Another Monday, another #MakjangMonday story! (See comment below). 🤪

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    This week’s story took place a few years after my brush with the Moped of Doom, as chronicled in last week’s entry. We had moved into an apartment complex in a slightly better neighborhood. We traded prostitutes and loansharks for heroin addicts loitering around the staircases and trash rooms. Around this time, there were a lot of cases of kidnappings involved drug addicts coming up to children and luring them away with promises of candies/games/whatever. Sometimes it was to rob the kids off whatever valuable on their persons (mostly jewelry) before letting them go. Other times, sadly, it was human traffickings and no one saw the children again. I remembered being told to strictly run away whenever a stranger approach for whatever reason.

    That morning, my little sister and I were sent to the store downstairs for snacks. We took off, not thinking much. On our way back up the stairs, a man approached us saying he had something for us from our parents, which we knew instantly was a lie. Before I could grabbed my sister’s hand, the guy reached out and tried to snatch one of her gold studs from her ears. She cried out and we ran up the three flights of stairs like crazy. My dad was waiting for us right outside the front door, and when he saw us ran over looking so scared and my sister’s ear was bleeding, he knew something was wrong. The second my sister, blessed her for actually able to speak because I was paralyzed with fear, pointed at the stairs and said a strange man was after us, my dad immediately sprinted in that direction. My mom came out from the living room so confused. She was just talking to my aunt and her suitor at the time who happened to be a police officer. They all heard what happened, and the police officer guy rushed after my dad because he knew my dad’s temper.

    The next thing I remembered was my mom taking us to the police station to 1) pick up my dad who was held for beating the kidnapper up and 2) to identify said kidnapper for the police report. When we got there, my dad was still fuming and screaming insults and threats at the kidnapper. Said criminal was cowering in a corner of the holding cell, bleeding from whatever my dad did to him. My sister and I were so scared and only barely managed to point out the guy and told the police what happened.

    The police returned my sister’s earring to us. They were very small, age-appropriate gold studs that weren’t worth much at all, but desperate druggies resorted to desperate measures. My sister’s ear was scratched, but healed up pretty fast. Also turned out, my dad broke one of his fingers when he punched the guy too hard and my mom was so mad at him for that. I remembered him wearing a cast for a while after. My aunt’s suitor, aka the police officer that ran after my dad, told us that he had to pull my dad away from the guy and convinced him to take that bastard into the station. Otherwise, he wasn’t about to stop.

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    Beanies, no worries, my sister and I were ok and sometimes we would jokingly said, “hey, remember that one time we were almost kidnapped?” We would laugh it off, saying how wild it was that the police officers were more afraid of my dad than that drug addict. Maybe it wasn’t really an attempted kidnapping. Maybe the druggie would just let us go after taking the earrings. But telling this story over and over, each time with different gestures and comedic touches, is how we deal.

    To be honest, my adulthood so far is thankfully not as dramatic as my childhood. I’m sure moving abroad to a better area helped with that a whole lot. I’m infinitely thankful for that!

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