BRIEF ENCOUNTER: And a pause for thought

This is Dry July. It's the month when some people stop drinking and instead get on social media to announce their alcohol-free virtue to whoever is out there.

They join others who, whatever the month, will write “Now eight years sober” and watch as friends and strangers respond with “good one, hun” or “well done, just three years for me”.

Social media can act as a useful support network although, as we know, it is usually the poisonous opposite.

I don't observe Dry July and the other day while driving home from somewhere I stopped at the local liquor shop because I had a hankering for some spicy rum before dinner.

When I came out of the store there was someone hunched down beside my car.

“Are you alright?” I asked and a boy -- glasses, pale and about 14 – looked at my wide-eyed.

He was clearly terrified and breathless.

“They're after me,” he said through gasps and he popped his head up to see if whoever had been chasing him was still there.

“They got me . . . down at the mall,” he wheezed, referring to shopping mall which was a couple of hundred metres away.

“They tried to get me into the toilets . . . they tried to get my phone,” he said, holding up his phone to show me. He was shaking uncontrollably.

“Can you help me?”
“Of course.”

I got him into the car and then he whispered, “there they are”.

There were two boys, a little older than him I guessed, who were walking around the small park nearby, looking around angrily.

“Keep your head down,” I said as I started the car.

He didn't need to be told twice.

I drove slowly past the boys. The taller of the two was ferret-faced with narrow eyes and a look which suggested he was ready to pay out on someone, the other was short but more solid and carried the same sense of menace.

They were both stronger than the thin, white-faced boy in my car with his face buried in his hands.

We drove off and I asked where he needed to go. He was so frightened he could barely get the words out but I gleaned the shopping centre a couple of kilometres away.

His name was Andrew or Anaru, I couldn't catch it through his heaving breaths, and he knew the boys from school. I reassured him he was safe now, asked him a few questions but could see he was too distraught to answer.

The poor kid was absolutely terrified.

When I dropped him off I asked if he was going home and who was there. He was, he said, his grandma was there.

I asked what he was going to do about this. He said maybe call the police. I agreed but also said he needed to talk about it with his grandma straight away and not carry it all by himself.

We said goodbye and I watched as he hurried down the footpath, glancing at his phone all the time and wiping the tears from his eyes.

By the time I got home I'd all but forgotten about him but later when I was pouring that drink it all came back.

And so did this: If I'd been observing Dry July I would not have stopped at that liquor store, would never seen this poor boy and been able to take him from impending brutality.

The outcome for him might have been very different.

It was a sobering thought.