Rockstar’s been recovering from an ear infection, so we’ve been letting him sleep on his own schedule – which meant not waking in time for summer camp today… Then in the afternoon, a trip to his favorite Wellcome (car-shaped shopping cart, large selection of breads and buns, fish tanks) morphed into a brief Playtown excursion because all 3 shopping center coin rides weren’t working.
I always have this impression local Hong Kong kids are super-well-behaved in general. As in, I get self-conscious if Rockstar acts up in public particularly in more local-y areas. Hongkie friends have tried to erm, adjust this view, telling me there is some serious misbehavior out there, but today was the first time I really saw it.
So there’s a bunch of ~5-7 year olds running around noisily in the “ballistics” zone, which is foam balls and air guns and footstools/ ball vessels. I pick up a plastic footstool and follow Rockstar to the upper deck. Minutes later, I feel a tap on my shoulder.
Part of the ballistics area
Politely, a boy who looks to be 5 or 6 asks me to give him the footstool Rockstar is standing on, “Jie-jie,” he addresses me, “that happens to be mine.” I’m a lot slower in Cantonese, and having not encountered this previously (we rarely come when it’s crowded with older kids), I turn in surprise and ask him why, in Cantonese (rather than shut him down by speaking English and pretending I don’t understand him). There are like, 20 vacant footstools littering the area.
“Because,” he explains patiently, “my friends say these are all mine.” Then I notice another larger child from the same playdate group trying to pelt Rockstar with foam balls. Not goodnaturedly. He’s not trying to play, he’s looking to drive Rockstar off. Bloody hell, Rockstar is a small 3.5 years, the youngest of these kids has to be 5 or 6, the one trying to pelt Rockstar looks about 8.
I glare at the fat kid with the shaven head throwing the ball, and he scowls but stops. Except the first child has decided our time’s up with the footstool, and sits about 5 feet from us, glowering. I pointedly let Rockstar finish, much to these kids’ displeasure (we were not playing anywhere near them to begin with, they just decided no one else was to play in the upper and lower decks or touch any of the umpteen footstools and buckets lying about- uh, excuse me, this is a massive playground that some of my ex colleagues once estimated cost several million HKD initial setup expense (apparently it was set up by a Mummy) – you want to own it then make it to college, come out and get a well-paying job and then you can buy up the whole bloody thing). When we finish shooting every foam ball in our area is when I get Rockstar interested in something else .
Later when we walk by, we see the bullies now in a loud argument with a dad. They’re all local and speaking in Cantonese, and I initially assume from the way the bullies are yelling at this local dad that they’re all the same party. Until I realize he’s trying to get his own son (who looks about 5 or 6) to leave the area. “If you insist on staying, Daddy can’t protect you from these kids.” There are 4 or 5 of em rounding him and his son seriously yelling about how they aren’t welcome, and –
Hang on. One of the things I hear the lone girl in the group yell at the man – Lei Gau Ngor – that means “You messed with me,” (which can be in a not-savory way) in Cantonese right? There’s a little boy who’s yelling similar, but – the girl yelling at someone’s dad. She’s a skinny little thing – she doesn’t look at all like a bully. But there she is, yelling at this freaked out dad (who is saying I didn’t Gau Lei), right along with the bully boys. In amazement, I step into the area, “Who is in charge of these children??”
At my English (and possibly because there are now two parents in the area) the bullies stop yelling at Poor Lone Dad And Son (who btw is determined to stay in the area – respect). Is it my imagination or does the little girl back off the quickest? Mr I Own All The Footstools is still scowling at me and picking up all the stools away from Rockstar and me, saying something rude about “these people” under his breath in Cantonese.
Poor Lone Dad replies, “I don’t know, but they are really… impolite,” in heavily accented English. (Uh, dude – these kids are freaking foaming at the mouth.)
We look around, but there isn’t a grownup in sight that we could possibly attribute to these feral children, not even a helper. Rockstar plays for awhile under my uneasy, watchful eye before wandering off to try something else, even as PLD’s son takes my hand and asks us to join them.
