Monday, August 07, 2023

Gold Reef City: The Log Ride

That year's birthday, my best friend's folks were taking us to Gold Reef City for a day of tangible fun, excitement, fear and flurry. There the scents and smells of sweet candy floss, sticky glistening toffee apples, fear, vile bile and pavement vomit overwhelm the highveld air. Vibrant colours expressed in the jars of technicoloured candies, jellies, textured toffee, short breads, lengthy lengths of rope liquorice, and shining roller coasters fill in the white spaces of an already kaleidoscopic setting. And the sounds of screams, giggles, whistles and yodels of children, teens and adults reverberate through the small historical mining 'town'.

Kids love rides, I don't. The Tea Cups, the Bumper Cars, the petting zoo, those I can tolerate. Roller coasters?. Not for my jellied gut. But to be able to be part of the conversation on the playground, to fit in, to get a girl, I'd have to roll one ride. That ride was to be, The Log Ride.

Queued for a substantial amount of time in the hot blazing sun, the length of the line shrunk like an unattended lit cigarette, and eventually the sausage-shaped ride bobbed and weaved its way in readiness for its excited, nervous and palpatatious passengers.

The barrier gate opened, and the conductor readied himself by inflating his giant pink cheeks to blow his silver whistle hailing us to board the rudimentary ride- a fiberglass-hollow carved and painted to appear as a lumbered log. No cushioning, no foot holds, a 'water ready' Fiat Uno, a Titan submersible.

As his whistle screeched, the passengers scattered like skittled pins rushing to their intended seats. Beginning from the back, us joyriders slotted one by one filling row by row like dominoes. I was stood standing waiting my turn having learnt my manners at government school. Being the last man, there were no pickings but for the gaping seat at front and centre.

Frightened, and white, shaking and shivering, clattering, and teary, clambering over stray knees, I got on board. 

Our giant painted boerewors began slowly moving as it was over taken by the water's flowing current. Shifting along arcs, bends and curves as the moat meandered, the log knocked and bumped against walls in the dark. Ghouls and ghosts haunted us, witches soared high up above, their broom sticks brushing our foreheads, tickling us to squeal like pigs. 

The boat breached the darkness and entered the light of day. 

A short stint and it stopped. Like the jolt of landing gear emerging from the bowels of a Jumbo, the log shuffled and hooked itself onto a conveyor belt-like contraption. click click click the ride began to rise ecking its way up the ramp, the ascent sending my heart crashing against my rib cage. The log reached its fulcrum, pivoted and with immense speed hurtled down the shoot with break neck speed towards a pool of water, our screams and cries in tow. 

With my lungs filled with fearful screams, I trying to gasp for air. I wanted this to all end.
Boom!!, we hit the bottom of the ramp and a gush of water engulfed us all. The front line absorbing the brunt.

With the forced stop, my head flicked back like a stationary punching bag being pummeled by Fury and on the return flicked forward belting the rim of the fibreglass log. I heard a crack. Disembarking the Log, I stroked my tongue along my once Wrigley's-sharp smile to find a gaping hole framed by the crenelations of half an incisor.

As I smiled a sense of relief, bravery, self confidence and a will to succeed bounding off of my face, my friends cackled shouting, hey, Alfred E Neuman, that you?

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

A Parking Paystation

Having sat watching a late night flik, my wife and I punctured the envelope of the mall into the dark, tar-heavy, covered parking lot.

Before us stood Arthur C Clarke's HAL 9000 reincarnate, a parking paystation.

Intimidating, complex, expressionless, sharp and shiny, its monolithic steel form sits squat and heavy.  Mona-Lisa-like, it follows us with its beady LED lights, there is no escaping it for it is the gatekeeper to the light beyond this cavernous hollow.

The monochrome green screen bleats and blinks yanking us within range of its gravitational pull. Moving closer kicking and screaming, fumbling and shaking, I step up to The Death Star patting my body down, searching desperately for the parking ticket. I find it in my pen pocket sharply bent and mildly creased. I gulp hard and loud as the wad of gob slippy slides rapidly  down my gullet plummeting with a deep splash into my sparkling-water-filled belly.

Like a blindfolded kid at a pin-the-donkey party, I begin thrusting, shoving my piece of origami into each of the multitude horizontal slots seeking one, just one opening that'll accept the ticket. Is it the coin slot, card slot, ticket slot, paper cash slot,credit card slot, scratch block, kep pad, tariff thingy, or the gaping cash back slot?. My brain rotates on my spinal column like Jordan spinning a basketball atop his ET finger.

