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Worzels World - A Hitchhikers Guide to Stranger Danger

 

In my boyhood, after years of frustration at always arriving late, I gave up allowing my mother to drop me off anywhere. I would often pack my kit and strike out early on a Saturday morning. Rugby boots laced through the handles of my bag I would hitchhike. I have hitchhiked at odd times since and I can testify that a 12-year-old going to footy gets more lifts than a gnarly middle aged man.

There has been the occasional uncomfortable ride when I have suspected that I was sharing a vehicle with a psychopath or indeed multiple psychopaths. Once a lady in a beaten up Datsun pulled over. After we were seated she removed from the back seat some baggage I had not previously noticed. She proceeded to thrust a baby and a bottle into my hands.

“Can ya feed the baby please?” she asked.

I didn’t really have much choice. Throwing a baby out the window is not the done thing and hardly the way to show appreciation for a lift.

“The milk’s not warm,” I ventured.

“He wont mind,” she replied.

He began to cry so I put the rubber nipple in his mouth to which he gave suck hungrily. He didn’t seem to mind at all.

I have hitched throughout the world. I spent so long trying to hitch out of Fort William in Scotland I thought I was going to have to settle there. I got picked up once by a Polish American woman not far out of Chicago. The ride lasted four days and I travelled less than a hundred miles.

I admit that I am less vulnerable than many others, yet in my wide experience I have yet to experience anything more dangerous than being picked up by a car packed with patched Black Power.

There was no room for me but somehow I managed to skinny my way in. There was an open crate and bottles did the rounds. It appeared that last nights party had decided to be on the move without actually bothering to finish. I wondered if I should offer to drive.

They were a decent bunch and although I seldom drink before midday I felt obliged to join in and was dropped off more than a little the worse for wear. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and if, on the odd occasion, I feared it may all come to grief, my fears were unfounded. I made it home.

I also pick hitchhikers up. For the most part we meet as strangers, occasionally we part as friends. None of these strangers have ever proved as dangerous to me as nature, certain friends and myself.

There is however one very dangerous stranger or, in fact, a whole host of em. They are legion. More persuasive than any con man and with greater guile than the most brazen burglar they make their way into peoples homes. Often entertaining and beguiling, the majority of New Zealanders invite them in and give them pride of place in their sitting rooms. Beware – these strangers are not what they appear to be. They are trained professionals who are paid to seduce you.

I can inform you of this as I have been one of them and when the fee is adequate will be one of them again. Our job is to get you to suspend your credibility, numb your mind, divorce you from reality, then sell you stuff that you probably don’t need and would never have considered wanting until we suggest that it is desirable. And the desirable can vary from an enmity towards a political faction, the requirement to be a skinnier or healthier person, through to a new car.

I am of course referring to the endless line of strangers who enter people’s lives through the doorway of television. It’s over two decades ago that I banished these strangers from my home. I did it in a fit of pique when they took the rugby off free-to-air and put it on Sky. I have no regrets, and am often tempted to feel smug. I am the only person I know who is occasionally on the telly but doesn’t have one.

In this crazy global marketplace, in order to watch a particular production I had been involved in filmed in Mt Wellington I had to send $80 to the US to obtain the DVD. Professional actors make a

living by pretending to be what they’re not and it is not true that the camera never lies – it always lies.

But unlike the 3am stalwarts still gathered round the fire at your party who look like they are settling in for the weekend, the television strangers can be evicted at the touch of a button No one will be offended, your reputation for hospitality will not be diminished. It may even be enhanced if there are actual flesh and blood people there. And perhaps you will, like me, be much the better for it.

n prof_worzel@hotmail.com
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