“Let me go! I’m not going anywhere with you!” I heard a child cry out on my way home from work. I was in my thoughts so I didn’t hear anything, but this cry brought me back to reality and my feet carried me toward the sounds. The fact is that I am a father myself, I have two daughters, so I react quickly and irrevocably to a child’s cry. Before I knew it, I was standing next to a little girl who was screaming and crying.
In a moment, I was tearing the hand of a thirty-year-old man from a little girl of about 6 years old. I wasn’t even thinking about anything but the horrific pictures and news I had read and seen earlier.
– “Why are you touching her? Either you go away or I’ll call the police!” I shouted at the stranger, hiding the girl behind my back.
– “What are you doing? I’m her father and I’ll call the police on you!” he shouted back.
Then I turned to the girl, sat down and asked if he was really her father.
– No, I don’t know him! He wanted to steal me!” the girl shouted with tears in her eyes, and I had no doubt that it was true.
At that moment, all the boxing lessons came back to me and in a moment, I put the man on the ground head down and cuffed his hands behind his back. At that moment, I noticed that the girl’s look changed. She stopped crying and started watching with interest.
– “Stop it! I’ll explain everything now!” the man began to call out to me, but I didn’t even want to hear anything.
– Why do I need your explanations? The police will be here soon and you will tell them your tales!” I said, and then turned to the girl and began to reassure her that she would soon return to her mother and she would protect her, while I was looking for my phone.
The man realized that there was no point in talking to me, so he turned to the girl again: “Daddy is already in pain. Ask your uncle to let go of his hands!”
Then the girl turned to me and said softly: “Get off my dad, he says he’s hurt!”
– “Dad?” I said, unable to hide my surprise, and then got up and helped the man up.
Then he began to explain to me that two years ago he married her mother and became her stepfather. They have a good relationship, but the girl is very capricious. And today he was in a hurry for an important meeting at the office, and she started to get capricious. He had to take her to a dance before the meeting, so he had to drag her to the car, and she started screaming, and then I was the hero…
The girl just said once again that she wasn’t going to the dance, and her stepfather held his head and looked at his watch. On the one hand, I immediately felt ashamed of my husband for the joust I had staged, but I am sure that he would have done the same in my place, because what I saw was not an example of “good family conversation” – not the best.
Of course, you can also write that you should have stayed out of other people’s “family affairs,” but the next time it could be terrible news on TV. So I’d rather be embarrassed once again than pass by.
In my opinion, each of us should be indifferent and run headlong to someone’s cry and only then find out if someone really needed help!
