The Day I Hurt a Child
It was in the summer of 2005, I was working at a day camp. Before I go on, I would like to mention that this is perhaps the only regret I have from my pre-philosophy life. I won’t mince my words: I did a very bad job. I didn’t know how to take care of kids, the only thing I knew about it was my family and the other people working at the day camp urging me to have ‘authority’ on them. So I was basically trying to do that, half-heartedly, and since children can sense insincerity a mile away, they obviously didn’t buy it and thus I failed miserably. Although in retrospect, I am pretty glad I failed at being authoritarian.
Anyway, there were two sisters aged around 5 and 8 who really disliked me (and rightly so). Let’s call them Maddy and Fanny. One day, they were fighting - and I mean physically, with punches and kicks and hair pulling and everything. So I separated them, and Fanny - the eldest of the two - started hitting me.
At that moment, I lost it. I grabbed her arm and squeezed it for about 3 seconds. When she started screaming in pain, I realized what I was doing and released her.
I felt horrible for the rest of the week and I still feel bad when I think about it. I can’t remember if I apologized to Fanny afterwards - probably not. If I ever were to see her again, I sure would.
Now, even though I wish with all my heart I didn’t do what I did, you can’t change the past. You can only learn from it. So here are two valuable lessons this event taught me:
- My dad used to do the same arm-squeezing thing to me if I got angry at him, especially in public places, when I was around Fanny’s age. I felt dirty when I realized that. A reminder, if I ever needed one, that you re-enact what you don’t process.
- What I did was wrong, but it’s pretty damn tame compared to what some parents do to their kids. If causing pain to a little girl for a few seconds made me feel this bad, for this long, I can only imagine the living hell a real child abuser must be experiencing. Not to sympathize with them at all - but it can help calm down any wish of vengeance one might have towards these people. Trust me, nothing you can do can be worse than what they’re doing to themselves.
