Why I was late

Why I was late.

“Why were you late?” the diminutive Georgina demanded far too regally for her eight years, hopping into our nearly new Hyundai Santa-Fe.

“Well, it’s a long story. Too long to go into.”

“Tell me anyway. I want to know.”

“Right,” I thought “if I try to make excuses she’s just going to quiz me all the way to gym, and I’ve still got Arki to pick up. Maybe I Will  tell her a story.”

“OK, this is why I’m late, which, by the way, I am not, since we are going to get there on time.”

“No we aren’t, because you are late.”

“Once upon a time in a far off forgotten land………..”

She looked at me quizzically but didn’t say anything so I continued.

“There was a Genie trapped in a cave. He had been trapped there for a thousand years and was desperate to get out. He made a vow to himself that he would reward anyone who set him free with anything they desired.  The cave was sealed with a giant rock that would only roll aside if someone outside rubbed the rock and said the magic words Open Sesame.

One day, a wandering tinker stopped to lean against the huge rock for a rest. He used the roughness of the rock to scratch his back. As he rubbed this way and that against the rock, he started thinking out loud, ‘I’m sick of being a tinker. I want to open a shop and sell sesame seeds and lots of…………...’

To his surprise and astonishment the rock groaned and creaked and cracked deep within itself and moved. Slowly at first, so he had time to get out of the way, then faster, it rolled back, revealing an enormous cave.

From the depths of the cave came a noise like thunder. ‘Who opened the door to my cave?’ The Genie roared.

The poor tinker almost collapsed with fear. With his knees knocking and his teeth chattering he managed to say (because he was a truthful and logical man) ‘I suppppp…pose it was I’

‘Well then,’ the Genie boomed. (After a thousand years alone in a cave he hadn’t worked out the correct volume for a normal conversation just yet)  ‘I am in your debt for releasing me. You can have anything you want.’

‘That’s very nice, said the tinker. I would like a car.’

‘You can’t have a car, they haven’t been invented yet,’ said the Genie. (He’d found his volume control.)

‘Well you did promise me anything, and I take it you are a man of your word,’ said the tinker.

PFFFT! In a twinkling the Genie had disappeared. He was back shortly, with a very confused look on his face.

‘I have been to the future and there are millions of cars of all different kinds. You will have to decide what sort you want.’

The tinker asked, ‘can you remember the names of any?’

‘Well, there were Mercedes, and Toyotas and Fords and Holdens and Hyundais      and ………………’

‘Stop, what was that last one with the pretty sounding name?’

‘Hyundai,’ said the Genie.

‘That’s what I want.’

PFFFFFFT! And the Genie disappeared, only to return a few minutes later looking even more confused.

‘You wouldn’t believe how many different types of Hyundai there are,’ he said. ‘There are Santa-Fe’s, and Getz’s and Sonatas and……….’ ‘Stop right there,’ said the tinker who was a man of instant decision. ‘I like the name Santa-Fe. Can I have one of those please?’

PFFFFT! The Genie disappeared once again.”

We had picked up Arki and were nearly at the gym.

“Now,” I said to Georgina, “there I was, driving along the highway between Gatton and Ipswich in the rain, when suddenly, there appeared, barrelling along the highway in the opposite direction, a gigantic black cloud.

It was the Genie. He was hurling cars to left and right, shouting ‘Not this, not that.’ And then he saw us and said ‘Aaah’ in a voice of seven thousand satisfied sighs and scooped us up into the folds of his clothing and carried us back a thousand years and ten thousand miles to the tinker who was waiting by the cave entrance.

‘Here is your Hyundai Santa-Fe,’ said the Genie proudly, laying us down gently on to the sand by the cave.

‘But it’s got people in it,’ said the tinker (who was a kind and thoughtful man), ‘and they were on a journey.  I’m afraid you’ll have to take them back exactly where they were.’

PFFFFT! The Genie took us forward a thousand years and set us gently down on the highway to resume our journey.

I glanced at Georgina as we turned into the gym and finished, “And that is why we were late. Because it took the Genie exactly fifteen minutes for the whole round trip.”

She was quiet until we had stopped and then she said accusingly but with a small smile “You made that up didn’t you.”

Roger Wooller

As told on Monday 6thDec 2010