A Quick One While She's Away
I absolutely have to go to bed (must get up early to try and patch things up with the fambly) but I thought I'd tell this quick story before I forget it.
I've started exercising again (just started) and I remembered Suwon James telling me about how he went running on the SungKyungKwan U track. I had trouble finding it the first time, but I managed to locate it the last time out.
When I went there this Thursday, around lunch time, it was abandoned. The sun was out, it was hot, a perfect training environment. So I do my first lap. As I start my second lap, I almost trip over a small child, clothed in some sort of cloth diaper, a t-shirt, and a gigantic sun visor. It is crying the soulful, plaintive, timeless cry of children - an echo of the primordial pain of birth, life and eventual death. This kid is not holding back - it is getting a real workout, what with the bellowing after her..."omma" and walking at child-full-speed. But where is Omoni?
The answer is she is on the track, about 200 m in front of me, and power walking away from her helpless progeny. I catch up to her and slow down enough to try and gauge the mental state of a mom who just leaves her toddler to wander around an olympic size running oval. She is oblivious to me, so I do a mental shrug, lap the bawling child, and then lap mom again. At this point the wee one has lost sight of her mom completely and is wandering in the wrong direction, but the crying has not subsided in volume. Tough break kid - I guess this is how they make em tough in preparation for army service.
After a few more laps the whole scene became too pathetic for me -I daydreamed for a while about how quickly I'd get deported if I took matters into my own hands and then I just left. It was time to get ready for work anyway.
I've started exercising again (just started) and I remembered Suwon James telling me about how he went running on the SungKyungKwan U track. I had trouble finding it the first time, but I managed to locate it the last time out.
When I went there this Thursday, around lunch time, it was abandoned. The sun was out, it was hot, a perfect training environment. So I do my first lap. As I start my second lap, I almost trip over a small child, clothed in some sort of cloth diaper, a t-shirt, and a gigantic sun visor. It is crying the soulful, plaintive, timeless cry of children - an echo of the primordial pain of birth, life and eventual death. This kid is not holding back - it is getting a real workout, what with the bellowing after her..."omma" and walking at child-full-speed. But where is Omoni?
The answer is she is on the track, about 200 m in front of me, and power walking away from her helpless progeny. I catch up to her and slow down enough to try and gauge the mental state of a mom who just leaves her toddler to wander around an olympic size running oval. She is oblivious to me, so I do a mental shrug, lap the bawling child, and then lap mom again. At this point the wee one has lost sight of her mom completely and is wandering in the wrong direction, but the crying has not subsided in volume. Tough break kid - I guess this is how they make em tough in preparation for army service.
After a few more laps the whole scene became too pathetic for me -I daydreamed for a while about how quickly I'd get deported if I took matters into my own hands and then I just left. It was time to get ready for work anyway.
posted by Vivec at 2:55 a.m.
1 Comments:
I am thrilled that this blog has gotten enough attention to become a target for the spammers, but I will take the time to delete all commercial posts - so don't bother.
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