needle out of the drip. And as I lie back to enjoy my imbibed enhanced injection of oblivion with a lurking pain in the distance, I begin to dream.
I dream of a man who is walking his little brown dog along a road on a strangely windless and warm summer evening. He perchances across signs of a commotion on the grassy verge. His little brown dog, ill-disciplined as he was, begins to sniff at the grass where there is some broken glass, oil, and perhaps a little blood.
The man with the little brown dog tut-tuts as he turns his gaze away from the massacred and now sun-dried bean sprouts in the Eastern Cape of South Africa on this, strangely windless, hot summer’s day, and wonders what the world has come to, and whether his lasagne will be ready by the time he gets home.
