Chatper ONE

Me my Life and my Family.

 

I like to think that most of my life, up to the point when I got a bike, was just a background blur of my purpose. Like waiting halfway through a movie before putting the sound on. Where it takes off and starts building up.

 

Since logic takes a while to catch up with me, in this case, from the day I was born, 8 February 1993, I can’t remember anything up to the age of four. This means I know nothing about the foundation of my life, the stepping stones of my life, until logic found me. For all I know I am a clone of Greg Minnaar (someone you will learn of later in this book). My parents might be aliens, and I might be adopted from another galaxy.

But all these possibilities are just suggestions, I most probably lived the average life my parents informed me of, for my logic was still somewhere in Texas, I would guess.

 

I was the first born child in my family, which I am a older brother to my two sisters, Leila 13, and Nina 9.

My parents were surprisingly poor, earning the salary of a voiceless ventriloquist when I was born. My dad was still studying for a software engineer at the University of Pretoria. At the same time working providing the bare minimum of a salary as a waiter at the local Spur branch to support his dependent family. My parents made good use of the money they earned, as is obvious, for I am still here, and not starved to death of readopted by the Galactic orphan agency to planet Zionagore.

 

I must say, from a modern perspective it seeks like an astonishing feat what they had accomplished, marrying at the age of 21 and 23. Raising a small but demanding family from the income of Chuck Norris when he worked in the local pub.

 

At the age of about three and a half, I got my first bike. Better described as a four wheel pedal propelled super-turbo-pedal-charged scooter, nevertheless I zoomed around on it all day. So was my enthusiasm that I left the useless time consuming act of putting your pants back on after using the loo, to return to my duty as flat-patrol-on-my-quardicycle.

It was only round about the age of six that I got my first real bike. It was an Avalanche, a word which at the time was far to complicated to pronounce. So it was just the “big grey bike”, or more precisely in Afrikaans, “die groot grys fiets.”

 

Our block, or neighbourhood, had a notoriously steep slope in the circle we usually rode our bikes. Me and my friends would always gaze at its steepness, before retiring and taking another route. It was considered a great feat to pedal all the way up, without stopping and pushing your bike. A mission that was only accomplished a few times.

I’ve recently went back to see how that neighbourhood looked after the few years we’ve moved. It took me a little while, and a staggering amount of puzzlement to find that steep slope, which delighted my boyhood days with such daring feats. After a while I settled to the conclusion that it must be this slightly angled piece of asphalt, tilted at about 4 degrees. I left rather disappointed, either I was a very small boy, or an underground volcano was slowly, but surely, deforming the neighbourhood, of for all I know, the country! And I was definitely not a small boy, which leaves the country to the fate of GOLZATH (officially the name of the underground volcano, chosen by me).

 

We moved from that house to a small farm, better known as a plot, a few kilometres on the outskirts of Pretoria. The reason not being the volcanic activity of GOLZATH (denied, of course by the government), but our house was right next to the highway. This means that there was constantly the sound of cars just outside the house. And frequently I mistook this sound, and lying in my bed, braced myself for a booing 747 to crash, nose first into my room.

The plot we were building our house on was about ten hector big, about the size of five football fields. This you might think is a reasonable size for a front yard, but it wasn’t all our yard, most of the plot was covered in long wild grasses. Our land was surrounded by a electric fence, something I’ve made a good few acquaintances with in the few shocking years we lived there. An experience that would leave your heart racing and you would suddenly find that the fence has transported a few feet forward. What actually happened was a fantastic array of electrical charges entered your nerves system and with a sudden shock contracted various muscles in your body to cause you to leap and gain air like you never have before. And that’s when you find yourself, quite a distance away from the fence, quite literally, stunned.

I remember the first time my dad experienced the pleasantly electrifying greeting with our newly established electric fence. My dad got home from work, now my dad is kind of person who won’t eccept something works properly unless proven and tested by himself. So he got out of the car, and slowly moved his hand closer to the fence, I was standing at the window, fascinated by what happened next. I have never seen a grown man jump so high and so far. He walked into the house, very energised and said “well that works” and greeted my mom. That’s when I knew I had the strongest and bravest dad on Earth.

Author's Note

Its not perfect or publish worthy i know, there are still mistakes. but hey, everyone makes mistakes, i'm 15!

Reviews

[Ama May Cooper]

I have one query about the use of the bike... you say you dont rember it at all due to it being

[Liam Riley]

I like this chapter, but like you say you have many grammatical and punctuation errors..

Watch your comma's, and i suggest reading through your work to find the exact problems..

Here are some things I found:

'Our land was surrounded by 'the' electric fence, 'someone' I've made a good few acquaintances with in the few shocking years we lived there.'

Here, this sentence does not really make a lot of sense.. If your trying to say that someone had installed in before you lived there, watch the sentence structure. It's getting too complicated

My dad got home from work, now my dad is kind of person who won't except something works properly unless proven and tested by himself.

here, the word is accept. he wont accept something, except is like.. 'every one went out to the park except billy, who stayed in detention.' thats where you would use except.