She was running late for her appointment. That infernal Starbucks barista had given her a soya milk latte instead of a skinny latte. The nerve! And she had, of course, misspelt her name, so she demanded a new cup to take it away in. Worst of all, they didn’t even include that purple plastic bit over the lid to prevent spillage. So half of her latte had dribbled out in her haste to get to the void deck.
She hated volunteering. Honestly, she was just there so that she could gaze up on her fellow volunteers, especially that cute one with the slight lisp. She was wasting her precious Saturday on some sort of silly carnival in a void deck for, what, 20 preschoolers? They came from underprivileged homes, they were often from broken families, yada yada yada. She was there to impress her fellow volunteers and get some volunteering experience on her resume, not to play with little pests.
But, as the universe would have it, she was assigned a little boy. A little boy who couldn’t English. She rolled her eyes as the boy literally ran circles around her in a fit of hyperactivity. She grabbed him and ushered him to the next activity. She could see the hate in his eyes as he spewed an unintelligible phrase at her. Non-English speaking plebeian, she thought.
She let him go, and for a minute he paid attention to the activity. But just as she was captioning her Instagram photo of this carnival (“Helping out poor little ki”), he ran away. His precious little attention span had been ripped away by a colourful playground that caught his eye, and again she had to grab him and carry the irritating little tyke back to the activity. Once more, he spewed another phrase at her. She didn’t know if it was the same, but she didn’t care. He didn’t speak English at 5, so he wouldn’t go far in life.
She set him down and forcibly turned his head to the teacher. He struggled, but she wouldn’t let go, and eventually he calmed down and paid attention. Finally, she could go back to finishing her caption and hashtagging her photos and showing the world what a saint she was.
And then en route to the next activity, his ever roving eye caught sight of a large, red bin. A bin for burning incense, paper money, and all manner of offerings to the dead. Smoke curled out of the bin of respect, and he ran towards it. He wanted to grab the smoke, touch the bin, and play with whatever was being offered to the dead. She shrieked and almost dropped her phone, and dashed forward to pull him back.
The pipsqueak actually turned around and hit her. It didn’t hurt, not physically, but inside she was crushed. She was stopping the stupid little thing from burning himself on a bin. Why couldn’t he see that? Again that unintelligible phrase flew forth at her, and this time a social worker heard it. The look of horror on the social worker’s face spoke volumes, even as she came towards the boy to counsel him in his own language. He had said something terrible, something that no 5-year-old should even hear or know or say, and she felt her spirit plummet.
What was the point of all this volunteering?
She checked herself from those thoughts, and focused on her objective. A good resume. The chance to see her lisping crush. And to show her acquaintances and friends that she was such a socially responsible woman. Yes. Those were her objectives. To hell if this helped the boy or not. She didn’t care.
It was time for the last activity. The children had to write down their wish on a piece of paper, and it would all be pinned up on a tree, a wishing tree. The tiny moron, of course, didn’t know any English, but at least he understood the activity. The speaker had delivered the instructions in all languages, so there was no chance for confusion.
She sighed, and then Googled images to show him. A toy? Was he going to wish for a toy? No. McDonalds? A book? A bicycle? The boy shook his head. She was exasperated. The creature was so difficult to please.
He grasped the pen, and shakily scrawled out an “I.” She offered to help write the rest, but he shook his head, determined to finish it himself. Then he drew a “B.” This was taking forever. But he had only one letter left, and he triumphantly etched out a “U.”
She didn’t care what it meant, but she nodded and hastily pinned it up for him. He watched her, then tugged at her dress. She smiled – finally, there was some gratitude – and out of curiosity, decided to Google Translate what he had written.
Then she knelt down, and hugged him tight.
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