The theme of this story is adolescent fantasising and hero-worship.

The story revolves around the life of Sophie, a teenager, who, like others of her age, is filled with fantasies and desires. She comes from a poor financial background, but hopes to be sophisticated in the future. Sophie dreams of owning a boutique one day ot being an actress or fashion designer, but her friend Jansie believes that both of them are earmarked for the biscuit factory. Jansie, who is more realistic, tries to pull Sophie to reality, but in vain.

Sophie lives in a small house with her parents and brothers, Geoff and little Derek. Though she voices her feelings and desires, her parents pooh-pooh her, because they, unlike her, are more mature and know the truths of life.

Sophie finds a sort of fascination for her elder brother Geoff, who is tall, strong and handsome and reserved. She envies his silence and often wonders about his thoughts and areas of his life that she doesn’t know about.

The centre of this story is that Sophie fantasises about Danny Casey, an Irish football player, whom she had seen playing in innumerable matches. She makes up a story about how she met him in the streets and tells this to Geoff. Geoff, who is more sensible than Sophie, does not really believe her, even if she wants to. It seems an unlikely incident for Sophie to meet the prodigy in their street, but whe Sophie describes the meeting in all her details, he begins to hope that it could be true. She tells him that Danny has promised to meet her somewhere again.

Sophie gets so pulled into the story she made that she herself begins to believe that its true. She waits for the Irish player, but obviously, he never arrives. Then, she makes her way home, wondering how her brother would be disappointed on knowing that Danny Casey never showed up. However, Sophie still fantasises about her hero, unperturbed.

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0 by Karthik Bala | link