Helping Another and Regretting It
Andrew Right’s facial muscles tautened, as he stood and continued to watch the disappearing figure of the woman he felt he had offered a rare assistance. The next thing Andrew might have done was clench palms of frustration or ruefully shakes his head but he tried neither of the two. The woman’s handset had outrageously slipped from her hand and, straight, fallen into a nearby drain - dirty gutter, actually - as she was strutting past a lane.
How abominable!
Fortunately, Andrew Right was right behind the woman looking to be twenty-five or less. Thus, she needed not have yelled out for help in the manner she had done to stimulate him into - The Save-Her-Handset - Action he was to take. Andrew had seen the regrettable slip, was able to locate the exact point of the smelly stagnant water in which the handset had sunk and, quick-like-lightning, dug his hand into the same point to retrieve The Prized Piece of Technology!
A camera phone! Very delightful thing. A Nokia of good make from China. Probably, a phone that cost its owner some of N1000.00 multiplied hundred times or more.
Andrew did not simply stop at fishing the handset out of the bad gutter. Quickly, he cleaned it against a spotted waiting rag and later with his own white handkerchief, preparatory to dismantling its parts for sunning and drying. The despairing owner, then seated on a raised block at one corner of the road, had her two hands placed over her head, off and on pulling the hair on it, possibly wishing that The Midday Sun would intensify its drying rays of heat...
A really crumpled heap of sorrow, The Twenty-Five-Year-Old lady was! She had ceased to think that the handset was still a thing worth keeping or one likely to function again... For so it had been with her, she had disclosed to Andrew, launching into a recollection of her chain series of ill-luck with hand phones. According to her, the first of them was Korea’s Samsung, also a camera phone. She had lost that one to light fingers after mindlessly dropping it on a seat beside her and did not look in its direction for a half hour. The next was a Sagem: praised more for its powerful service than powerful battery. The Sagem she did not lose to a crook; rather to a neighbor of hers, who had a similar handset but with a faulty charging point. The said neighbor had made a daily ritual of borrowing her phone to charge his own battery in it, such that it was clear that he had no immediate plans to discontinue the practice.
So, resignedly but voluntarily she transferred its ownership to The Parasite!
The third, A Motorola, was again lost to a thief, this time, A gun-toting one, who had boarded the same vehicle as true travelers, in the late hours of the evening!
Hence, she had felt with the fresh slip of her new Nokia camera phone into a gutter that she was being haunted by some perverse spirit which would not want her to keep any handset too long.
“Things can’t continue happening this way, can they?” she asked her attentive Andrew. On his part, Andrew kept assuring her that no damage would come to the set urging her to wait for another ten minutes within which period he would reassemble the parts of the handset and test its operation before she reached a conclusion.
Lo! Andrew Right was right! The machine was still intact... Most likely, a water-resist and the hapless lady had not remembered it or perhaps not bothered to verify from its manual or casing. Right there for an enduring confirmation, the lady tried her mother’s number and it got connected, egging her on to hold a brief chat with her and in a Victoria’s Voice mention The Handset Incident.
That was all! Turning to Andrew, Victoria curtsied, released her biggest ‘Thank You’ to him plus God’s blessings and strode off for the job interview she needed to catch!
Thunderstruck Andrew Right did not remain speechless. It touched him that this was the fifth time he had extended a helping hand to somebody in need and he just ended up with prayers for Divine Elevation by the recipient, sometimes handshakes of appreciation possibly thought by the fellow as Cash Gift fittingly replaced.
“Pooh! Sheer Bad luck, this is” rasped Andrew Right but soon shut his trap. Or could it be some Divine Force, had sought to get a message across to him on The Issue of Granted Help to the next fellow!
But which message in particular? Which, indeed?
To learn to find Divine Pleasure in the smiles that pucker up the lips of recipients of great favour from him…
Because, perhaps, he Andrew Right would have commiserated with such a fellow, if he had not in good time secured some help from him or from another being in the vicinity.
Then, Andrew noted, for the very first time, that it had been mostly women who got into a pretty mess from which they were later pulled out by him… Or rather women were the ones who had touchingly called out to him for SOS while in travail…
Oh Yeah! Men chose to still look brave or radiated courage after crippling losses. Unbelievable isn’t it? Men scarcely linked with Pretence or Play Acting the ones who publicly display A Fat One in their predicament.
“It’s all bloody ironic!” thought Andrew Right, still rooted to the spot he had fixed his legs. Women who are Pretence Personified would cast off Costumes of Pretence to thrust themselves upon the closest men or man, whom they had guessed his simply stretched out hands would ferret out magical results!
Yet, wickedly reflected Andrew, The Enraged Woman settling score with a male offender would touch in graphic details every aspect of his Stupid Life, sometimes, on purpose, raising for serious discussion every single escapable mistake he has ever made!
But why is he Andrew dusting up all these, after unwise assistance has just been given to their kind – A Handset-Mishandling Soul and off she had gone, no soft-pedaling on Victorious Cat Walk.
Curiously enough, for all his Andrew Exasperation with these Daughters of Jezebel, they always found a way of insinuating themselves into his small world to once again snatch a favour they had not the least intention to pay for!
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