This Isn’t Real, Is It?

By Rebecca Viljoen

Rebecca Viljoen is subject to unusual incidents. She has been fallen on by a unicyclist and a piano and has been pursued down the stairs by a table. Even she finds it hard to believe some of the things that happen to her, but she swears that everything written between these pages is true and unexaggerated. The author attributes her bizarre experiences to a guardian angel with a creative imagination and a misplaced sense of humor, who enjoys making her look ridiculous in order to cheer her up and make her feel unique.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973648970

Rebecca Viljoen

Rebecca Viljoen was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in 1953. She lives with her husband, and they have two grown up sons - who don’t live with them. (They live with three cats and a flock of mixed breed bantam-type chickens.) Home is Harare, Zimbabwe. She has always lived in Africa, where her heart is, though she has travelled to most of the other continents. Her training is in special needs teaching for dyslexic and ADD/ADHD students, and she is the founder of a small educational trust, which specialises in students who don’t fit comfortably into the ordinary school system. A few years ago, she met two young men in a car park, which somehow lead to her becoming a film producer. Although she knew nothing about film making, thirty years experience in theatre helped a little. Rebecca Viljoen is a nom de plume. About the Illustrator Bill Masuku is a born and raised Zimbabwean comic book artist, writer, and founder of Enigma Comix Africa. He gained acclaim for his fresh take on super hero narratives in his books Captain South Africa and Razor-Man, fast making him one of the notable pioneers of African comic book stories in the SADC region. He appeared as a guest at the first Comic Con Africa hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2018. He has gone on to teach his craft in youth development programs in Harare.

Book preview

May’s Favourite Story

Personally, I did not think what happened was that funny, but every time we discussed the things which happened to me, May brought it up and had another good laugh.

I suffer from sinus, especially during the cold dry part of the year.

One morning, I woke up with a sinus headache. I have found that sometimes placing something warm on my forehead eases the headache. It was cold and I was rather disinclined to get out of bed and prepare a hot water bottle. My eye fell on the mug of hot cocoa, kindly left on my bed side table by my early rising husband.

I felt the mug – too hot to put straight onto my skin. The sheet was not thick enough – I thought in Mama Bear’s voice. The duvet was too thick – I thought in papa bear’s voice. Ahhh! My t-shirt was just right.

I folded the front of the t-shirt over my head and rested the mug on my forehead. I was enjoying the sensation, when something changed. The heat had changed position. I could not tell right away what was wrong, but something was not right.

I struggled to get the t-shirt off my head with one hand. I did not want to put the mug down until I could see. When I finally emerged, it was to discover that I was holding only the handle of the mug in my fist. The mug had broken off and fallen into my lap, depositing a large brown mess.

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I think this incident was much funnier.

It was Friday lunchtime, and it had been one of those weeks - and one of those days. It was winter. I was stressed and cold. There is something which has the ability to soothe all those ills – COCOA – chocolate and milk – warm and calming. I felt better just thinking about it.

An indication of my brain’s level of battering was what happened next. I filled the kettle, placed it carefully in the fridge, and shut the door. Something was not right – I could see a vague reflexion of my puzzled face in the fridge door, as I tried to work it out. Ha! One does not put kettles in the fridge if one wishes them to heat up. One has to plug them into the power supply.

I opened the fridge, removed the kettle and plugged it into its socket. The next step was to spoon cocoa powder into the mug. (This was the instant version – I could not wait for the method which calls for boiling everything up in a saucepan.) Next, I grabbed the kettle and poured water into the mug.

Now what? I tried to stir the powder into the water, and it just was not dissolving. I peered into the cup, trying to work out what was going on. Unfortunately, I got too close to the cup and breathed in dry cocoa powder, which hit the back of my nose, and before I could lift my head, I sneezed directly into the mug.

Cocoa mixture shot out of the cup and splattered into my face.

I went into the bathroom to wash my face. As I bent over the basin, I caught sight of my face in the mirror. It was amazing! The cocoa had distributed itself so evenly that it was just like a face pack. My whole face was chocolate brown, except for the whites of my eyes, and my teeth as I smiled at myself.

By this time, I had been able to work out what the problem had been – I had not let the water boil.

My parents’ domestic worker had been ironing in the scullery, and she had witnessed the whole fiasco. African people are extremely polite, and never laugh when someone has an accident or looks silly. However, everyone can be pushed beyond their ability to endure. Poor Spiwe tried her best, but the rest of the afternoon was punctuated by snorts, as she made super human attempts not to laugh, and then exploded when the pressure grew too great.

What Made Louis Laugh

My dad, Louis, did not often laugh out loud. That is not to say that he did not have a sense of humor. He just seldom displayed hilarity. I only ever saw him beside himself with laughter four times.

The first time was when I was about three. I had been on a visit to the UK with my mother, and my father, with half a mind as he shaved in the bathroom, was leading me through a litany of what all the relatives had said.

What did Granddad say? What did Uncle Ron say?