[FONT="]Ever been in a situation where you are so tired of something bad always happening to you that you go a little overboard in trying to deal with the problem? I remember some 20 years ago I was sharing a house with two friends of mine. In the first 6 months there, we were being hounded by constant attempts by burglars to break into our property. Car alarms were going off every other night usually followed by the sound of running footsteps of a panicked intruder preparing to scramble over the perimeter wall. On two or three occasions the thugs managed to get away with spot lights of one car and seriously damaged the locks on another. We were really fed up with the sleepless nights and then one of the guys had this brilliant idea! "Let's wait for them!" He says, excitedly.[/FONT]
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"Um who?" I said.
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[FONT="]"The tsotsi's" he said with immense enthusiasm. (Tsotsi is a colloquial expression here in my part of the world for a thug, a robber or a thief - good luck with the pronunciation
). I was a little uneasy, so I asked him how. His idea was that we go out into the yard and sit in the bushes at about 1:00 am in the morning for at least an hour and a half and, here's the hard part:
wait. He fashioned a baton of sorts and I found myself a thick piece of wood which I converted into my "rod of correction and retribution."
I can't imagine what we both hoped to achieve as we didn't know how many thugs would one day show up and whether or not they would be armed. The thought of sitting in the dew layered, mosquito and bug infested undergrowth (we had to be hidden!) didn't really have much appeal, at least not at 1:00 am in the morning. But there we were! We were young and foolish back then.[/FONT]
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On the second night we were "on duty" in the bushes, cold, damp, tired and irritable, when we heard a noise next door. My friend signaled for us to approach the wall and, because only I was tall enough, asked me to take a peep next door. I looked over the wall expecting to spot intruders breaking into the house next door. What I did see was my next door neighbour, whom we hardly knew, apparently a little drunk, banging on his door so his girlfriend could open up. It was about 2:30 am and I guessed that he had been to a night club. Open and shut case. My friend insisted that, even though the man was banging on his own door at his own home, he was behaving suspiciously! So he asked me, "Is the man still at his door?"[/FONT]
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By this time I was really irritable.[/FONT]
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Me,"Yes!"[/FONT]
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Why don't you ask him what he's doing?[/FONT]
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"I can't do that! He lives there!"[/FONT]
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"Just do it! Why is he out this time of the night during the week?"[/FONT]
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"Why are we outside here at this ridiculous hour?"
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Our whispering must have alerted the neighbour because he approached the wall and then wanted to know what we were doing outside. Really embarrassing. We never did catch anyone in our nightly vigils (okay there were only two). Needless to say, "operation barn-owl" was soon suspended due to lack of sleep.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
"Um who?" I said.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]"The tsotsi's" he said with immense enthusiasm. (Tsotsi is a colloquial expression here in my part of the world for a thug, a robber or a thief - good luck with the pronunciation
). I was a little uneasy, so I asked him how. His idea was that we go out into the yard and sit in the bushes at about 1:00 am in the morning for at least an hour and a half and, here's the hard part:
wait. He fashioned a baton of sorts and I found myself a thick piece of wood which I converted into my "rod of correction and retribution."I can't imagine what we both hoped to achieve as we didn't know how many thugs would one day show up and whether or not they would be armed. The thought of sitting in the dew layered, mosquito and bug infested undergrowth (we had to be hidden!) didn't really have much appeal, at least not at 1:00 am in the morning. But there we were! We were young and foolish back then.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
On the second night we were "on duty" in the bushes, cold, damp, tired and irritable, when we heard a noise next door. My friend signaled for us to approach the wall and, because only I was tall enough, asked me to take a peep next door. I looked over the wall expecting to spot intruders breaking into the house next door. What I did see was my next door neighbour, whom we hardly knew, apparently a little drunk, banging on his door so his girlfriend could open up. It was about 2:30 am and I guessed that he had been to a night club. Open and shut case. My friend insisted that, even though the man was banging on his own door at his own home, he was behaving suspiciously! So he asked me, "Is the man still at his door?"[/FONT]
[FONT="]
By this time I was really irritable.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
Me,"Yes!"[/FONT]
[FONT="]
Why don't you ask him what he's doing?[/FONT]
[FONT="]
"I can't do that! He lives there!"[/FONT]
[FONT="]
"Just do it! Why is he out this time of the night during the week?"[/FONT]
[FONT="]
"Why are we outside here at this ridiculous hour?"
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Our whispering must have alerted the neighbour because he approached the wall and then wanted to know what we were doing outside. Really embarrassing. We never did catch anyone in our nightly vigils (okay there were only two). Needless to say, "operation barn-owl" was soon suspended due to lack of sleep.[/FONT]
