Here’s a funny story to get you smiling into your wheaties today, or your ham sanger, depending on when the paper arrives.
It’s not my story mind you, but if someone wants to pin me down and share their tale for a few moments, they know very well it’s not safe.
They know they’re talking to a rampant collector of stories with a filing system in the memory bank.
This one came from a work mate who lives in the middle of town.
I could relate to some of her experiences as although we’re safely out in the ‘burbs now, it wasn’t always like that.
Back in the days of uncoordinated furniture and rice with chicken salt for dinner, our first house was smack bang in the action.
Parties, festivals, fireworks were all on the doorstep, literally, and mostly involving a handful of drunkards on their way home from a night out.
Bits and pieces were regularly pinched from around the house. It seems you’re a fair target, not to mention public property when you’re along a main drag.
Especially at Easter time when getting a car park in your own driveway is pot luck.
We woke one night to some cretin making a bed on our couch, ready to settle in and wait for the hangover to hit.
He had climbed through an open window but was thrown out the front door.
Another time a mystery overnight bag was found in the backyard, thrown over from the railway line beyond.
The thing was chockas with plastic bags of weed, and I’m not talking milk thistles. Don’t worry, we took it straight to the cop shop.
Anyway, this work mate of mine had similar tales of petty crime.
One night she was out on the front verandah watching the world go by, when her child’s car seat went by, under the arm of dirty rotten thief.
“Col, Col, some bugger’s just nicked our car seat,” she called to her husband.
Otherwise engaged on the WC, Col whipped up his daks at break neck speed and sped off up the footpath after the said thief.
My work mate admitted even she wouldn’t like the likes of Col charging up behind her, being a bit on the burly-looking side as he is.
He caught up with the accused at the top of the hill and all that could be heard from the house was the muffled, somewhat frantic words exchanged between the two.
Imagine if you would, Col, bellowing in his deep voice, “Roar, roar, roar, roar,” while the petty criminal tried to defend himself with a “Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak”.
‘Yeah,’ thought my workmate, ‘you give it to the bugger, Col.’
Victorious, Col swaggered back down the street with the car seat tucked under his arm and his chest puffed out, huffing and puffing.
Walked a little taller for that moment, did our Col.
Until the couple went to put the seat back in the car.
“Um, actually that’s not our car seat,” said Col’s wife. As theirs was still in its place.
You’d never hear of it in Huntly.