Relax your neck, and slump your head forward. No, really let it go. Your chin should touch the middle of your chest. If you want to take it a little further, walk around a bit like that. If not, just imagine spending the rest of your days like this.
Quite a long time ago, I saw her while on my way to work. A tiny, emaciated thing of sixty-five, seventy, maybe more. Who knows. She was dressed simply. Plain, worn but not shabby. And she was walking towards me, from the direction of the train station, just like that, looking straight at the ground and a little to the left.
I wondered what had her so sad. Because she did look sad, in a rather permanent sort of way. Like she'd watched a kitten die painfully, and someone suddenly sprayed fixative on her face. She walked softly, tending to weave a little to the left like a rogue supermarket cart. She would correct her step frequently for that. Something was incongruous, though. I slowed slightly.
Then, using the hand that was not clutching a plastic bag, she pushed up on her chin to raise her head, so she could see where she was going. Having checked, and likely written the next ten metres into her mind, her arm dropped to her side. And her head flopped once again against her chest.
Who she was, where she was going and what happened to her, I don't know. I saw her a few more times, but haven't in the past...year? I'm not even sure if I should wish that she's doing alright.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, brutal governmental crackdowns. I could care less. Let the papers report it, and the internet lookatmes pour forth their grief for all to see. I'm quite happy to give my ten or twenty to a worthy cause, when asked. But my emotionz cannot go out to people I don't know, half a world away.
They did go out to her. I remember her soft, stoic shuffle still. "Well, what can I do about it? Gotta keep on truckin." it seemed to say. I'm mostly alone, but that's by choice. If she didn't want to be, I can but hope that she didn't have to be.
But yes, I've recently sat in the chair of someone who, having seen what I did, would probably say,
"It's her own damned fault, you know."
How so?
"Everyone knows about Osteoporosis, and how women need to look after their calcium intake when they get older. She has no excuse."
She might be illiterate, and one of the few remaining that came from China on a boat, looking for a better life. She might have spent her life raising children left behind by a gambling drug addict of a husband who left her for a woman with a pretty face and nice tits.
"Well, why wouldn't she drink milk anyway? It's great for calcium, not to mention all the other benefits that come with it. She was just asking for it."
She's lactose intolerant. She doesn't know that's what it's called, but on the rare times she did drink milk, she had explosive diarrhoea in the fields for a week. It doesn't even take cognitive thought to come to the conclusion that it's bad for her.
"Her fault for being lactose intolerant. She still could have taken calcium supplements and the like. Or gone to a doctor. You should always see a doctor when you're not feeling well. I always see a doctor when I'm not feeling well."
Her children left her, one by one. They can't call her because she doesn't have a phone. And they don't visit her at all. What little money she makes goes to her evening meal of vegetables and rice. Sometimes she feels extravagant and buys a bottle of fermented bean curd. It usually lasts her a month.
"With a diet like that, it's no wonder she's in such bad shape. Well, enough. I can't help it that no one takes my advice. I mean, look at my life. If everyone listened to me, the world would be so much better. I'm going home to my highschool sweetheart banker husband and two and a half children. Bye."
And people call me self-righteous leh. Leh.
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