South Africans are a wonderful, hospitable and friendly people. Even the street hawkers are nice when you turn them down. You will understand, then, my bafflement (is that a word?) at the strange day I've had.
It all started when I was daydreaming at the robot (traffic light). I was thinking about sine and cosine graphs and how they sort of look like a dance between lovers, and that got me thinking about double helixes, and I was about to envision the Dance of the Double Helix when a face appeared against my window.
When I say "against my window" I mean that quite literally. The nose-print is still there from a street hawker who was selling pumice stones. I was slightly miffed that he interrupted my trigonometry tango, but on the other hand, he's just trying to make a living. I smiled and politely told him I didn't need a pumice stone. Then he got really angry at me, called me some choice words and ended with "*bleep* *bleep* *bleep* racist!" (So... I'm a racist because I don't want a pumice stone?)
A few robots up the road was the one-legged beggar. He's there almost every day. I smiled at him, too (I think it's good to at least acknowledge people; we all want someone to know we exist, right?) but declined to give him any money. He looked at me and then hit my rear view mirror so that I now have a nice view of the sky.
I think the few rare mean people of Pretoria all converged on my path today. But at least two people know I exist, and I have some lovely souvenirs on my car to prove it.
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