My first trip to India and I was going to the Taj Mahal for a day. We stopped at the state border of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Apparently everyone stops there and being an obvious foreigner I attracted the usual swarm of beggers and merchants, but here I also attracted animal handlers. First a guy with cobras which didn’t bother me so much, but then a guy with a bear. They had put a huge metal ring in the bear’s nose and had a rope tied to it. It must have been done poorly as the bear’s snout was badly disfigured, and the guy made the bear do tricks by pulling on the rope, I couldn’t watch, the bear was obviously in pain. I felt so sorry for it. I was sitting in the back seat of the car and just looked away, refusing to look, even when the guy was knocking on the window asking for money. I wasn’t going to reward him for the mistreatment of such a magnificant animal. IIRC, it was a Sun Bear. It was mostly black with a white cresent on its chest. Anyway, that disgusted me something aweful. The memory still pains me even though this happened more than ten yeas ago.
Have been back to India countless times since, never saw a bear again, but I have seen my fair share of things that would be considered digusting and disgraceful, but you sort of become blind to it. Isn’t it odd?
As for beatings, I remember an incident in Tokyo at a restaurant. This guy was sitting with two women at a table near ours. I was guessing it was wife and mother in law. Anyway, the women were nagging him pretty bad. He took this for about an hour after which he finally stood up and yelled for them to shut up, then started walking towards the door. The women followed him and started pulling him back. He just turned around and wham first he punched the younger woman (wife?) in the face who just went down, then he punched the older woman (mother in law?) in the face and she went down, then he turned around again and calmly walked out the door. There was blood gushing from the nose of the younger woman and a bloody mouth on the older women, with actual teeth on the floor. It happened so fast there was no time to react, and needless to say all eyes were on them. I jumped up and helped the women off the floor, and once they had recovered a bit, they started bowing and profusely apologizing to everyone in the restaurant for the disturbance. Personally I would never punch a woman, no matter how much she nags or even if she hits me, I wouldn’t hit back. So, I wouldn’t defend the guys actions, but it felt to me that the nagging he was getting, that we witnessed, may have been going on for some time, maybe even months or years. Who knows? I guess he had finally had enough.
My little cousin hauled off and slapped his mom in the face once. While she sat there and sobbed quietly into her hands, he ran in circles, cheering and yelling.
The thing is, the really really sad thing is, while the family lived with us (they were trying to come over from India) it was clear the boy was in desperate need and WANT of discipline. I’m not a parent but it’s quite clear to me that one of the chief reasons kids act out is to test their independence and still feel safe, i.e., mom is going to stop them/catch them after so far and not let them go any further. They’re just testing their boundaries. When they have no boundaries, they grow fearful and act out even more.
I was only a few years older than this kid (maybe he was six and I was 12?) but he listened to me, and I yelled at him when he needed it, and was probably a little rough with him now and then (hey, I was barely out of childhood.) But whenever his dad tried to discipline him his mom would jump in saying “Oh, you beat him black and blue, he’s covered with bruises, he’s just being a kid”…
which of course, leads to being slapped in the face by your own child.
Huh. I would argue that leaving any creature out in the cold all day long - and I’m sorry, but freezing weather IS cold - is cruelty. I mean, sure, it depends on the dog, but even my Samoyed doggie wanted to eventually come in and curl up by the heater. Dogs are creatures of comfort, too, and I’d never leave a dog out all day in freezing weather.
On our first day in China, we decided to walk around for a while before we went to bed, hoping to get our bodies on a correct sleep schedule. So we looked around a bit, and on our way back we saw a boy peeing into the gutter. It bothered me a whole lot less than my wife and kiddo, who were wearing sandals. From then on, it was close-toed shoes.
When I worked in retail I’d go take my lunch break in my car so I could read and have a bit of peace and quiet. One day I was in the McD’s lot, and since it was a nice day I had my window down. Woman in the minivan next to me hauls her toddler girl out of the car, pulls her pants down and picks her up in such a way that she’s in a seated position, and tells her to pee. Kid pees a lake about 2 ft from my open window…
Actually, it did make me cry. I am at work and had to leave my desk and go into the bathroom so my colleagues wouldn’t see a 43 yo professional male sobbing at his desk.
That is one of the saddest things I have read in a long time.
**Dougie **M. did you really revive this just to tell us about some teenagers who didn’t pay their full bus fare?
In light of some of the other posts here … jeez, if that’s really the most disgraceful thing you’ve ever seen, I’d happily trade with you.
Um, why? What was his issue with hula dancing? Did he know he would have to pay for those books?
For me, it was something somebody else thought was a disgrace. Back when I waitressed, a couple came in with their severely disabled daughter, who sat in a wheelchair. Her parents ordered things for themselves that they knew she would also like, and fed her off their plates. The issue was with an elderly couple at the next table who kept saying things like, “That is sickening. That is disgraceful. People like that used to be put away.” I wanted to say, “She isn’t hurting you. If you don’t like it, YOU leave.”
I guess you would have to be there. And, as I noted, the driver had apparently dealt with these punks time and time again before yesterday. He reached his limit. He called for the police as a last resort.
