The Scrivener: There And Then, Here And Now
…One day, we heard someone whistling in the corner. He was in the greetings card section at the front. Oh yes, we could see him from behind the counter at the back. He picked a card here, a card there, and danced around while he whistled and held it high in the air. After a while, he bought just one card…
Brian Barratt recalls incidents in a missionary society bookshop 50 years ago, then considers the vagaries of the human brain, recommending us to cherish and use our neurons while we still have them.
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The shelving units were pretty rough wooden affairs. They had no plywood backing. That was useful, because you could see from the back of the shop if someone had crept into a corner at the front. One or two people did tend to creep in rather strangely.
The bookshop was owned by a missionary society. The emphasis was on devotional books, with a good measure of theology. There was a fair range of children's books and greetings cards plus the inevitable religious knick-knacks. Bibles and hymnbooks were available in several languages — Ndebele and dialects of Shona, as well as English.
One day, we heard someone whistling in the corner. He was in the greetings card section at the front. Oh yes, we could see him from behind the counter at the back. He picked a card here, a card there, and danced around while he whistled and held it high in the air. After a while, he bought just one card.
The corner where we kept Gospel tracts also attracted him. He would spend time picking and choosing and then purchase just one small tract for sixpence. This went on for a few weeks, each time with little dances. Then the young assistant — who had a beauty which only people of mixed race possess — asked if someone else would serve him. She didn't like the way he looked at her.
There was a small table in the middle of the shop. We had set up a word-making game for children. You know the sort of thing — a set of plastic letters which you can be use as a game or as a language teaching aid. He found this and spent a long time laboriously arranging the letters. He called me over to show me what he'd done. He had laid out the words 'God is love'. This sent him into a state akin to spiritual ecstasy as he danced around the table, waving his arms in the air.
He declared with great excitement how wonderful it was that God had done this. It was to be the essence of his message to the world. And off he went to spread the Gospel with his greetings cards, picture postcards of Jesus, evangelical tracts, and a set of plastic letters.
That was fifty years ago. He's the sort of person who stays in your memory bank. You wonder what happened to him. Perhaps he continued his earnest but dysfunctional mission on Earth. Maybe he was watched and cared for by understanding friends. On the other hand, he might have cracked up completely and been institutionalised.
The human brain is a remarkable organ or, as some believe, gland. It weighs only about 1.4kg but contains over 12 billion neurons and 50 billion glial cells. The neurons receive and send constant streams of tiny electrical messages via the protective glial cells. Between the ages of about 20 and 75 we lose the use of about 50,000 neurons each day. In some people, this gradual loss leads to impairment. In others, normal functions continue via other channels in the wondrous neurological search engine.
40 years later. Change of scene: A residential care home for frail elderly people. In a writing programme, some of these good folk were recalling what memories they could of times long gone. A number of voluntary scribes helped, and the stories were published in a book.*
After one session, a tall, smartly dressed man came striding towards me. 'Excuse me,' he said briskly, 'have you seen the station master? I can't find him'. I looked round, searching carefully, and told him with an apology that the station master didn't seem to be here. Perhaps he was somewhere else? He thanked me, and marched off to search on another part of the railway platform.
Some folk hover on the edge of the here and now. Some, perhaps, are living back in their own personal there and then, or even in a different reality conjured up by their failing neurons. Let's cherish and use what we have, while we have it, here and now.
© Copyright Brian Barratt 2007
* 'Sharing Our Past: 90 Years of Memories by Senior Citizens of Monash', published 1995 by Monash City Council, Victoria, Australia. ISBN 0 9594745 6 5.
