Thursday

It’s Thursday night around 7:30. I just went up to the little stand at the junction near our house to get an omelette. While I was waiting for my food, there was a bang and a commotion. Traffic stopped and everyone rushed to the roadside. Someone had been hit by a car. At first I couldn’t see anything, but then I saw a little girl (or small woman) lying lifeless on the other side of the road. They put her in the back of a pickup after a few minutes and sped off towards the hospital, but it looked to me like she was dead.

I don’t know what to say. I’m going to go back up there soon to see if I can find out what happened to her. Everything else seems pretty trivial—it’s sort of hard to post something about how my day was after seeing what looked like a dead child. She was so lifeless, like a doll or something.

I just went back to the kiosk there and the guy that runs it told me that the little girl was alive and that she and her mother had both been hit. She certainly didn’t look alive to me, but she was on the other side of the road and it was dark so hopefully she was.

It’s now Friday afternoon. I haven’t found out anything about what happened last night and I don’t know if I ever will, due to the difficulty of getting details here. I don’t see any point in not posting what I had already written but it definitely does seem trivial. Here it is anyways:

Here’s an ethical dilemma: if a crazy bum spits food in your face while you’re walking down the street, are you allowed to punch him?

Sounds ridiculous, but it happened to me today. Out of nowhere, some guy stepped in front of me and spat in my face. Not too sure what he was eating, but it could have been worse. Nonetheless, I was pissed. The guy looked pretty normal so I followed him yelling niceties at him and I also shoved him. Then someone asked me what had happened and told me that the guy was clearly crazy, which I realized was the case, so I just let it go. Makes sense to me that he was nuts—honestly, would a sane person spit food at someone?

But it is an interesting question. My turning the other cheek means that there was no consequence for the spitter and it also means that in the future (if he has any cognitive abilities), he will likely do the same thing to someone else, as he got away with it the last time. Have I condemned another hapless obruni to suffer the same fate by my inaction

Perhaps I’m being a bit defensive/paranoid, but I am pretty sure he did it to me because I was white. There are hundreds of other people on the street who he didn’t spit at.

Anyhoo, I’ll live. I think it was just crumbs of bread anyways and I don’t think my conscience would have been too at ease if I had clocked a lunatic who was a head shorter than me. If it happens again, maybe I’ll feel differently!