Page 18 - Dainfern Precinct Living Issue 6_2023

Humour

HENRY

BY JAMES CLARKE

It had been some time since I’d Abating, Controlling and Preventing Thus, throughout the day, we were able
heard of Henry. But the other Water Pollution and had just got to the to keep up a long though interrupted
Iday I saw that he was back in the exciting bit when they wheeled him in – conversation.
headlines. The headline was over a Henry Bender, now aged 57.
story about road accidents. It read: Henry’s ambition is to get into the
MAN KNOCKED DOWN EVERY 34 He told me with some satisfaction how Guinness Book of Records as the most
MINUTES. he had just been hit by the latest Jaguar knocked-down man in the world but
That had to be Henry. He was back in while running across Main Road to he has a long way to go because in
town. retrieve his glass eye that had popped Ghana a man is knocked down every 15
out when he sneezed. It was, he said, minutes.
the first time he’d been hit by a Jag for
I had in fact written him off, assuming at least a year. His best hit this year He spoke highly of South Africa’s
some vehicle had at last managed to was when he ended up against the paramedics. He knew them all.
nail him – a tarmac ripper for instance windscreen of a Ferrari. “Not that I go for treatment each time
or a 20-ton road roller. I’m knocked down,” he said. “If I did I
But no, he’s still around and still being He dismissed his new injury with would spend too much time in hospital
knocked down. contempt and was more interested in and not enough time on the road, so
telling me how the hospital’s boiled fish to speak. Sometimes I set the bones
Being a good newspaperman, I leapt had improved over the years. They fixed myself.”
aboard my bicycle and pedalled him up – he was on first name terms
furiously to the General Hospital where with everybody – and off he limped, I asked him how he stood the pain.
I knew he would eventually have to anxious to keep up his average. He explained he had almost perfected
appear. being hit on his left side because he
He was back in 17 minutes having been had an artificial left leg (a taxi on the
I had settled down to read The hit by a municipal bus. After treatment, he Pretoria Road in 1981); an artificial left
Examination into the Effectiveness walked out of the hospital only to be hit arm (Volvo in 1999); a silver plate in his
of the Constructive Programme of by an ambulance right outside the door. skull (Combi taxi on Jan Smuts Avenue
2001). “Most of the time I just need a
panel beater.”

Apart from his artificial eye, he had
false teeth and a wig – the wig being
necessary after he was scalped by an
emergency helicopter that had been
sent to rescue him following an incident
involving a cement lorry in Midrand.

I asked him if he was married.
“Used to be,” he said. “But our
marriage was doomed to failure. On the
few occasions I slept at home instead of
in hospital I used to put my leg and arm
in a drawer. I’d put my eye and teeth
in there too after putting them into a
receptacle.

Then I’d chuck my wig in. My wife
never knew whether to get into bed
or climb in the drawer. One day I came
home and found a note saying she had
run off with my best friend, Fred, an
ambulance driver.”

“You could have knocked me down with
a feather!” he exclaimed.
6 DPL issue 10 2022
18 DPL issue 6 2023