Poor Mr Smith

Mr Smith performed a ritual every night before going to bed. He was a fat man, with beady eyes and a habit of wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, even on cool and crisp winter days. This ritual was just another habit of his. All the time while he performed his little ritual, he would sweat and swear as he painfully completed each step. His wife did not know about it, and neither did his children. Sometimes his wife wondered why he would take a long time coming to bed, but soon shrugged it off as she settled under the doona, watching a late night movie on television. Mr Smith wished that he could shrug off doing his ritual, but he could not. So every night while his children lay in bed sleeping soundly, and his wife lay smitten and endorsed in a late night Brad Pitt movie, Mr Smith would sweat and swear, while standing over his cooking stove.

He hated his cooking stove. He wished it would disappear. For the ordinary person, they would not understand why Mr Smith disliked his cooking stove so much, but for Mr Smith, he had a perfectly reasonable reason. You see, checking his cooking stove was the first step in his ritual. Night after night, just after he had finished brushing his teeth, Mr Smith would make his way to the cooking stove to see that it wasn't turned on. His worst nightmare, was to be engulfed in flames of fire in his own home. And while the ordinary person would check the stove once and then move on, Mr Smith was not the same. He would stand over his stove, checking the buttons and stoves over and over again. Sometimes he would just stare at the stoves, telling himself that yes, they were all turned off. And when he tried to move away, a little fleeting thought such as "You might not have checked it properly" or "Your wife and children will die and it will be all your fault" came to his mind, and he quickly moved towards the stove again... checking... checking... checking.... Poor Mr Smith. Sometimes he had to check the stove twenty times before he could move on. Mr Smith soon became accustomed to syncopating his checking of the stoves, with the tick tock sound of the clock on the wall. He found that with every tick, he would check one stove, and then with the next tock, check the next stove. Poor Mr Smith. This worn him out every night, and as he became more and more frustrated with himself, even his sweating and swearing became syncopated with the tick tock of the wall clock.

After the stoves, it was time to make sure the back door that lead to the garden was locked. This for him was not so bad, as all he had to do was pull on the handle to confirm that the door would not open. However, Mr Smith had to make a mental effort of doing this. Sometimes after checking the stoves, he would be so tired that his feet would take him to the door, while he unconsciously checked that it was locked. If this happened, some time during the night when he was in bed, he would think back to whether or not he had locked the back door, having no mental recollection of doing so. And this meant, of course, that he would have to venture back to the door and make sure it was locked. Poor Mr Smith.

Adding to Mr Smith's fear of fire, he would check the electricity power points in his room. By this time, I must note, his wife would already have been asleep, having been exhausted from a long one hour Brad Pitt fest. Mr Smith would check to make sure that all the lights in his room were turned off, and then make sure that the power points were turned off too. Like the stoves, he would stare at the power points, telling himself that they were turned off.

Next came the nightly prayer to dear God. Mr Smith was not a Christian, no, but he believed that there were Gods, Goddesses and angels in the heavens. So every night, Mr Smith performed what was his own little prayer. He would wave his arms in the air, and bow to the night sky outside the window. Then he would kneel on one knee, and say this - "To the God of all Gods and the Goddess of all Goddesses... May You Bless Me, My Wife, and My Children and Keep Them Safe From Any Danger. Let Them Be Healthy, Happy and Wealthy. Amen." Then he would stand up once more, and bow towards the night sky, blow kisses to the stars and then finally draw his curtains. Whether his neighbours who may have been looking out their own windows at that very time, found this weird, I do not know, but poor Mr Smith did this every night. If he did not, he would feel very guilty and have a very sleepless night.

So that, was Mr Smith's ritual. It was only until after the very last step of the ritual that Mr Smith allowed himself to flop into bed and sleep until the very next morning. That is, of course, unless Mr Smith's dreams were punctured with a thought - "You better do that again. If your wife and children die, it will be all your fault!"

The End