When I woke up this morning I was a bit solemn ah there was a reason - today was my last day of leave, my little one’s second last day of holidays as well. Better make good use of it I thought. So off we went bright and early - at 2.00 pm (well 2.00 pm is quite early on a holiday after brunch) to a children’s activity centre. The place was not as crowded as I expected on a school holiday. My little one ran off to play as I settled down on a chair to spend the next couple of hours to dig my head in to a book. After an hour or so I thought it would be good to go outside and see the activities that they had - this was the first time I had been to the outdoor area of the centre.
One of the activities in the outdoor area was sifting for gold from a water canal with stones and mud in it. If you found 5 gold stones you could win a medallion. As I stood watching the children dig for gold, I noticed an elderly gentleman with his grand daughter sifting for gold. In an instant I saw him slip his foot and lose his grip, but luckily he caught hold of the wood railing and was alright. My instant reaction was to go and check on him if he fell down, but when I realised that he was alright back on his foot I just looked away as if nothing has happened. The underlying thought behind this reaction was that I feel terribly embarrassed if I fall down in public. Can’t remember when I started feeling like this. Did anyone laugh at me when I was little when I fell down? I am all to help someone who has hurt themselves but if they are ok, my subconscious springs in to action and I just ignore the whole thing. Telling of this I think I always have one fall a year mostly during winter and I just pray that it is at someplace and sometime that nobody is around as the first thing that I do after getting up is to look around to see if anybody saw me fall. I don’t know how other people react to a person falling down? What would you do?
