Blade Runner Read Online Free PDF Page B

discipline and were absolutely
committed to winning our individual legs. I had chosen
cycling. In our last year we triumphed and won the Junior title.
    In the girls' team there was a princess; her name was Faryn
Martin. We lived on the same road and our parents knew one
another. She was blonde, blue-eyed and very sporty. She was
a tomboy who played football with the boys and who is now
part of the South African national hockey team.
    As soon as I saw Faryn, I fell head over heels in love with
her. I even gave her my first rose on Valentine's Day at the
tender age of eight – although I must admit it took me much
longer to pluck up the courage actually to speak to her. My
crush lasted, unabated, until I was at least thirteen. We spent
a lot of time together, playing, going to the movies or
ice-skating and we always held hands. We kept in touch even
after I moved to Pretoria and changed schools, and in fact we
have remained close as adults. I was very happy last October
when she married a wonderful guy who also happens to be
a top rugby player.
    She literally marked me for life. When I was about ten, we
were playing football at school when she tackled me from
behind, throwing her weight against my back. I ended up in
the fence at the end of the field, cutting my leg in the process.
    You can still see the scar today and I consider it my gift from
Faryn so I would never forget her.
    Again, it was on her account that, aged nine, I got involved
in my first fist fight – with a rival for her affections. I came
off worse, but Ashton, my rival, was just lucky. Not too long
after that I was involved in another more serious fight with
two kids who were trying to bully me at a school function.
My father did not intervene during the scuffle but that
evening at home he took me to my grandfather who had been
a boxing champion. Together they put me in front of the
boxing punch bag and began to work on my swing. The time
had come for me to learn to defend myself
    My mother also taught me how to defend myself from
unwelcome attention by using more sophisticated and less
adversarial tactics. She taught me how to handle people's
curiosity and how to answer their questions with ease and
often with a sense of humour. Sometimes I told children that
my legs were a special acquisition from Toys R Us and that
if their parents worked hard enough, and saved enough
money, they too could buy a pair. One of my favourite white
lies was that I had lost my legs in a shark attack. Shark
attacks were not unheard of in Plettenberg Bay and so my
scary story was a showstopper. When I was on the beach the
children would often wait for me to finish with my sandcastle
and leave and then beg Carl to tell them all about the shark
attack. I think my presence made them awkward and nobody
wanted to hurt my feelings.
    Carl was my hero and role model. He was never far from
my side – my guardian angel. I remember one evening when
we were on holiday. I must have been about ten years old.
He found me in a bar dancing shirtless on the stage with a
cigarette in my hand. At that time he smoked like a chimney
but that did not stop him from yanking me off the stage and
rebuking me for smoking in front of everyone. His scolding
was furious and then I was abruptly dispatched home.
    He felt that his position as my older brother entitled him
to behave this way, however much I protested. When I think
back on the incident now I can only wonder what he himself
was doing at the bar . . . I may have been only ten at the time,
but that would have made him twelve.
    One of the many advantages that came with his affection
for me was that he was always prepared to keep me company,
even during the interminable afternoons I spent after school
at the prosthetics specialist's. Often we would spend up to
three hours fitting the prostheses, making the moulds for the
upper part where my stumps would sit, checking, and then
trialling and adjusting each angle until they were perfect.
    Carl, in true