Common Decency

So today I went to Yonghe to see my 90 (give or take a couple years) year old grandmother, who's been very ill with something and has been vomiting at night. Seeing her I could see her frailty immediately as her skin looked sallow and she is visibly slimmer from just a few weeks prior.

Anyways, what spurred me to pen this new post after such a long hiatus is what happened as we were heading downstairs to grab lunch. I was walking behind my grandma, who was already weakened and walking slowly due to her condition so we decided to take the elevator. Well, as the doors opened my grandma walked in but then the doors suddenly closed on her right as she took a step in, even though a young girl was inside and was clearly pushing the open button. At first I thought the old lift must be broken since the girl was repeatedly pushing the open button with vigor. Then when I tried to walk in after my grandma (while holding the two doors open) it shut on me as well. So then I felt something was fishy and alas I saw that the young girl was actually pressing the "Close" button which was clearly stated in English. Now you may say she didn't know English but open and close are words that every child in Taiwan comprehends since English is a required and heavily stressed subject. Furthermore, anyone could see by the actions of the lift that it was indeed CLOSING. At this point I was furious. The intense heat and the walk over to my grandma's place had already set the stage for my anger and then this extremely rude gesture just set me off.

In Chinese, I asked the girl, "What do you think you are doing?! Can't you see my grandma is trying to get on the elevator? Don't you have any manners at all? You should be ashamed of yourself. Apologize to my grandmother right this instant!"

But to my surprise the girl just stared ahead like a retard (even her mouth was slightly agape) and kept pressing the "Close" button! I just stood there watching her completely shocked at her response. Before I could recover she bolted out and down the street.

When I asked my grandma why she let the spoiled brat off so easily she just said, "Well, she's just a spoiled Taiwanese kid." That certainly is no excuse in my book. I was quite close to slapping that kid some manners. Her only excuse would be that she was actually retarded or autistic and wasn't sure what she was doing. While she looked somewhat slow and could possibly be special ed, I still think she was just an extremely rude kid with absentee parents.

Well, this really bothered me because my grandma is really old and frail and I can't be there always to look after her as she lives alone. If it happened to me I probably wouldn't even think that much about it besides that she is a juvenile delinquent but since she purposely did it to my grandmother for her own twisted amusement-to me that constitutes as a cruel crime that deserves retribution.

This incident just showed me that you really cannot count on the common decency of strangers. If a sick, elderly woman doesn't inspire compassion or sympathy in a human being that I don't know what will.