the height of teenage fashion in the 1980s

Saved from a watery grave

Note: This is a kickass version of the PMR essay which was discussed in class recently.
Disclaimer: Please do not attempt to write in the following style lest you want to incur the wrath of your skool teechers.

Mr Aimahiro is a retired swimming instructor. He resides near the polluted Kinta River. In the evenings, he enjoys reading old newspapers by the river because of the reassuring smell of noxious fumes from a nearby highway.

One evening, Mr Aimahiro was reading his old newspapers by the river as usual. He was reading an article about how a group of delinquent students broke into an ice-cream parlour when he noticed several children prancing around near the riverbank. The playful children were gleefully chasing after each other and running about as if their shorts were on fire. Mr Aimahiro shook his head disdainfully and resumed reading the article.

All of a sudden, the wet sound of a big splash interrupted Encik Halotano's reading once more. The moment Mr Aimahiro looked up from the newspaper, he was aghast to see a dumb kid thrashing in the foul and muddy waters of the river.

"Aha! Serves you right, you dumbo kiddo!" Mr Aimahiro thought to himself.

The diabolical Mr Aimahiro waited for the child to drink several mouthfuls of gritty river water before jumping into the river. And it was during that split-second right before Mr Aimahiro's obese body hit the water that he realised how he had completely forgotten how to swim...

...........................


"Why did you jump into the river?"
"To save the poor child from a watery grave."
"And?"
"And I suddenly realised that I had completely forgotten how to swim."
"Do you see the black-eyed angels swimming with you?"*
"Yes."
"And a moon full of stars and astral cars?"
"Yes."
"Do you know where you are?"
"No, I don't."
"Do you know who you're talking to?"
"No."

And thus Hades decreed that Mr Aimahiro was a buffoon whose time in the afterlife has yet to come.

When Mr Aimahiro came to, he was surrounded by the children. The children towered over him. For a moment, he thought he was Lemuel Gulliver in Brobdingnag.

"What? Where? Why? Whose? Which? When? How?"
"You're safe, mister."
"Huh?"
"You tried to save Bee Seng, and you almost drowned. Bee Seng saved you."
"Huh?"
"We were practising. We're really, very sorry for what happened."
"Huh?"
"We're all junior state swimmers. We have a competition coming up. That was why."
"Huh?"

Epilogue:
If you have been an attentive reader, you might just have noticed that something is not quite right with this story. Well, you're most likely referring to the part where the kid was "thrashing in the foul and muddy waters of the river."

Now, why would the child be "thrashing" if they were only practising?

To this, there are several possible answers.

Perhaps the kids wanted to make it more real by doing so. They were probably doing a rescue-type mission.

Or, perhaps the kid was lying. Who knows? Kids lie all the time, right? You're a kid, you should know.

Or maybe Mr Aimahiro is in fact, still struggling in the water, and he is hallucinating. Don't know what "hallucinating" means? Look it up in the dictionary.

*Some parts of the conversation were appropriated from the lyrics of "The Pyramid Song" performed by Radiohead.

"Anything worth doing is never easy."