This is an incident that happened about a year ago, way, way before I started this blog. It wasn’t constantly on my mind, in fact, this is the first time it pops to my head in months. Thinking back, I don’t know what sorta lesson it serves, probably nothing much.
I was in the mall waiting for my sister to pick me up. After picking up some groceries, I headed straight to the pickup/drop-off section of mall, saw a chair full of people, so I just stood still and waited.
Suddenly I felt a pinch on my butt. My heart was pumping fast and having guessed the worst, I turned around and saw a smiley-face grinning, almost nonchalantly. Immediately I snapped out loud, “Hey, what the hell did you just do?” The teenager was still smiling, but my blood pressure was already up a few thousand times. Boiling inside(coupled with the fact that he was still smiling ‘innocently’), I was ready to confront him again, this time, his mother (who was standing nearby) dashed over, apologized and explained that her child was “a special kid”. I remember I reacted by screaming at the top of my lungs, “HE GRABBED ME!!!” She kept on apologizing without making any eye contacts , which was pretty odd to me because SHE was the one apologizing, instead of the boy. Why did his mother have to come to his defense? I thought to myself. I stared back at the teenager, my heart almost sank. He didn’t have any remorse at all. He still didn’t wipe that almost-innocent smirk off his face. I could kill him now, I thought then.
Still seething but nothing much to do, I went over to sit on a vacant spot. Already 10+ people in the nearby crowd witnessed my ‘Mad Day’. If that wasn’t enough, the kid was still smiling. I wasn’t sane enough to think, so I had plenty of time to hatch imaginary murder plots to ‘take care’ of all the perverts in the world. When I was snapped out of it, I took a good look at the kid who grabbed my butt. I noticed something. He was still smiling innocently. Why oh why? I thought to myself. Is he a retard?
OMG, that’s what his mother meant by ‘special’… I didn’t notice she almost choked when she used that word, and I lost my head (& lungs…) the moment he grabbed me. The mother—obviously embarrassed—was just holding the boy’s hand and staring down the floor. I saw the sadness (and helplessness) in her eyes, she was just holding the boy’s hand, waiting for someone to pick them up, and hoping for the day to be over, fast. Meanwhile I was on the other end of the bench, having simmered down a little, but still agitated. I could be forgiving sometimes, with ample reasons provided f’ course…
The boy was with someone around his age, probably a brother. The brother looked frightened and anxious when I confronted the perpetrator. When I told my sister the whole incident, Christy quickly dismissed the fact that the boy might have done this on his own will (because, according to Smarty-pants, ‘he’s not that bright’), and someone else might have been pulling the strings. Someone with brains and someone with remorse and fear when caught. Her bet was on the brother.
Anyhow, all I could only make out of this incident was, indeed, nothing much. Maybe I shouldn’t have yelled, but even the child was ‘special’, he or she, in my opinion, should be taught what’s right and what’s wrong. The mother wasn’t all to blame, she’s probably had a million people shunning her and her son all these years. And I admit I know next-to-nothing about special education, so to give a one-sided argument is pure crap. All in all, I feel for the mother.
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