Opinion | Columnists
Personality's hidden seeds
Although no reader has complained or found it offensive, I feel the need to add a quick postscript to last week's "You're a brick" article, which, in a way serves as an ideal introduction, indeed a vital element, for the grist in this week's mill.
- By Kevin Martin, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 01:28 January 31, 2008
Although no reader has complained or found it offensive, I feel the need to add a quick postscript to last week's "You're a brick" article, which, in a way serves as an ideal introduction, indeed a vital element, for the grist in this week's mill.
Having been a teacher myself in the dim mists of the past, it isn't my intention to show up pupils in disrespectful light - although backchat is and has been as common as books in a classroom.
The aim was to point out that pupils, too, have a right to be respected and, more importantly, that all of us, ultimately, are human and that, driven past a point of endurance - and we all have varying thresholds of tolerance - some of us snap and respond, perhaps irrationally.
But the action, essentially, is done in defence of our own dignity. Which segues neatly to the quiet, elderly couple living in a respectful suburb, one without a history of that fast-growing euphemism - "home invasion" - which we all know is blatant breaking and entering with an intention toward burglary, or worse.
The residents of such suburbs tend to live with their guards down and the radar switched off, for in their minds they feel that if it hasn't happened here in the past it's not likely to.
Non-installation
Forget the non-installation of burglar alarms or even safety latches on doors, some residents don't even trouble to turn the key in the lock. This, to the burglary-minded, is akin to honey to the bee.
So when, in the falling dusk, three stocking-masked men walk in through the front door of the middle-aged couple they do so, indeed, with minimum effort but maximum shock (to the couple who are lounging on an expensive Italian sofa watching a televised episode of Frasier on a hi-definition Plasma television set.)
The armed trio may also have been mildly taken aback to find the two laughing, before the first shock of their presence was registered.
They did not, however, say, "Put your hands in the air," or even, "Hold out your hands so we can tie you up". Nothing of the sort. They just ordered the couple, who were stunned speechless anyway, to sit quietly exactly where they were.
One of them, proving this was not something they did as burglars regularly, even placed his weapon on the table near the speechless male while he went about emptying drawers, jewellery cabinets, rifling and ransacking, asking all the time, "Where are the jewels? And where is your money?"'
It doesn't take long to overcome speechlessness if, as a hostage, a revolver suddenly becomes handy.
The man of the house sprang swiftly, picked up the weapon and brandished it shouting at the unarmed man, "Stop, or I'll shoot." Or brave words to that effect.
Dumb terror made a swift return, however, when the unarmed home-invader calmly walked up to him, snatched the weapon out of his hand, informing him calmly, 'It's unloaded', but proceeding to rain blows upon the hapless almost-hero, with his abettors joining in.
A few minutes later, just as calmly they take what they feel is worth it, and leave. The badly injured man - he has a broken nose - calls the police. Then the couple calls their son, living a few streets away, in this safe suburb.
He arrives and is devastated that someone could even contemplate harming physically a man as decent as his father, or terrorising a woman as mild as his mother.
He himself, this son, is a humble, upright citizen. But you sense, watching him on television, reliving the horror for the press, that somewhere deep inside him, hidden buttons have been pushed, for it is what he says that is disquieting, frightening even.
"This is not the end," he says. "This is just a beginning. If the police cannot, I will hunt them down and make them pay."
Who was it said "There's a saint in all of us... and also (given the circumstances) a criminal?"
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
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