The Traffic Officer

Tales of Maria Series : III

 

 

 

 

He was the only one who spoke to father in a way in which he was able to draw father's attention to the issue. It caught Maria by surprise, the day they were pulled over. She had pondered on it since.

 

So when her brother played a traffic officer in the school play, everybody thought he did a great job. He wore a uniform and had detained some teenage girls while driving. But more was yet to come.

 

In the SUV, on the way to the zoo on a sunday, the family had stopped at the traffic lights. In a convertible that came alongside, a blonde young thing had waved to her brother. Her mother inquired about her. The brother casually replied that she was a friend and was one of the girls in the car in the school play.

 

At the zoo, they had done something most zoos will not do. They featured a theme in the lion's enclosure of a hunter, painted as a British colonel and his black porters, in the tall grasses, approaching the lions with a shotgun. Father had thought it distasteful and was still on the topic after dinner that night, in the TV room.

 

Just then the National Geographic channel featured some native hunters in Africa spearing a hippo. Father had yelled something awful, tossed the newspaper he was reading and left the room. Everyone was a little peeped. Just then mother asked her brother again if he was seeing that blonde young thing socially. In the aftermath of father's tantrum, her brother had immediately answered ' yes.'

 

Maria thought it was all very interesting. She had done a play in school on the pilgrim fathers. She seemed to recall in some way, after the play, that she had learned to relate to her father better.