Step in my old friend Facebook. When I first started writing my blog, way back when, a lot of my posts were inspired by pictures or sayings that friends were posting. Quite often I'd look at one of them and it would inspire me to write about it. A few days ago, another aspiring author, who unlike myself, is seriously working on her book at the moment, posted a link to her blog to a post that was a short story about an Amazon green parrot called Myrtyle. I absolutely loved it and when I commented as much to my friend, I found out that it was based on a true story.
Now this got me thinking. I thought about how sometimes life can be stranger than fiction, and reminded me of an incident that happened about 10 years ago. So I decided that I'd write about it.
The story is a bit longer than my usual blog posts, but I hope you enjoy it.
Stranger Than Fiction
One Saturday morning, my husband
decided that he needed to go to B&Q, a local DIY superstore. As this seemed
to be his second home at the time, I decided to go with him so we could spend
some time together. Just as we stepped out the front door, he decided that he
needed his measuring tape and disappeared back into the house.
As I waited for him, I heard a faint sound. At
first I thought it was a baby crying, but as I looked along the road, I
couldn’t see anyone at all, let alone someone with a child. Both of my
neighbours were elderly, so I knew it couldn’t be coming from either of their
houses.
I strained my ears and realised
that it was the mewing sound of a cat and it seemed to be coming from one of
the trees that lined the opposite side of the road. Curious, I crossed the road
and as I did so the mewing became louder. After a few minutes of straining both
my eyes and my neck, I spotted a tiny black kitten quite high up in the
branches of a plum tree. Although the tree wasn’t very tall, the poor little
kitten was a bit too high up for me to reach, and anyway, my days of climbing
trees were long gone.
‘There’s a kitten stuck up the
tree.’ I called to him.
He crossed the road and started
to climb the tree in the direction that I was pointing. But, the higher up the
tree he climbed, the further up the tree the kitten retreated.
‘This is hopeless. I’ll need a
ladder.’ He said, ‘you stay here and watch.’
Watch! Watch why? I wasn’t
exactly sure what I could do, short of trying to catch it if it decided to
jump.
While I stood there, still
straining my neck, a woman stopped and lifted her eyes in the direction of
mine.
‘There’s a little black kitten
stuck up the tree.’ I said, not wanting her to think that I was just some crazy
tree lover.
‘I can hear it. Has it been there
long?’ she replied.
‘I’m not sure. But my husband has
gone to fetch a ladder.’
We continued to stand, both with
our eyes fixed on the little ball of fluff in the tree, willing it to not do
anything until my husband came back with the ladder. As we stood there we
talked about what a dangerous road this was for cats. I’d lost one black and
white cat already, and as we waited, I told her about the night it happened.
My husband and I were sitting
watching television late one Saturday night, when the phone rang. Our eldest
son was out with his friends, and his younger brother was tucked up in bed. My
husband answered the phone, and as I listened I realised that there had been
some sort of accident. I immediately thought it was my son and when I heard my
husband ask if he was breathing, my heart froze.
My husband hung up after telling the person on the other end
that he would be right there. I demanded to know what had happened and asked if
my son was OK. My husband took me by the hand and gently explained that it
wasn’t anything to do with our son, but that our cat had been hit by a car. Unfortunately
the cat hadn’t made it, but I was so relieved that it hadn’t been my son.
As I finished telling the woman this story, my husband returned with a ladder. But as he placed
the ladder under the tree, the little kitten jumped down and ran away. We all
laughed and joked about cats and their nine lives. Then the woman went on her
way and my husband and I got into his car and set off for B&Q.
Well as interesting as this might be, you may well be
thinking that this isn’t really that strange, and you’d be right.
Earlier that same morning, we had given our youngest son his
first mobile phone. He was about 15 at the time, but unlike most kids his age,
he hadn’t really wanted one. But we insisted that he had one in case of an
emergency. I’d inputted both mine and my husband’s mobile numbers and left him
in his room while we went off to B&Q.
I can’t even remember what it was we had gone there for. But
eventually we paid for our purchases and headed home.
Meanwhile, our son had phoned one of his friends and
arranged to meet him in town. To get there, he had to walk across a common,
crossing two small bridges. Then turn right and follow the river before coming
to a zebra crossing which crossed the road and took him into one of the town’s
main car parks. A journey he’d done many times before.
By this time we were about halfway home and as we approached
a mini roundabout, my mobile started ringing in my handbag. I picked it up and
saw that it was my son calling. I smiled and made some remark to my husband
about how it hadn’t taken him long to use it. But as I listened to the call, my
heart, just as on the night our cat was hit by a car, froze. Instead of my
son’s voice, I heard a man telling me that he was a policeman and that I wasn’t
to panic, but my son had been hit by a car. I couldn’t believe it. We weren’t
very far from where it had happened, so turning right instead of left we were
soon there. It must have taken us about 3 minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.
All we could both think about was that we couldn’t lose him.
As we arrived at the zebra crossing where it had happened,
we could see 2 police cars, stopping the traffic, 2 ambulances and a
paramedic’s motorbike. A small, green car, its window screen shattered, lay
abandoned, its front doors lying wide open. A woman was being comforted on the
pavement, her eyes red from crying. But the most vivid memory of it all is of
my son lying on the ground, an oxygen mask on his face. But he was conscious. A
couple pf paramedics were attending to him and as I rushed over to him, having
barely waited for the car to stop before jumping out of it, they very firmly,
but gently, asked me to step back and let them attend to him. I stood on the
pavement watching helplessly as they placed him on a stretcher and loaded him
into the ambulance.
Fortunately I was able to ride with him in the ambulance, my
husband following on in the car. Despite having been thrown about 16 feet, he
only had a few scrapes and bruises. He’d had his headphones on and had been
listening to music and hadn’t heard the car approaching. As a result he hadn’t
tensed before the impact and apparently that had saved him from more serious
damage.
We were so relieved. But we just couldn’t believe it. Only
about an hour after I’d told this woman about the night we received a phone when
I thought it was my son that had been hit by a car, but it turned out to be the
cat, I got a phone call telling me my other son had been hit by a car. Not only
that, but our son had only just been given a mobile phone in case of emergency.
We can laugh about it now, but at the time it wasn’t so
funny. Although there was the incident 3 days later when in our local
Blockbusters I was asked if I had heard about the accident on the zebra
crossing. I was told that the person had died, that someone they knew had seen
the body being placed in the ambulance. I was able to assure them that this
wasn’t the case as it had been my son and that he was alive and well and
playing with his games console back home. Chinese whispers at their best.
He was very lucky. But even now, 10 years on, my heart still
does a flip whenever I have to use that zebra crossing. I don’t know about you,
but I think this might well qualify as an instance where fact was stranger than
fiction. At the very least I think it was a very strange set of coincidences.
p.s. here's the link to my friend's story about Myrtyle the Amazon green parrot.
https://gladysfriday52.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/myrtle/