So many stories start with those words. Funny stories , sad stories , tragedies ... it's hard not to add on your own leanings as you hear or read them.
So much is going around about Oscar Pistorius at the moment, opinions, strong feelings, some fanaticism on both sides of the fence.
I'm not going to go through what I think, I do believe there is far too much pre-judging going on at the moment, but I will share with you something that happened to me about 4 days go, and let you draw your own conclusions.
I woke up around 5:30 am , unable to sleep, it was a hot muggy night and morning ( Melbourne has been averaging the high 30's for the last week , with unbearable humidity ) . I was feeling down , as my mother's visit was coming to an end , and all of this added up to me being unable to sleep very well.
It was pitch dark in our room, the blinds are flipping brilliant at blocking out almost every smidgen of ambient and street light .
I got up quietly , so as not to wake up my husband who was lying next to me, and went to the toilet quietly.
I didn't flush the toilet for fear of waking him up.
I crept back into bed , and after lying there for a couple of minutes I got back up , edged myself across the room quietly opened the door , and went downstairs to make coffee.
While in the kitchen , I decide to take coffee up to my husband , and place it next to the bed , because he usually wakes up if I bring coffee into the room.
I took the coffee upstairs, opened the bedroom door ( it was still pitch dark inside the room) , quietly, without turning on any lights I crept across the room and placed the coffee next to his bed while carefully feeling my way in the dark.
I then edged around the bed with my coffee carefully climbed back into bed , and got out my iPad to read the news , check on emails and see what my family in South Africa were up to.
I sat , in the dark reading the news , and getting social media updates for about 20 minutes.
At some point I wondered if my husband was sick, as he had not stirred so much as a whisper when I put the coffee next to the bed.
As I was thinking this - my bedroom door opened , and I saw a man's frame standing in my doorway silhouetted in the light from the sunrise behind him. I thought , what the hell is my house mate doing opening my door at 6 am in the morning? If I was in South Africa , I am certain I would have screamed on the assumption that there was an intruder in the house.
It was at that point that my husband said to me - from the doorway - "Was that you making coffee downstairs?"
I whipped around, turned on the bedside light , and realised that I had lovingly placed a cup of coffee next to an empty spot in the bed , mostly taken up with scrunched up sheets and pillows.
My husband had not been there from the moment I had woken up. He had been up since around 4 am , quietly working in our home office.
Not once , in the 30 minutes since I woke up did I even consider the possibility that my husband was not in the bed, and I never made a noise, or called him, or tried to touch him, as I was trying not to wake him up ( he had a very late night working). It never crossed my mind that he would not be there, and in the pitch dark I really didn't look very hard to try and verify that.
Ever since then, I have imagined how terrible it would have been, if I lived in South Africa still, and was living with the fear of intruders in my house. Would I have shot my husband , given the right amount of fear and disbelief ?
I don't know.
But it's worth thinking about before you judge Mr Pistorious for something you think is implausible, or even impossible.
So much is going around about Oscar Pistorius at the moment, opinions, strong feelings, some fanaticism on both sides of the fence.
I'm not going to go through what I think, I do believe there is far too much pre-judging going on at the moment, but I will share with you something that happened to me about 4 days go, and let you draw your own conclusions.
I woke up around 5:30 am , unable to sleep, it was a hot muggy night and morning ( Melbourne has been averaging the high 30's for the last week , with unbearable humidity ) . I was feeling down , as my mother's visit was coming to an end , and all of this added up to me being unable to sleep very well.
It was pitch dark in our room, the blinds are flipping brilliant at blocking out almost every smidgen of ambient and street light .
I got up quietly , so as not to wake up my husband who was lying next to me, and went to the toilet quietly.
I didn't flush the toilet for fear of waking him up.
I crept back into bed , and after lying there for a couple of minutes I got back up , edged myself across the room quietly opened the door , and went downstairs to make coffee.
While in the kitchen , I decide to take coffee up to my husband , and place it next to the bed , because he usually wakes up if I bring coffee into the room.
I took the coffee upstairs, opened the bedroom door ( it was still pitch dark inside the room) , quietly, without turning on any lights I crept across the room and placed the coffee next to his bed while carefully feeling my way in the dark.
I then edged around the bed with my coffee carefully climbed back into bed , and got out my iPad to read the news , check on emails and see what my family in South Africa were up to.
I sat , in the dark reading the news , and getting social media updates for about 20 minutes.
At some point I wondered if my husband was sick, as he had not stirred so much as a whisper when I put the coffee next to the bed.
As I was thinking this - my bedroom door opened , and I saw a man's frame standing in my doorway silhouetted in the light from the sunrise behind him. I thought , what the hell is my house mate doing opening my door at 6 am in the morning? If I was in South Africa , I am certain I would have screamed on the assumption that there was an intruder in the house.
It was at that point that my husband said to me - from the doorway - "Was that you making coffee downstairs?"
I whipped around, turned on the bedside light , and realised that I had lovingly placed a cup of coffee next to an empty spot in the bed , mostly taken up with scrunched up sheets and pillows.
My husband had not been there from the moment I had woken up. He had been up since around 4 am , quietly working in our home office.
Not once , in the 30 minutes since I woke up did I even consider the possibility that my husband was not in the bed, and I never made a noise, or called him, or tried to touch him, as I was trying not to wake him up ( he had a very late night working). It never crossed my mind that he would not be there, and in the pitch dark I really didn't look very hard to try and verify that.
Ever since then, I have imagined how terrible it would have been, if I lived in South Africa still, and was living with the fear of intruders in my house. Would I have shot my husband , given the right amount of fear and disbelief ?
I don't know.
But it's worth thinking about before you judge Mr Pistorious for something you think is implausible, or even impossible.
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