GRIT

          

 GRIT

         My placid morning walk was disturbed by a dangerous scene unfolding before my eyes.

        A tiny boy with a large head, a boy I placed around five or six years was trying to mount an adult cycle. On the rear seat, I saw a plastic sack loosely secured, which made the already rickety cycle wobble like jelly.

       My instinct was to shout a warning, but I held back. Moving with casual indifference, men were walking about the boy as if he was invisible. Again and again the lad tried to get his leg across the cycle bar only to fall back landing shakily on his spindly short legs. The lines of a poem learnt in school flooded my memory.  Now I was riveted to this drama of tenacity in sight.

Try Try Again

by T. H. Palmer

'Tis a lesson you should heed, If at first you don't succeed, Try, try again;

    

      After half a dozen attempts, by some acrobatic leap, the boy launched himself on the cycle, landed crouched, and started peddling furiously, the cycle swinging from one side of the road to the other. There were cars and schools vans whizzing by, and when the road cleared, I saw the cycle propped on a stand and the boy running back to pick up the fallen sack.

      I could no longer continue as a bystander, and walking at a fast trot I covered the twenty feet in seconds.  

      At close proximity, the boy was older maybe a ten year old with the build of a child half his age. The plastic sack held some milk sachets and one had fallen out of the sack. Together we tried to secure the sack and fasten it to the rear seat which held a small bundle of newspapers. He was on a a milk and newspaper delivery route, so much struggle for a pittance of extra cash! Did he go to school, I wondered? Wordlessly the boy accepted my presence as we tried various methods to get his deliveries together. I scrounged around the wayside and found some dirty rope which held the parcels down. Then with my steadying hand on the cycle, the boy got on and moved ahead.

      I stood bemused at my participation especially picking up litter from the roadside. It takes very little to get involved in a moment. It requires an effort to step back again as a bystander, anonymous, connected.