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| Happy Birthday |
We were putting petrol into our tank when my son directed my attention to a sign, suspended from the garage roof, which read:
'No cheques accepted'.
He was nearing his fifteenth birthday.
'I'm making a copy of that notice and pasting it on my bedroom door,' he announced.
'Why?'
'My birthday is coming up next month.'
Cure worse than cause
I stared blankly - then. remembering his last birthday, I laughed.
'It's a shame that boy always loses out on his birthday,' my husband had said. 'Remember the time he became ill just before his party and how the doctor prescribed Friar's Balsam to be inhaled? And how you got the wrong end of the stick and gave the child two teaspoons of the stuff to swallow, and he all but breathed his last.'
'Yes, but it fixed his cold', I said defensively, eager to change the subject.
'But what about the time we opened his Christmas tree present and found the case containing sixteen small cars, as ordered, merely contained one large hole.
We decided not to go back with the empty case and make a fuss.
He was the one who lost out on our magnanimity that time.'
'That's right. And then last year you bought his flippers and goggles two sizes too small.'
'Let's make sure he scores this time,' I said.
Car instalment
'Well, I'm terribly sorry Ma, but he'll have to bide his time until the end of the month.
There's the car instalment to be paid and the school fees and ..'
I agreed, albeit with a heavy heart, that my son would have to wait for the end of the month before getting a birthday gift.
He always did get the rough end of the stick, ayway, I mused, just as I used to when I was a child.
Evergreen in my memory remains the pageant where I featured as one of Snow White's seven dwarfs and there were only six hammers to go around.
I felt ever so conspicuous when they gave me a piece of wood to hold instead.
Some years later I was cast as a constable in a play about gypsies.
There were five policemen and four helmets and I'm still ashamed to recall how swiftly I snatched one of the helmets, leaving my friend Paula to tuck her long plaits into a rather odd-looking straw cheesecutter.
Ah well, that was all in the past.
As for my son, I could only hope his luck would turn some day.
When his dad arrived home from work at 4am on his birthday, it seemed my wish had come true. 'I've thought of a brilliant idea to cheer up the birthday boy!' he said excitedly.
'Bring out your cheque book.'
'But there's only a rand left in my account,' I objected.
'Never mind. Just write out a cheque for the sum of fourteen rands, one rand for every year of his life, and date it for the 28th of this month.'
Rockefeller
I did so and my son got his present after all. Rockefeller with all his millions could not have felt as rich as he did with his postdated cheque.
He must have visited every toy shop in town that month, and he mentally spent that fourteen rand at least fourteen times before the cheque became due.
When it did, an unexpected financial blow hit us. Since it was wintertime we had burnt asbestos heaters in four rooms day and night, never thinking our electricity account would be as high as it turned out to be.
When our salary cheque arrived, fifty-odd rand had been deducted for which we hadn't budgeted.
Necessities versus luxuries
When it came to a choice between necessities and luxuries, the former received priority, and so we told our son, who put a good face on his disappointment.
We gave him a rand to spend and reminded him of the starving millions and how lucky he was to have schoolbooks and shoes and regular meals to eat and he ambled off, seemingly pacified.
It was only when I paged through his photo album nearly a year later that I again saw the cheque. 'Fourteen rand only, eh?' he grinned when I asked him about it.
'Only fourteen rand and then I ended up by getting one - and a sermon.'
It seemed as though some of his confidence in us had been shaken, for instead of the usual: 'Keep out. This means you',on the door of his room, he now prepared a poster reading 'No cheques accepted.'
Cold cash
'This time I'm opting for cold cash,' he insisted, and although he had my support, my heart bled for the naivetè of the last year's birthday boy who jumped for joy upon being presented with a postdated cheque.
Catherine Nicolette
Oh that cheque! It just seemed to live on . . .
Well into my thirties when looking for an appointment card for the doctor for my dad, I opened an album in Mom's cupboard and there was the cheque - slightly faded, but still there - fourteen rand to my brother...
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