Mum-meries 2: Why Aren't you Talking to Me?

Why Aren’t you Talking to Me?

My mother could not drive. She did go for lessons once a long long time ago but she proved particularly inept. So inept in fact, that it seems the instructor declared at the end of her first and only lesson that he would be long in his grave before she would ever learn to drive. And yes, he’s been gone a long time now, I’m sure, and she did never learn to drive.

For going around, she often depended on my father. And so it was with her visits to the bank - usually on Saturday mornings. Dad would take her to nearby PJ New Town where the HSBC Bank was, drop her off to do her banking then return some time later after his breakfast to pick her up from that very busy part of town. Right in front of the HSBC Bank was a carpark (invariably full) and the lane that ran through it. Mum would usually just be waiting by the side of the lane and hop into the car as Dad came by. Perhaps people were simply more patient in those days, or maybe they’d gotten the routine down pat because she wouldn’t usually be waiting too long for him.

One very busy Saturday, she stood waiting for him as a long line of cars made their way slowly past. She finally spotted the beige Mazda 323 we used to have in those days and walked up to it, grabbed the door handle as it paused momentarily, then got in and sat down. As she reached to her left for the seat belt, she began talking to my father, the topic of which we never found out. That morning she struggled a bit with the belt, and as she continued her conversation with Dad, she became frustrated with both the belt and his silence. She finally got the belt sorted, clicked it into the receptacle on her right while saying sharply, ‘Eh, why aren’t you talking to me?’.

She looked up from her seat belt struggles only to find, not my father, but a strange young man, his eyes big with surprise and shock and his mouth hanging open in stunned silence.

Mum, in equal shock, quickly said ‘Oh, sorry!’ somehow smoothly unclicked the seat belt and jumped out of the beige car - not a Mazda and certainly not our Mazda, leaving behind a bewildered young man with a tale to tell his family.

She stood there embarassed for a while then eventually spotted the correct car, got in and asked my Dad ‘Eh, where were you?’