Comprehension: A Carefree Lorry Driver

Topic Content:

• Title: A Carefree Lorry Driver
• Text: New Oxford Secondary English Course for SS2 pages 49-50

“Look out, look out”, shouted his mother in panic. He saw it, nearly too late, he swerved sharply to the left bringing the car to a halt mere inches short of a telegraph pole on the offside of the road. He had very narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a lorry. Indeed, he had been very fortunate, for his vehicle would have somersaulted a thousand and one times. He had mistaken the oncoming vehicle for a motorcycle because it had only a single headlamp, which the driver had not dipped. It was at the last minute that the “motorcycle” had suddenly metamorphosed into a lorry – with a near-disastrous consequence.

“My God! My God!” Deborah cried in fright. Dende climbed out of his car, fuming. The driver of the lorry had stopped. He too came out, and shouted: “Why won’t you drive carefully? You nearly ran into my lorry”.

“You must be mad, you senseless idiot”, Dende answered him, shaking with rage and from the shock of the averted accident.

“Don’t you call me an idiot, I tell you”, the driver cried. “And don’t you tell me I’m mad. There is no madness in my family history. You appear to be a big man. This is the only reason why I refrain from calling you mad yourself”.

“Why on earth don’t you have both headlights working properly?”

“The other one is not working. The mechanic tried to get it working but it just wouldn’t work. And what am I to do, Mother?” he appealed to Deborah as if to say: I know you are his mother or his aunt but this case here is so straightforward that even you, his relative, cannot but agree that I’m right and he is wrong! “What can I do? Can I pluck out one of my eyes to fix it on the lorry, can I? I tell you I will not. Not even if my master pays me forty thousand naira a month”.

“You are talking rubbish”, Dende said helplessly.

(Adapted from NOSEC Book Five)