My cousin Erica has encouraged me to write more stories online. She’s right … my busyness and disinterest lately have turned this blog into a blahg. Hopefully this choice morsel will help.

A couple of days ago, I was going to the post office to mail two packages back to America (a four-hour ordeal that deserves its own story). I carried one of the packages to the front gate of my school, returning a couple of minutes later to retrieve the second package. When I entered my apartment through the door that I had left ajar, however, I heard someone moving in my bedroom.

Now in America, I would have been pretty cautious and “smart” in this situation. In China, however, I’ve become pretty bold … I’m generally bigger, stronger, and louder than everyone else, so I’m rarely afraid of confrontations. Plus, people simply don’t have guns. So I immediately walked toward my bedroom to take care of the problem.

As I entered my office, I saw a little girl, about 6 or 7 years old, pulling up her shorts and underwear. Ok … weird. I looked at her face to try to gauge what was happening, and I saw that she was a little surprised, but not scared at all … in fact, she was smiling pretty broadly, like she was proud of herself.

Then I looked down and saw the puddle.

Yeah … this random little girl was grinning because she had just had peed on the floor in the middle of my office! I was pretty helpless … I couldn’t ask her any questions or talk to her about it or anything. So I took her hand and said, “wo men zo” (let’s go), walking her outside towards the front gate of the school, where I was going to try to explain to the guards what had happened and find out where she belonged.

During our walk, I noticed that her demeanor was calm … she still wasn’t frightened at all, as most children would be when “caught” like that, especially by a foreigner. She just looked around and smiled. In a way, her behavior actually reminded me the children with autism who I worked with in college.

As I tried to empathize with her bizarre behavior, we rounded a corner and ran into a man who I could immediately tell was her father. He asked her where she had been (she didn’t answer) then thanked me profusely. And that was that. All I could do was walk home and continue my day, as if nothing had ever happened.

At least I hadn’t yet given away my mop. Or my bleach.

Posted to webeldotnet on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 2:16 am EST in Stories & Home & China & Humor (comment feed). If you refer to this post on your blog, please trackback. Thanks!