I am convinced that God is testing me and testing me severely. Now anybody who knows me would testify that I am not one to get angry and then rant and rave and carry on. Oh no. I am one of the calmest, most level-headed people that you could come across. I live by the Biblical teaching that says, “Be angry and sin not”. But let me tell you about my most recent trial.
I decided to take my sister, my son and some of his cousins to see the Udupi Utsav last Saturday. Wasn’t that nice of me, especially since I was dog tired and would have preferred to head in the other direction straight to my bed? Good, I thought you would agree. Anyway, I left home and eventually parked in the space opposite the Utsav grounds near Kalasanka to get a good spot without having to pay for the parking and also find it difficult to find the vehicle in the array of vehicles.
First off I put the vehicle by the transformer near the building and after I had lined up properly and settled down an attendant came and told me I could not park there. Fair enough. I positioned the car a little differently, as instructed, and I waited to cross the road.
Up comes a fellow driving a grey car, and he comes and parks in the almost exact spot that I was in before. Not a soul walked up to him and told him that he had to move. I didn’t say anything either, because by now the place was getting full and everybody was blocking in everybody else. What should have warned me that this was a bad situation about to develop was that when this bespectacled man got out he was dressed from head come down in yellow. I figured that this was a bit unusual for a man to wear this type of get up, but then I decided that nobody had made me Commissioner of Clothing Police, so I didn’t bother with that. To top it off I saw him with a camera and he was taking pictures of the grounds.
I went in and after about an hour it is closing time I am looking to go home. We have all the children loaded in the car and we are set to rev up and move off. Five minutes passed. No Yellow Man. Ten minutes passed. No Yellow Man . Thirty minutes passed and still no Yellow Man. By then I was seething. How on earth could one body be so inconsiderate? He knows that he blocked me in and still he walked until God knows how far taking foolish pictures and would not come back and move his car. I eventually got out and started to take a stroll to see if I could spot yellow man. After all with bright colours like what he was wearing, there could be no way that I could miss him. I looked up and down the road and there was no sign of him or his yellow clothes.
What eventually happened was that the person who was driving the truck which was next to my car came and moved and I pulled away but not before a number of things happened. First I thought of getting out with my keys and making a long scratch on yellow man’s car. Then I thought no, somebody might see me doing that and tell him. Then I thought that when I moved off I would “accidentally” smash into his car. I even thought of what sort of expression I would have when the white and grey paints mixed and I was just about to practise them when I scrapped that too because I might be the one with all the damage to my car and the Christmas bonus would have to be spent in that direction. I also took down the registration number and I thought that I would get one of my friends in high places to track down yellow man and I would call him and give him a good piece of my mind. What stopped me from executing any of these plans? I eventually tried to calm down and chalked it up to a character-building experience. You see just a couple of days before my son and I had read the story of Joseph. When we got to the part where the brothers came to Egypt to buy grain, I asked my boy if he were Joseph what would he have done. He said he would have thrown them in jail because of all the bad things they had done – like selling him as a slave to strangers. I pointed out to him that God wants us to forgive, not to heap vengeance on those who have wronged us.
You know how when you say the upright, moral thing, then that is the head time that situations will crop up and the words will slap you right in the face. This was one of those times. I had to set an example before this child. So I grit my teeth, thanked the truck driver and tried to appear my usual calm self. God knows that was hard. All like now I am still smarting from the experience, but then to hear from the pulpit a timely reminder that we are to forgive our brothers 70 times seven. So here goes number 219. Yellow Man I forgive you. Even though you made me mad, I am the better for it. So to you my yellow brother season’s greetings and a happy new year. My only Christmas wish is that you will be just a bit more considerate next time around.
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