When I was 14, I had one of the most traumatic events of my life when I saw this filthy, beastly, homeless bum do something too horrifying for me to cope with.
For 15 years, I hated homeless bums. This occasionally got awkward when I'd be arguing my liberal-left rhetoric. I honestly didn't / couldn't remember why I hated homeless bums so much - I just knew they disgusted me. If anyone had pressed, I don't know what I'd have done. Probably I'd be all Toddler like "I JUST HATE THEIR STINKING LAZY SHIT OKAY!?"
I wouldn't have been able to make a rational argument.
I suppressed the memory of the incident to cope.
I retained the horror and hatred. If you can't see how this is the brilliance of the human mind at work...the human mind is a fascinating thing.
When I was 29, and revisiting all my fears and phobias in the months that followed my becoming sane; I remembered the incident with the homeless bum. I was standing in the mall and I was horrified even before the bum came along. There was a pigeon with a broken wing and it was flapping and trying to fly and it was so obviously in miserable pain. I was watching it frozen in horror.
Hundreds of people were walking past, quickly looking the other way. Blocking their kids' eyes from watching it. Looking down at their feet. Expressing sympathy. One little girl was crying. I might have been, for all I know. It was a truly horrible sight. But nothing could have prepared me for the horror that came next.
A homeless man cursing the suits that were briskly walking past, and cursing the people who had stood there (like I was) watching it in horror, walked up to the bird, picked it up in two hands and snapped it's neck. The little girl screamed. I might have, but I was too horrified to run, so I don't think I would have been.
The bum unceremoniously dumped the dead bird in a bin and cursed at the people a bit more before walking off. I didn't understand how anyone could be so insane. For 15 years I hated homeless bums, because I didn't understand why he did what he did and why he swore at those expressing sympathy.
It might have been the most humane thing I've ever seen in my life.
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