Joy/Misery-Rider

Police car following a youth who has just stolen a car.

Youth debates with himself which is the best way to escape the police and decides it is to turn left. To his horror he is confronted with a mother crossing the road with two small children. The driver tries to avoid them but turns away just too late and kills the mother and her small son. The daughter somehow escapes without injury. The car crashes into a low wall and before the young man can run off, he is caught by the police. Young man proves to be just eighteen years old. The mother was thirty four, her son was ten and her daughter is twelve. Young man is sent to prison for six years. He was just about to go to university to read medicine but his prison sentence stops that. His father commits suicide with the shame of what his son did and his mother dies a year later of a broken heart. Prison brutalises the young man and he turns to drugs for comfort. By the time he is released he is a confirmed drug addict and is unable to hold down a regular job. Instead, he turns to petty crime to feed his habit and begins a slow but inexorable decline into homelessness, despair and an early death. The young girl never recovers from what was a dreadful experience, her father turns to drink and the loving, secure home life she once enjoyed disappears. She never achieves her early promise and eventually become entrapped in a loveless marriage.

Police car following a youth who has just stolen a car.

Youth debates which is the best way to escape the police and decides to turn right. Before the road again sharply to the right he spots a narrow street immediately to his left, which he takes. The police rush by the street he took allowing the young man time to make his escape. As he walks away he finds he is shaking with relief. He had stolen the car as a stupid dare but when the owner had come out of the shop almost immediately and had called the police who had been able to respond almost immediately because they just happened to have a patrol car in the vicinity, the young man found he was being chased almost immediately. He was due to start at university in less than a month and that might now be in jeopardy and his parents would be devastated by the shame he had brought onto the family. All this flashed through his mind as he tried to evade the police so when he did escape his relief was palpable. He was sufficiently intelligent to realize just how lucky he was. No one was killed and the stolen car was undamaged. He was unaware that the reason the man rushed into the chemist shop leaving the keys in his car was because he was frantic with worry. His wife had run out of essential medication and though after reporting his car stolen the man tried, he could find no taxi to take him home. When he arrived back, he discovered his wife had suffered a major attack which severely damaged her brain. She became a permanent invalid needing 24 hour care. The lives of the man, his wife and their two children were severely and adversely affected.

The young man went to university and became a doctor. He set up a practice in his home town and some years later, one of his patients was none other than the same young girl whose life he might well have ruined had he turned left that fateful day twelve years earlier. At that time, her life was in a mess and she was severely depressed. It took lots of probing but eventually the story revealed itself. When she was still at school, her mother had had an affair with her boss and had left her husband who had taken to drink. She and her younger brother were left to care for themselves. It then transpired that her brother was none other than the so-called Shropshire Savage who was responsible for the deaths of eight prostitutes. The young woman explained that her brother had always exhibited a cruel streak but this had flowered after her mother left. When, eventually, he married, he had treated his wife and child abominably and they were now in care. Her mother now had a second family with her second husband and wanted nothing to do with her problem first family. She seemed unable to accept her culpability for what had happened to them. The young woman was now trying to cope with an abusive booze addled father. It was a difficult case but our young man did all he could to help all the while thanking god none of this sort of thing happened to him.