Meanwhile a dense thick snaking queue of fellow mall rats begins to swell behind me, my head pivots to see this swath of shaking, impatient bobble heads. I am under pressure trying to act Cool Hand Luke playing for time. It's a game of Whack-A-Mole. I want to cry as my hands clam up. And then finally the machine hoover's it up. 'Bingo', I shout.

Success, and after a moment of processing, Robocop indicates the amount, it's a perfect tenner.

Deep inside my ipod pocket, I find a rusty crumpled greenback.

Top slot, bottom slot,side slot, my stomach's in a knot. Again, which darn slot is it?

With my hands now in full flight swishing around like Yehudi Menuhin conducting New York's Philharmonic,I stuff the tenner into the top slot jamming the thing in as I would my forgotten swimming trunks into my carry-on luggage. 'Just. get. in', I growl under my breath. A tear squirts out my eye. I want to die right now. The machine rages, and rejects the green back. I pull it out, iron it with the back of my hand, straightening the corners. I crisp the tenner like I'm licking a rollie, aiming it again for the slot, it takes hold, I yodel 'yes', like I just holed out at Amen Corner at Augusta National.

My armpits drain every iota of hydration from my sapped body. Terminator 2's T-1000 ejects my parking ticket. I cleave to this ticket with hands upon knees. We exit.

Malcolm Gladwell's 10 000 hours does not apply to paying at parking machines, bamboozling me everytime. This User Experience is a game of Russian Roulette, thank goodness i spun the barrel right.


Tuesday, January 10, 2023

A Short Story about a Frog 2022.02.18

Dan and Lee spent a weekend in the bush. It was an hour's drive from their home.
Leaving behind concrete, tarnished tar, speeding selfish taxis, abusive Ubers, and city smog they were greeted by the scent of Body Shop lush brush, Mountain Dew clear skies and the rich earthly dust of dirt roads. Their eyes drank in the wide open skies and the liquid OJ of the setting sun. The massaging gentle wind breezed through their hair washing over them, cooling them to relax.

As the moon ballooned, they flicked on the lights and like positives to negatives, a humdrum of creepies from short bugs with big wings, tall skinny stick insects with bow legs, leathery lizards, alpha bravo geckos, furry moths, praying mantis and unsightly critters with many hairs, skittled and crawled out from each of their lairs.

Lee squeaked and squealed as the insects arrived on the scene moving in rhythm to Michael Jackson's Thriller. Each one bobbed and weaved in unison, nipping, biting, creeping, and crawling.

With this flurry of bugs there was no way of plugging this dike.

The weekend flashed. Sunday arrived.
Dan's alarm buzzed, he bounded out of bed, humming a Rolling Stones tune, grabbed a fluffy white towel, bee-lined to the shower, motioned to flip the mixer to warm, and there below his feet a small black blob, frightened, skedaddled along the skirting zipping beneath the ball and claw of the bath. Suppressing his screech by biting his clenched knuckles so Lee'd be unawares, he let black Frog be for keeping this little secret between 'you and me' would be their little triumph.

He then packed his shirts, her dress and jeans, both pairs,
and tossed the bags into the back of the Ecosport, bounced around on a game drive, then headed south to The Big Smoke.

Back in suburbia, Dan unpacked the luggage. Holding up each item he remarked, 'Clean, not so clean, clean, not so clean, folded, needs ironing'. Pulling out a ruffled towel, it was not alone. As a pilot ejecting from a shot down fighter jet, Black Frog burst itself from the bowels of the bag careening towards earth. Karma.

The echoes of 'Frog' sent Simba lurching into the room. Grabbing the little critter, he held it gently in his cupped hand and rushed for the door.

Once upon a time, Dan, Lee and family lived on the 4th floor of an apartment building.

Frog in hand, Simba hurtled down the corridor like a barefoot rugby player down the left wing when another kid approached. Eager for show and tell, Simba gooied anchors, ignored all instructions to keep his hands clasped, peeled them open, and Frog lurched out. Dropping to the floor, it scurried away seeking salvation beneath a door of a plumbing duct. Inspecting the duct, Dan witnessed Frog cleaving for its life like a stretched Fizzer- one foot on a drain pipe, and one foot dangling from death. Alex Honnold reincarnate.
Frog had no sure footing.


The End