Roxilla

Ok, maybe not as bad as this – but bad enough

My shitting day ended on a shitty then positive note yesterday. I had called a cab to fetch me after I left the office, which didn’t pitch. On calling the cab company they offered to send another one out, but I was not keen to wait outside after 5pm, so decided to walk. And of course I had gotten almost all the way down Long when the rain eventually started – not so badly at first though.

Around the same time, I ran into my semi-street kid friends, who I hadn’t seen in a while since I had been catching cabs the last week or two. They walked me to Spar, and I got them pies and sent them off to the station so they could get home before the rain got worse, then I went back in to finish my grocery shopping. Came out and the storm was in full-swing, hail and all, but seeing as I had already been totally drenched head to toe the second I stepped outside, I didn’t see much point in waiting for it to pass, so made my way home up the hill, almost blinded and face almost numb with cold, and finally got home and dry.

Fate is funny, and I am glad that things turned out the way they did – if I had gotten that cab, I wouldn’t have seen the boys, so it all worked out. I could get into warm dry clothes, and heat up my microwave huggie, crack the wine and warm up, but those boys had to find a taxi back to the Cape Flats, and then go home to their drunk father and awful home environment. So spending even a bit of time with them, knowing that at least they had some warm food in their tummies, and seeing that they’re still surviving, and not on crack or glue, was totally worth the small annoyance of getting wet.

One thing that made me smile bigtime yesterday was the smaller boys looking at an ad on the window of Spar, which was for chocolate custard. They were quite fascinated at the concept, but the older boy just looked at them with this eye roll, and said ‘chocolate is bad for your teeth’. It just never fails to amaze me how these kids, who have got almost nothing, and by all logic and societal reasoning should be hardened drug addicts and criminals can manage to be so sweet and normal. The older one is a teenager, but he still always makes sure his little brother is eating properly and behaving.

Always the case, the people with the least are always the most humble. And the people with the most are all too often the greediest and intolerant.

I would totally rather be a happy poor person than a rich asshole.