Off the Cuff: Charged with a sense of duty

It is a Saturday morning. The weekend is here. The suburb’s main road is not busy – at least not as active as a week day. The school buses are conspicuously absent – several of them ply this route. Although the majority of the town’s residents are still indoors, enjoying a lie in or a more leisurely start to their day, a few are out and about: the early birds, the routine-based individuals who find a change of habit hard to accommodate.

Up at the top where the road climbs and flattens before dipping on the other side there’s a line of eateries, some with large premises. All the big chains are here – KFC, Hungry Jacks, Red Rooster, Subway.

A group of youngsters – young boy-men, year ten pupils perhaps – is sitting outside one such venue (none of the aforementioned, though.) This place has a car park outside and all around are broad railings. Sometimes youngsters go into the store, buy hamburgers and fries then wander over to the railings, sit there and finish a quick snack, watching the traffic or generally mucking around.

It is no different this morning, with the sun quietly striding across the sky banishing shadows on the ground. Eight lads, all of them clearly headed off for a spot of fun somewhere – an energy releasing session – for they have skateboards. One has a footy ball that gets thrown from person to person. A few gentle kicks are practiced – nothing to cause worry to the car owners parked nearby. It’s all good, as they say here.

As with youngsters of this age, there’s an overriding air of merriment, teasing and banter. A nudging of shoulders when someone is being set up; raucous high-fiving when one of them has been had, or a joke been told; the slapping of thighs; a quick swig from the zero sugar Coke bottles; an audible burp that elicits more laughter; a dog wandering into the vicinity – it’s either slipped its leash or simply outwitted its owner. Tail a-wag and nose firmly following the scent of food it wanders up to the group, introducing itself by rubbing its coat against the legs of the youngsters. It is welcomed in turn. A few French fries are tossed in its direction which the dog doesn’t wait for permission to demolish.

A sea gull – ever keen-eyed, witnessing food being disbursed freely – happens on the scene too and deftly – like a cricketer at first slip – flies in the air to intercept a morsel of hamburger bun.

One of the lads is eating healthily – two bananas and an apple, of which the apple gets first preference. One of the young men thinks the banana peel may make an ideal instrument for mirth so he sets it in the middle of the path nearby awaiting the first careless head-in-the-air passerby.

“Hey old man, you didn’t see anything, okay?” says one of the youths to an elderly gentleman minding his business on the stone bench nearby. A ‘conversation’ of sorts ensues – probably on the right and wrong of the youngsters’ action. It results in the older man rising, picking up the peel and depositing it in the red-lidded general waste bin.

All this happens rapidly.

Quick as a flash one of the youths produces the second banana peel and places it back on the path, upon which a really senior lady has begun setting course headed for the bus stand.

The man rises from the bench walks to the woman halts in front of her and says, “Be careful, don’t walk that way,” or words to that effect.

The woman, alarmed, thinking she’s being accosted deals the man a glancing blow with her cane saying, “Mind your own business, I know where to walk.”

In swinging the cane she loses her balance, falls and lies unmoving.

When the ambulance and the police arrive several minutes later it is the man that is charged. The youths – and their banana skin – have all skateboarded away.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.