Pa-Mean

The following incidents happened in the mid-90s.

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One day I was at the left-most lane near the intersection, waiting for the traffic light to turn green. A boy of about 7 years old, a street urchin, approached my side of the car. He was holding a McDonald’s cup, coins clicking inside it. He raised the cup towards me, with matching facial expression of pure mendicant pleading.

I just ignored him.

Then he did something which, at that time, to me, was a pet peeve of biblical proportions. As in, Old Testament biblical proportions. He placed his dirty, oily face onto my window, creating a smudgy abstract impression on the clear glass.

Something between my ears snapped.

I first checked the light; it had just turned green. I quickly rolled down my window and reached for his cup, as if I was about to drop a coin in. He too was looking at the light and at the vehicles in front of me that were already starting to move. Perfect! I took the cup from his hands as I moved my car forward. I could see his shocked expression from my side mirror.

At the edge of the intersection, as I turned my car to the left I dropped his cup, scattering the coins on the pavement. Then I zoomed away.

* * * * *

Another time I got into my car that was parked near McDonald’s in Katipunan. I had in my hand a plastic cup marked “Hi-C” since I ordered orange juice. Just as I started the engine, another child mendicant approached me. He raised his hand in the familiar gesture of begging. I shook my open hand in a gesture of “I have nothing to give to you”.

He then pointed at my cup and said, “Sir, yung Coke na lang.” “Hindi ito Coke,” I answered back. “Yung Coke na lang,” he insisted. And then he did the McPet Peeve of Old Testament Biblical Proportions.

Another snap.

I leaned my head towards him, twisted off the cup cover, and slowly finished the orange juice while he watched. Then I rolled down my window and threw the cup at his feet. Then I drove off.

The whole time I was driving home, I kept telling myself, “Karma’s gonna get me, karma’s gonna get me. My car will break down, or I’ll get into an accident, or some truck’s gonna ram into me.” But then I got home without a scratch so I said to myself, “Mwhahaha! Evil wins again.”

* * * * *

William Shakespeare once famously wrote, “To thine own self be true”. But to do that, I need to know myself first.

In those two incidents I surprised myself just how mean I can get. But with that revelation came a resolution: It will be my choice, and solely my responsibility, if ever I act that mean again.

To this date no street urchin has incurred my wrath of Biblical proportions. For another line from Shakespeare keeps reminding me: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”