Maybe 5 mins after we leave the area, I see Poor Lone Dad getting one of the Playtown attendants. Thinking he might need help, I wave and call out to the attendant that we had the same problem with those kids. That’s when another one or two attendants join in. But Rockstar is engrossed too far away for me to walk all the way up to the group of attendants/PLD / a couple Hong Kong women who turn out to be the bullies’ mums with helpers in attendance to boot. (Where was everyone earlier?? Did all the grownups avert their eyes and inch away from the crime scene? Those kids were like the proverbial 300lb gorilla taking a giant crap on your sofa as you sat next to it pretending you didn’t smell anything).
I don’t want to leave Rockstar, because two local children near him in the new area have just gotten into a screaming fight over foam building blocks and a Chinese nanny (speaking in the accented Cantonese of a Mainlander) then hauls one off the other before comforting the one bawling underneath. In front of them, a newspaper-reading Asian dad briefly gets to his feet as the fight is broken up. He says nothing. The nanny does not look or speak to the child she has hauled off her charge. After watching them for some time til the nanny moves off with her charge, I still can’t tell if the nanny, newspaper-reading-dad and the two fighting children are together.
What is with this place today? We’ve been here on occasion, never seen all the stuff happening now.
<thinking> I am so freaking not leaving Rockstar’s side in this psycho place full of rabid kids. If they bite us we might have to see the doc about shots.
Just in case it’s something else, I spritz Rockstar’s hands with Mucky Pups sanitizer foam yet again.
So when we finally approach PLD, sitting quietly on a bench with his son (who looks a lot less shaken than he does) I ask, in broken Cantonese, if he needs me to back up his story about the bullies.
Weakly, he waves a hand, “I’ve finished. I had to call that attendant. They threw a footstool at my son so I yelled at them real loud. So then they threw a footstool at me. The attendants got their mums who were sitting in the cafe.” Uh, fortunately the mums believed you right? I mean, what if all the grownups didn’t believe you (I’m thinking especially the skinny little girl.)
“If they didn’t believe me they might even call the police. But it’s all recorded on the security cameras, I would have asked them to play back the tape. One of the mums dragged her children off and quickly left.”
Poor Lone Dad looked really frazzled. Shortly after the bullies left, he sank onto one of the benches for a bit, then I thought they’d left. Except his son appeared out of nowhere and happily invited himself to join Rockstar and me, so they played for a bit, the older boy shooting hoops, Rockstar scoring goals.
Guess that’s a reminder kids can be a lot hardier to bullying than we give them credit for, but well of course we don’t – we’re parents, after all… Worrying is like a standard job description. But now I know to seek out security cameras… Security’s a good word. And… is it possible these kids are meaner to dads? 😀
Reading your post about these children bullies, I am reminded of the story – “Lord of the Flies”. Why didn’t the attendants do something about these children earlier as obviously these children are driving other children (business) away.
Lord of the Flies that’s a good one!! Agree about the doing something about these children, in the past they are quite strict, you can’t even take the balls out of the ball area bla bla… So I was very surprised they allowed this to go on so long, maybe the place was just too crowded
Many local HK people don’t want to get involved with anything that doesn’t directly involve themselves. They think of it as being too troublesome and not worth the effort and so close/ avert their eyes and pretend it’s not happening, even at the detriment of someone else. Of course, this is not true for all HK people.
The staff probably didn’t do anything sooner cos stepping in sooner could cost them their jobs or being reprimanded loudly & in public by embarrassed-but-my-child-didn’t-do-anything-wrong parent of the bullies and then by their boss because you can certainly guarantee such parents will then complain loudly to the boss. And selfish behaviour of the parents meant that the bullies were free to harrass others whilst they were elsewhere yakking crap.
I wonder if both the stool-throwing child & his mother apologized for being such a bully but I doubt this. Personally, I’d have called the parent of the bully out for being such a bad parent and that it was HER job to teach her child right from wrong. Would she have been ok if the situation had been reversed and her child and herself had been on the receiving end of a flying stool?
Sorry for the rant but bullying and uneducated and undisciplined children as well as their lazy parents make me livid!
Hey CA, you’re back from traveling? Hi! Yeah you’re probably right the attendants likely didn’t say anything sooner because they were more likely to get burned trying to “do the right thing…” I think the only way to ensure they have more incentive (which they deserve) to do the right thing is if you use your own parent card to speak up if you see an injustice…
Daily Bread cited an unrelated example of someone who chose not to care or say anything, in the face of something obviously wrong being done – until the day they HAD to care because the perpetual wrong then came all the way around and cost THEM dearly…