X - The Boy who didn't know what to do

Never knowing what to do was not a new phenomenon, Brian Chance had
never, in the whole of his miserable life, had a clue what to do.

At least he was unable to remember a time when he could manage to say
yes or no within a decent time frame. His parents at first thought it
rather quaint, having a two year old child who when asked 'Would you
like a drink dear?', would have him looking totally nonplussed for 30
seconds, before bursting into uncontrollable floods of tears. They were
absolutely certain it would be a 'phase he would grow out of', but alas
(and as we shall see) sadly not.

Before his fourth birthday the doctor had been consulted. Dr Chestnut
('a great man and nothing like the doctors you get nowadays', his
mother repeated on more than one occasion), had asked Brian the rather
simple question, 'Brian tell me, what is your favorite toy?'. The
doctor prided himself on being a patient man but everyone and
everything has its limit, the good doctors appeared after forty-six
minutes of watching Brian's face go through various contortions,
grimaces, tears and finally full on impact with the solid oak desk
between them. Returned to his parents with the now familiar 'I'm sure
he'll grow out of it', and a bloody nose, his parents accepted the
doctors findings with resigned shrugs of the shoulders and shakes of
the head.

School had been an absolute nightmare for everyone concerned, Brian,
every teacher he came into contact with, his parents, tuck shop
assistants, various child psychologists and social workers. The
learning itself hadn't been too bad and in fact the general consensus
of opinion was that he was of 'above average intelligence'. But the
problem manifested itself more when a question was posed or a test had
to be tackled, and of course later on with examinations. What can you
do with a child who, when posed the question 'What is 1 + 1?', would be
sure the answer was 2, but could he be 100\% sure, maybe it was a trick
question, or could it indeed relate to binary numbers. These types of
conundrums were constantly spinning in young Brian's mind. He was sure
the correct answers would eventually spew forth but people appeared to
have no patience whatsoever, even the specialists seemed to give up
after an hour on a single question.

The one school activity he loved and indeed thrived on was sports,
decisions seemed to be kept to a minimum and he could run the cross
country course as quick as the best of them. Cricket was the biggest
problem as there was the constant dilemma of whether there was 'a quick
single' on or not, frustrating teammates and teachers alike.

Brian however was an above average footballer and managed to work his
way into the school team via his defensive qualities. With not much
scope for decision making he went after the ball with gusto and, not
being the smallest lad in school (6 foot 1 by his fourteenth birthday),
managed to win more than his fair share of challenges. To encourage
this interest the games master had the brilliantly provocative idea of
making him captain of the side. Whether the master had given enough
thought to this appointment must remain very much in question, but in
fact he was quietly confident in Brian's abilities not to be unduly
worried. That was of course until the first game when he saw the lad
head into the centre circle for the obligatory toss of the coin. The
teacher breathed a sigh of relief when the opponents were asked to make
the call, but this lasted all of two seconds when the coin came down on
tails, Brian's selection by default. A decision on whether to kick off
or choose ends would, on the face of it, appear relatively
straightforward, twenty minutes later with Brian and the teacher in
tears, the referee in apoplexy and team mates in fits of giggles, the
lad had to be relieved of his captaincy duties.

With no chance of any examination success an appointment with the
careers officer was arranged at an earlier age than most. Ninety nine
percent of careers had to be crossed off the list immediately, who
would have the audacity to put Brian behind the wheel of a bus when
roads still have junctions? After much thought, and not altogether
necessary shouting by an exceptionally impatient careers man, Brian was
put on a work placement as a checkout operator at the local superstore,
surely with everything being scanned and computers doing decision
making nothing could go wrong. He survived precisely three minutes and
twenty-two seconds on the till. His very first customer had the
temerity to ask if he was able to help with the packing! On leaving
school Brian went through a variety of what can best be described as
'dead-end' jobs, none of which lasted more than a day, punctuated by
large spells as one of the great unemployed. He himself had been
resigned to this fate from a very young age.

His love life had faired no better. The only girl he had got anywhere
near had finally given up after waiting three weeks for the answer to
the standard dating question of whether he wanted to go to the local
disco next Friday. Of course by the time Brian could have come up with
an answer a new question would have to be raised of 'Which
Friday?'.

So this is how we now find our hero at the grand age of twenty years,
two months and thirteen days. The day in question had started off like
any other with Brian not being able to make his mind up about what to
have for breakfast and therefore, and as usual, going without. He had
the same basic predicament with clothes, and so more often than not
ended up wearing the same as yesterday, and the day before that, and
the day before that. His parents had decided that to stop him spending
every day in bed (the decision on whether to get up or not was no
easier than any other), had shown him a circular walk lasting
approximately an hour and covering very nearly three miles.
Unfortunately a level crossing had to be negotiated. Up until this
point the crossing had never posed a problem, the decision on whether
to cross or stop had always been made for him. However on this occasion
things were destined to turn out very differently indeed.

Brian approached the open level crossing as normal and continued to
walk on through. Suddenly, and as he was nearly half way across, the
sirens and lights went on. The shock had the effect of rooting the
young lad to the spot. To give him his due he came to his senses almost
immediately but of course a new dilemma had been raised, whether to go
on (he was very nearly at the middle) or return from whence he had
come. Forty eight seconds later the last thing Brian ever heard was the
shrill of the express trains hooter, fifty one seconds later he gasped
his last breath on this fair earth and screamed out.

Extract from eyewitness interview with 58.6 local FM radio.
Interviewer: Did the youth shout out at all?
Eyewitness 1: He most certainly did, just as the train was about to hit
I heard him shout, and at the top of his voice mind ya,
'bollocks'.
Eyewitness 2: That's right he certainly did shout out, but I'm sure my
hearing wouldn't deceive me, it was a definite 'shit'.