Open Writing

The difference between folly and curiosity is that these qualities used in tandem lead to disaster, and bring grief to the unwary who uses them one at a time. Wiser and sadder folk have learned that these attributes must be used with extreme caution.

I might have been aware of this before, because I have often been the major actor in curious moments when ‘twas folly to be curious, but I was not wise enough to wise up to that simple verity, and so the hard lesson visited me with the quickness of the fist that blacketh the eye frequently!

For example, it was simple curiosity that made me slide my hand across the top of the six-inch cube of steel that sat atop the dishwashing machine at the REME trade training centre at Ellesmere. My curiosity increased enormously when my probing finger found a circular hole on its dark side that felt about an inch in diameter.

In the normal course of events, this discovery would impress a person of no more than medium intelligence to walk around to the other side of the shiny steel monster by direct vision before sliding a finger inside as far as it would go.

But it was at this point that folly – a condition with which I have an ongoing and intimate relationship – potentiated my errant curiosity to the point where I was compelled to discover the exact purpose of the fascinating hole without having to take a hike round to the other side of the hissing abluter to see it and define its purpose.

At this point in the narrative I should take a break to deal with the anguish that this memory evokes. It was not the first time that pain took me by surprise, nor was it the last by any means resulting from my foolishness close-coupled with an habitually insouciant lack of caution.

You must be wondering what all this is about. If so, then wonder no more as I explain how this event returned to me and what it was that evoked it a couple of moments ago as I watched television footage that showed a boy of seven driving his new-for-Christmas battery powered tractor, towing his small brother behind him in a colour-coded trailer. The older boy set the gear, the speed, steered, applied the brakes, and tooted the horn, all the fun parts, and the little fellow had to be content to cope with the swings and sways, yaws and bumps that the tractor and trailer attracted from the rough ground.

As Einstein proved mathematically, the enjoyment produced in small boys by being bounced around in a wheeled plastic receptacle palls quickly. This young passenger – perhaps a hobo in training – was no exception to the Law of Limited Enjoyment that provides the equation E=MC2, where M = Minutes duration, and C = the inversely disproportionate amount of bone Crunching bounces that a young person can be subjected to before finding it unpleasant, multiplied by the square root of the lad’s age: he was four, thus the multiplier is 2, and E is the product of the equation, which is why it is attenuated to E, and also because the other E, subsumed, is the Enjoyment that has been so attenuated.

As all mathematicians know, the ‘E’ ought to be the end of the whole matter. But in the case before us it was not. Whilst it is certain that the little fellow had decided to follow the example of all who have been stuck on a ride they did not enjoy, such as a Roller Coaster that goes straight up, straight down, and upside down, before it gets even more exciting by performing gyrations that are amongst the world’s best known impossibilities, it did not preclude him seeking a more pleasant diversion.

As any queasy being being towed at incredible speeds by a seven-year-old Hell-on-Wheels destruction driver knows, there is not much to occupy the mind in an empty unseasoned trailer because it is only a shallow tray on a pair of unsprung plastic wheels. Therefore, finding an alternate interest that blanks out a fear of mortal danger is seldom easy. But the little fellow, whose face had turned as yellow as the trailer he sat in, found something more absorbing than imminent death.

He reached forward to grasp the object that caught his attention. That apparently satisfied his curiosity whilst leaving unwariness untouched. Yet it took the diminutive dupe no more than a second to remedy his deficiency of carelessness to such a degree that it is spoken of whenever the family gather.

Grasping the attractive object, the sufferer yanked it sharply upwards and held it in the air, as did King Arthur with Excalibur after one of his many famous victories. Whereas Arthur’s gesture had received the acclaim of his fighting men, the little lad’s gesture received a shock, and a hard one at that.

No sooner was the coupling pin above shoulder height, and rising, than the tractor, deprived of its lynch pin, left the trailer behind it, whereupon the trailer became vagrant, lacking visible means of support, and the forward momentum of the vehicle spilled the young boy out of his yellow shell, and set him, still moving forwards, on the rough ground where he was introduced to the Law of Gravity, and his face took the full force of the tumble as it met the unyielding dirt.

His undoing of the connecting pin was his undoing. It was hard lesson, but he learned it well and if he is capable of understanding cause and effect the tot will most likely not repeat his downfall.

My father had his moments of too little information and too much bravado when, thinking that the field cooking range had gone out he threw the contents of a Jerry can of petrol into the fire basket, and the red hot ashes hiding at the back took exception to the sudden inrush of cold fluid and expelled it, but it was no longer cold.

In the battlefield of the Western Desert where the Desert Rats pummelled Rommel the Desert Fox, my father took time off from the fire of battle to invent the flame-thrower, of which, by the twist fate that follows folly, he was also its first victim. He sort of shot himself in the foot, but they gave him some medals out of sympathy, probably because they had previously given him a medal for being the Best Man in the Regiment at PT.

As proof that I was his scion, I attempted to do much the same to a small fire in the grate of a house we used as a site office and storage when building a Mormon chapel in Ipswich. In my defence I will say that it was a severe midwinter’s day, and soon the lads would be coming in to warm up and eat their bologna sandwiches, so to save time re-lighting dead embers I threw in a couple of pints of paraffin.

It did not occur to me that what the camels and scorpions saw my daddy do, the creatures that crawl up the walls of abandoned houses were about to see me do.

In went the paraffin. But, the fire was not dead, but hibernating. Like Daddy’s field stove, it too objected to the injection of cold fluid, and heated it up in less than a second, sending a great big huge humongous cloud of white paraffin vapour up the chimney and out into the room.

The glowing embers instantly came to their senses and ignited the vapour. The subsequent fireball travelled up the chimney, out into the room enveloping me in its choking mass, and exploded with a deafening roar that blew all the windows out and all my eardrums in!

Yet apart from transient loss of hearing, and some slight confusion, from which I still await deliverance, I was not injured. However, I found the sudden vision of Father George shaking his head and wagging his nicotine stained forefinger in my direction to be more than a little sobering.

Now we return to the Ellesmere dishwashing machine. In idle curiosity, having located an unexpected hole the other side of the steel box, I let my finger probe its interior, and that is when I came to know what its function was. But, I did not know it until the tip of my probing left forefinger came into contact with the spring-loaded contacts that supply power to a light bulb.

There was no light bulb in the socket, and the power had not been turned off. I was shocked, and that’s putting it mildly. It was an experience that I had no wish to repeat. But that didn’t stop me doing other silly things that promised fatal results.

That I have not died from my foolishness is due more to smiling Providence than to my skill saving me from sudden extinction. Yet it was not all bad news. From that time, my hair took on more curls than ever before and, it is told, I display an angelic glow that is still visible when the lights dim.

It seems to be the case that Wisdom is the possession only of the already Wise, but not available to fools no matter how much they suffer, or how close they come to discharging themselves from mortality in careless and bizarre ways.

All that is left to the non-wise, such as myself, is to amplify caution to the level where the risk of damage, disappearance, or demise is minimised. Backing into the garage door the other day to make it a write off despite it being less than a year old is probably well within the range of my doddering folly. If I were wise I would have no need to learn this, but I am not, and so I do.

It’s not a lot of fun, it doesn’t pay well, the hours are great, someone has to do it, and it looks as if I am elected!

Copyright © 2009 – Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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