How I became a biker girl...


At the age of six, I was preoccupied with trying to figure out why all
the spoons in our house, had mysterious bends and kinks in the
handles.

Ofcourse, being six, it didn't occur to me to ask someone - instead I
spent many hours cogitating the strange phenomenon, and came up
up with a deeply plausible explanation:

God knew I had been eating green peaches off the tree, and this was
a sign from Him that I had better stop, or my insides will be twisted
and bent;



My most overwhelming suspicion, however, was that it had
something to do with... my brothers.

For a time, I thought that perhaps only I could see the bendy spoons -
since my mum and brothers would sit around the table, spooning
their porridge into their mouths, handles askew, as if nothing was
amiss.

As far as I was concerned, our household was full of mysterious
phenomena: my brothers told me that the garage was off limits,
because they were experimenting with radio-active materials that
would melt my teeth out of my mouth if I came near it.

The thought of my teeth slowly dripping down my chin in a sticky
white, snotty fashion, was enough to keep my mind from even
contemplating how THEIR teeth were safe.


It was only after a couple of years, that my curiosity and growing
distrust of my brothers gave me enough courage to enter the
'forbidden domain':

After careful planning, I decided on a strategy involving several short
recce missions into the hallowed ground. In particular on Saturdays,
when my brothers would disappear in the early morning and not
return for hours.

I also took out some insurance via my nightly prayers, reasoning with
God that IF my suspicions were right, and my brothers were
conducting Satan's business behind the roll-up doors, I could report
on it and thereby ensure a more righteous world for all.


***


I crawled through the gap in the roll-up door for the first time - and
my life has never been the same...

Nothing I could ever have imagined, could
prepare me for what lay between those four walls:

Motorcycles in various stages of decay/rebirth loomed in the darkness
- handlebars like huge antelope horns, menacingly gleaming in the
dim light.

Every breath of space was heaving with amazing and magical things:
grotesque complicated tools and shiny spanners and tubes of vile
liquid and ice cream tubs full of hundreds and thousands of bolts and
nuts and screws and washers...and my mum's missing cooking pot full
of thick, black oil.

And bent spoons everywhere.

The air was thick with an intoxicating mix of grease and rubber and
petrol and breathing deeply, suddenly it came to me:

My brothers are gods!

This is their palace, and all these godly things are theirs and they
know how to use all the magnificent magic potions and where every
one of those hundreds of bolts go...and they were the Benders of
Spoons, because they could fix motorcycles and resurrect them from
the dead and ride them.

From that moment, I was ready to do whatever rites of passage it
took, to raise up the ranks until I was legally allowed in their 'inner
sanctum'.

Well, that was how I imagined it would be...


Reality turned out to be slightly less heroic:

"If you don't LET ME IN, I AM GOING TO TELL MUM ABOUT THE SPOONS AND HER BRAND NEW TEFLON SAUCEPAN that you've S T O L E N !!"


***

Worked a treat!

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