"The Young Engineer"

A road to nowhere......literally, as this road sign (taken today) means DEAD END! The next road along from mine in Teddington. My road is a dead end too (next stop the Thames) but I didn't want to use my road sign in this post! I can't tell if this dream I had last night is a really good dream or a really horrible one? Either way it upset me!


The four year old girl was trying with her utmost patience & innocent professionalism to get the scooter started that was up on it's centre stand, comfortably parked over a dried puddle of motor oil that had leaked into the ground of the bare front garden of a grubby looking house on one corner to a main road at the end of a very long, straight side road. Her tiny figure looked very odd perched atop this towering machine, the girls little legs barely reaching past the bottom of the saddle, but she also looked completely at home with her eager face showing a great determination to get the engine up & running. Her Mum was standing by her side watching her daughters concentrating hands as she tried pushing the start button and twisting the throttle. My friend Lee & I were walking past them towards the corner of the main road as we looked over to witness them and this strange spectacle.....

Then out of the corner of my eye I saw what looked like a Mini car drive past us at a great amount of speed down towards the main road from the end of the side road, with no signs of slowing down. There weren't any sounds of a highly charged engine nor did the thing make a crashing sound as the car proceeded to drive at top speed through a gap in the moving traffic on the main road and into the house directly opposite and disappeared without so much as a speck of brick dust or the tinkling of shattering glass or the crushing, twisting sound of grinding metal & human weight forced together.....the curtians hanging inside the window frame being sucked in behind it momentarily revealing a very long tunnel of wreckage stretching into the distance the exact same shape as a small car. The curtains flopped back down to their original position and it looked as though nothing had happened. The steady stream of traffic the car had crossed through kept moving......oblivious to the high speed metal injection that just took place between their protective cocoons! I calmly asked Lee if he saw it.....the car pass through the window.....he couldn't say for sure if he had. Then I heard the sound of a tiny engine rev into life and upon looking up, noticed the girl on the vespa had managed to start it. Her smile spoke absolute volumes......eyes wide like saucers....her arms went up as she punched the air. She looked around feeling very clever & grown up at an imaginary crowd of people gathered to see this impressive display of kiddie engineering. She expected to see big smiles, clapping hands & cheers of admiration.....only to see that she was alone......all except for her Mum....who was looking right at me! Her eyes were boring holes into my face and her expression was of the most serious & frightening kind that exists. She was the Mini drivers Mother.

I knew the driver had mental problems and was addicted to heroin or some such chemical life-line.....as was his mother. The child sitting atop the newly revitalized motorcycle, knew absolutely nothing of the drug use inside of her precious family, nor of the awful damage that it had caused to her Loved ones ability to think straight over the years, but she knew there was something terribly, terribly wrong!



Jason







(C) JPT 2007.........652.36 miles.