The Arm of Jon

Since it’s almost that time of year where work starts slowing down and we all start planning our year end holidays I thought I’d share a mildly amusing story from my last holiday. That holiday was what I call a Facebook holiday. On a Facebook holiday you rush like mad to do as many things as possible, take roughly a billion photos, nearly die from exhaustion in the process; but once you’re done you load those photos on Facebook and people think you’ve spent a month in Cape Town when it’s only been 6 days. Good times.

On day 6 of my Facebook holiday, we went to Hermanus, a beautiful little coastal town, known for the southern right whales that breed there. A little known secret of the town is that the local dassies also breed quite prolifically and are almost out of control. They walk up to you like cats and want to eat whatever’s in your hands despite the fact that they’re so portly they can hardly move. I did not know this however until later.

After a lovely meal at the local Spur we decided to take a walk along the bay and take a few photos of the great views. As we walked along the bridge over one of the rock pools I spotted something strange sticking out one of the storm-water or sewage pipes leading into the pool. It looked like the head of a dassie but it was so still we couldn’t tell if it was real or just the afternoon sun playing tricks on our eyes.

Fortunately I still had my complimentary Spur mint, you know those hard glacier blue ones that look, feel, and sometimes taste like glass? What a great opportunity to put the aerodynamic abilities of my mint to the test! If I could just lob it near enough to the dassie to startle it. It might move and if it’s a little street smart it might even get to enjoy the loveliness that is Glacier blue mint. So I quickly unwrapped the mint, took aim and lobbed it towards our motionless dassie head. The mint had a very nice flight to it; it was heading in the right direction, slicing through the air like a knife through hot butter. But as we watched it started going too straight, it was on a collision path with the dassie’s head. So we all took a deep breath to see what would happen. Thwack! It nailed the poor dassie on the head with a hollow sound not too different from an acorn falling on an innocent by passer’s head. In the blink of an eye the dassie disappeared, never to be seen again by us. Ruckster uttered his standard phrase of astonishment with the eloquence only a Capetonian can muster: “Yoh!” Samba was more upset, “Jon! Why did you hit it on the head?” Candida and Ibu could only get out a nervous laugh. 

I felt like I had just inadvertently committed an offence worthy of being arrested by the SPCA for cruelty to animals. Not an awesome feeling. But that is what happens when you have the arm of Jon, it never hits anything you want but always hits everything you don’t. Now if only I could trick my arm into believing that I don’t want to hit something that I actually do want to hit.