Friday, October 26, 2007
Of Mice and Men
As a young boy I once read a story of a man with normal IQ but the heart of a villian making use of a dim-witted mentally impaired man with the heart of an angel to commit a crime. The conclusion was that the guy with the normal IQ became changed while having to look after his accomplice because he couldn't fend for himself. It's a nice story. Kids nowadays don't have much nice stories to read.I keep bumping into this old man on my way to school in the mornings. My heart stirs every time I see him. He has sun-beaten, weathered complexion and half his scalp is shiny, and the other half is crowned with fine whitish hair. From one side it looks like a Mohawk. His face sinks in where it shouldn't in certain places and protrudes where it shouldn't in others. I always see him at work with his bicycle. Wraps cardboard strips around the wheel rim of the back tyre. It always draws my curiosity because I wonder why his front tyre looks perfectly fine but the back would have to be so heavily modified. I didn't manage to catch a good picture of him cos I kinda took it in secret. In that same area where he sits, the stray cats have called it their home. He shares that home with them.
I can't help but wonder what could have led to the circumstances he is in today. He could have been anything from a high flyer to a coolie; I'd never know. He is now stuck in a world of unwrapping and wrapping the back tyre of his bicycle. Where is his family? I once caught him biting at the cardboard he uses. Does he eat them too? This old man is really a mystery and might remain so for me.
In any case he has no idea how just by meeting him and watching him live his life made me rethink my life principles. Like the guy in the story book my heart is slowly being changed just by these strange encounters. I don't think that once I get 'there', means I get 'there' and that's it. No more tears. Not so. Life isn't over until God says it's over.
Mantou at 11:32 PM