From an early age, although not knowing it, she was destined to be put down by nasty people.
It started in the school playground when the class bully roughly wrestled her to the ground and she had yelled “Stop!” at the top of her voice. It seemed to do the trick because he rolled off her and lay panting before the teacher helped him up. The fact that the boy had a sudden cardiac death a few days later, was greeted with the understandable grief. The connection between the two events went unnoticed. Later, as a teenager, she had been visiting an auntie that she felt no fondness for, with her parents. When the woman, who didn’t like the youngster being in her bedroom uninvited, even though she was only taking in the view from the window, took her by her upper arm and marched her out. The angry grip was far too tight and the girl shouted for her to stop.
Once again, this unpleasant yet relatively minor event was overshadowed when the woman had a dizzy spell and tumbled down the full length of her stairs later that week. She died in the ambulance.
These two events in her life came together as having some significance, but her interpretation of their meaning could not be construed as anything more than fanciful. However, an incident that occurred several years later forced her hand.
One of the men in her office, an obnoxious chauvinist, had, for no apparent reason that she could detect, been particularly nasty towards her from the day she arrived in the department. It had been going on for several months and she was sick of it.
She knew he lived close to the office and travelled in and out by bus. One evening, after work, she left sharp and was parked a short distance from the bus stop. She saw him get on and followed. When he got off she parked nearby and watched him go in. She waited for a couple of minutes before ringing his door bell. When the door opened, he raised disdainful eyebrows, but stood speechless. “I only have one thing to say to you,” she said. She drew in a great breath and shouted at the top of her voice, “Stop!” He just stood wide-eyed looking at her, thoroughly amazed. She just turned and walked away.
On the following week she went in each morning, sat and waited… Sure enough, on the third day he phoned in sick. Then, the next day all staff in her section were told that he was in hospital. It wasn’t looking good. Apparently, it was a case of ischemic heart disease. Following this, at the end of the week, the manager called them all together and gave them the very sad news.
When she got home that night a great jumble of thoughts was racing through her head.
She put the kettle on, sat down quietly in her kitchen with a piece of paper and a pen, and with a trembling hand she started to make a list.