Short Story Moral – When I Met a Thief…
When I Met a Thief…
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One evening, after having martial arts lesson, I was walking home. The location of lessons was half an hour’s walking away from my home. I love to walk alone along the bustling streets, feeling the boisterous air of a city.
If someone asks me, “Why do you want to learn Taekwondo?” I will reply “I like Taekwondo because it is for strengthening my body and health.”
It was not the truth. When I was still a small boy, I was mocked, teased or made fun of by my primary school classmate, Stevenson.
“Look. What is the four-eye small guy doing over there?”
“Why doesn’t this geek utter a word?”
“Being a four-eye small guy has an advantage: Always come first in a queue!”
In fact those words might not be malicious, just some random friendly chaffs, but I didn’t like him. I felt insulted. Though I had tried to talk to him asking him to stop his disturbing behaviour, what I said seemed to had fallen on deaf ears. I started to seethed and hatred germinated.
I remembered I had tussles with him, not real fights really. And often my opponent gained the upper hand, despite most of the conflicts were often curbed by overpowering intimidations that made me backed off timidly. I remembered I even hurt myself once while I was trying to push Stevenson away, he dodged and turned sideward and my force had me fallen on the ground. I didn’t tell this to my parents lest they would worry.
One day, my mother proposed that I learned Taekwondo to get stronger. At that time, I thought:
“I must master Taekwondo well so that I can beat him and have him beg for mercy!”
This happened five years ago. Stevenson and I went to different secondary schools, so my aim was not fulfilled. I had also stopped learning Taekwondo for a period of time, until a year ago I took it up again. Reasons? I think…. is for strengthening my body and health!
I came back to reality from my recall when I suddenly heard a loud cry saying “Stop!”. I looked up and saw two policemen running after a man on the other side of the street. A thought immediately sprung up: There was a thief running away! I saw the thief seemed to be running very fast, and the distance of outrunning seemed to get larger. There were chaos, and pedestrians were fleeing to avoid trouble. The thief risked bolting through the road with vehicles went past towards the sidewalk which I was standing, and scurried across a conjunction ahead of me, then took a turn to a narrow alley. At that moment, without hesitation, I dashed towards the direction of the chase.
It looked as if I was under the urge of subconsciousness. I was approaching the scene, nearer and nearer. Out of a sudden, the man took a turn and was heading the direction of me.
I was startled, to quite a large extent, to be frank. It happened in such a flash. I was facing him, directly. The truth was that I was so frightened that I didn’t look into the face of him. I squared up against the thief. I collected my sight, until then did I realize why the thief turned back. He, out of panic, chose a wrong path – a dead end. I thought that he was planning to hide himself somewhere but unexpectedly being chased by me.
I couldn’t imagine that he would turn round, running amuck towards me. I was taken aback without a chance to fight back. When he saw the policemen behind me arriving at the scene, he drew a cutter out of his trousers pocket and had my neck close to knife edge. I became a hostage.
He ordered the policemen “Back off now! Stay away or I will kill the boy!”
My mind went blank, with a feeling “I was too foolhardy! I just don’t think about the consequences! ”
He used me as a human shield and forced those two policemen to stay still in the alley as he prepared to move away from the dangerous scene with me.
I thought “I must fight back. I couldn’t imagine how the thief would do to me afterwards. I need to be calm, and grasp my chance.”.
When we lumbered past the two policemen, I retaliated. I knelt down, turned around and pummelled at his groin. Pow! The man’s face turned pale and green and the cutter dropped to the ground. He squatted with incessant cries of pain. The two policemen subdued him immediately, with one of them took the man away afterwards.
I sat on the ground. The previous boldness had vanished. Now my feet had no strength at all.
The present policeman asked me “Do you have any tissue?”
I was like a puppet following instructions, took out a packet of tissues out from my pocket in my trousers and handed to him. He took one tissue and proffered to me, saying “Take a wipe on your face.”
I touched my face, realizing that it was full of tears and the unconscious streaming down of tears.
The policeman gently spoke to me “Don’t feel shame. Feeling frightened is natural response. Even under dangerous environment can you react, that proves you are a brave boy. This guy had been under our observation for some time. Thanks to you that we can finally arrest him.”
Although my reactions to this incident was a bit embarrassing, but just as the policeman said, “it is natural response.”. I thought I could be called a brave boy.
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