get lost

I only needed one of them.

StoryKettle » Colin » get lost

Copyright © 2007, Michael M Wayman

I was unhappy, something was annoying me. What was it? I should have been happy.

I was doing my one year practical, working at some company to gain experience as part of my college course in engineering. On the second day the secretary came into my office and said that I was fired and laughed. Very humiliating!

“Oh, yes, you're fired. We're all fired. The company is bankrupt.” My second company was in the town where my parents lived. “Oh, you must come and live with us again: we'll be like seven dogs at a cat's funeral.” Groan! However the work at the company was interesting and I met Felicity. Yes, I should have been happy, Felicity was the love of my life, she was pretty, charming and most important, she had something between the ears.

And that was the problem; there were three women in my life, I only needed one. Don't get me wrong, I like women, more fun than men, men only talk about cars and sport otherwise sport and cars. But there were three of them women telling me what to do, interfering with my life.

My Mother, Notty and Felicity. I only needed one of them.

I made a plan. Silly me! If a man, especially a young man, makes a plan involving a woman or women, then that plan is automatically null and void. I was plagued with three women, I only wanted one of them, I needed a three phase plan.

I decided to leave town and hitch hike around until I got lost. That got rid of my Mother. Then I would ask Notty to marry me. Then if that failed I would marry Felicity, move to the other side of the planet and have ten children. Sounded good? Yes?

I put some clothes in a rucksack, got some cash and stood at the side of the road. I went anywhere and everywhere. I soon had no real idea where I was. One truck driver I was with suddenly pulled off the road and stopped. Did he want to rape me? No, he lived there. “Just walk down the road, you'll be in town in twenty minutes.”

After an hour I realised that I was close to the sea, the vegetation had changed, there was salt in the air, the wonderful smell of seaweed rotting. The sea had always been magic for me, it meant holidays, the big blue wet stuff, the scrunching of pebbles under foot, sand and sunburn. Oh what magic and I would soon be there.

She was there of course. Notty was standing on a breakwater feeding the seagulls with scraps of bread. “Hello Notty! How did you get here?” By this I meant: how did you know that I would come here. “Oh, I walked here.” I gave her a bar of chocolate. Now was the moment, I had to do it. Would I get her? “I want to marry you!” She did not speak. “You can't do that! I'm your Mother.”



This is the last of the ten-part door-to-door sequence, but life continues for Colin as a young man in goodbye.