To all those who smirk at my paranoia

This is scary.

Get yourself a shredder today.

So what would you do?

We were at the playroom at the residents’ club yesterday. It’s a huge mama of a room, and on this particular Saturday, there are a tonne of kids there, no thanks to the heat outside.

A typical scuffle appears to have happened, despite most of those present not actually being aware of it. An ang moh/gweilo/gai-jin (pick your own word) girl hits/punches/kicks a Chinese boy in the face. Namely the eye, or alledgedly so. No one really sees it. No one really cares – this is an indoor playground, after all, and kids will be kids. Of course, no one cares except the parent of the hit child. Fair enough. The not so normal bit is the reaction of this mother. She corners the offender which, again, goes largely unnoticed by all of us, but by the time she’s spent a good five minutes giving a talking-to (later escalating to yelling), most of us are now aware that there is a parent yelling at a child. Not her own child. This said child, a girl,  is probably no older than four. And the victim, judging from size, is older. A boy. No one saw the hit, or at least, I didn’t see it. And given that it occured atop the Jungle Gym, I can only assume the mother didn’t see it either. I do, however, see the boy come down and get his mom to climb back up with him. Anyway, this mom, she’s yelling at this girl, and before long, we see her ordering her son to hit the girl, which he does. After some more minutes of yelling, the girl climbs down from the Jungle Gym (where all this is happening), and passing the mother, decides to act like the four-year-old she is. Kick the evil woman yelling at me. She then quickly swings down and runs to her helper who’s, up till now, probably blissfully unaware of all this due to her chatting with other helpers. The fuming mad mom drags her son, follows the girl, and positions herself before the helper (who, by now, is shielding the crying girl), makes her son sit behind her, and proceeds to continue yelling at the helper and girl. Sorry, not yelling. Screaming. Like crazy screaming. I hear the word “asshole” used a couple of times.

And that’s when I lost it. I’m a pacifist. I hardly ever react to confrontational situations. I always prefer to back down and Danny likes to call me a push over. But something went “pop” in my head. That happens once in a while when I get truly mad. I’m not sure what this woman was doing that was making me mad, but I was MAD. She had to be taken down. She had to be disgraced. I decide, in split second, the best way to disgrace this woman is to make sure the staff at the club know who she is. So I dash out to bring them in. Of course, I’m too late. By the time we return, she’s already leaving. I confront her, telling her that she shouldn’t be yelling like that in the playroom full of children. She surprisingly doesn’t get mad with me and telling me to eff off, but nastily bites that it wasn’t my child that got hurt. I point out that yelling at a 4-year-old doesn’t solve anything. She says the mother wasn’t there. I say, still, you can’t behave like that. She sweeps off and I just let it go.

Looking back, I really shouldn’t have done anything. It wasn’t my battle and I didn’t achieve anything. I interfered where it really didn’t make a difference. It wasn’t my place to take her down. But she got me so mad and I’m still not sure what got me so pissed off. A day later, I’m still pissed with her. She’s mad and I think she probably did more harm to herself without my help anyway. Sadly, judging from the accent, she’s probably either Singaporean or Malaysian. Given how uptight she was, I’d say the former.

She did get me thinking though. How would I have handled it? If my child got hurt? Every parent has to deal with this some time. I know I’d want to teach my children to stand up for themselves, but I also want them to know that violence isn’t the way. I want to teach them it’s okay to walk away, to not play with someone who isn’t being nice, but I don’t want them to be pushovers either. So what would I do? I know what I wouldn’t do – act like the stark raving lunatic of a mother there, but what would you do? 

となりのトトロ

In this house, we love Totoro. Sara’s hoping to find one in our little postage stamp of a garden. I’m not sure how, seeing that they live in big camphor trees. Still, nothing like a hopeful child.

Sara loves the movie, which is funny since (a) she’s never followed an entire movie before (she watches things of Barney-length); (b) it’s in Japanese and she doesn’t read English subs. Still, she loves Totoro. As I do too – this is really a lovely, simple and happy film. Miyazaki at his best. I’m not a fan of all his work, but this one really works in its child-like simplicity and timelessness.

My neighbour Totoro

Six months on

My head still looks like a kiwi fruit. My hair is growing, albeit slowly, but Papa’s talking about keeping me shaven for a while. Because I have the nice round head Papa never had, and Papa has a bad case of head-shape envy.

I haven’t flipped. Not because I cannot, because I assure you, I can. But because it’s easier to yell when I don’t like being on my tummy or on my back. And Mommy, the sucker she is, always picks me up when I yell. Yeah, it says in all the books that babies shouldn’t be carried all the time, but Mommy’s clearly forgotten that and I clearly am taking advantage. But I’m round and cute and smiley and Mommy’s the sucker.

I love my cheh cheh. She beats everyone else hands down. If she had milk to offer me, she’d be GOD. I just wish she treated me a little better. You know, quit poking me, quit hitting me and yeah, stop with the kicking.

Life’s pretty good, it is.