Yesterday I had two occasions where I saw myself comforting strangers in two extremely different circumstances.
The Man
A man boarded the train that I was on, and stood near the doors, leaning on the side. When he boarded, there was a whiff of alcohol that came in with him, and after some time, it was clear that he was intoxicated on some level. This is during the bright 2PM afternoon that we have. I have no issue with drinking midday, but I think being drunk midday is another issue on its own. In any case, a drunk man on the afternoon train.
I was sitting in a row with no one next to me, because it was the afternoon train, no one was really out. So quite naturally, he moved slowly towards the seats next to me and decided to sit down.
This would normally have been alright, actually it was totally fine. I’ve definitely been the drunk guy on many nights in the train and towards my friends, and its cool to try to be sober as you aim yourself to seat your butt on the seat. He sat next to me in this manner, and proceeded to watch or listen to his shows on YouTube.
What happened after was slightly comical, he fell asleep a few times, dropping his phone into his bag. He was leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands holding, or not holding, his phone. This happened a few times, but what really was not comical, was that he started to drool.
How I knew he was drooling was because he took off his mask, wiped his drool, and then sneezed or breathed real heavy a few times, splattering spit all over the MRT floor. At that point, I felt greatly disturbed. Like really grossed out. Like what the hell man. But it was a drunk dude, and we don’t know what happened and why he’s drunk in the middle of the day, maybe it was a bad day or something. So I tried my best to reserve judgement, and to let him be, and just sleep it off.
But what continued on was that then he started to lean on me. To which I decided was a good time for me to indicate “okay, sure lean on me, but I will tap you because you are unmasked“ type of tap. I did this like three times, but I could not see his eyes actually registering that He even knew what was going on. This made me just really not want to sit there anymore. So that’s what I did, I stopped sitting there. I got up, got my bag, and walked out of the cabin at the next stop, and then I hopped into another cabin a few doors down.
The Baby
The baby is a little more complicated. I have met the baby before, once actually, about 5 months ago. The crazy part is that the baby’s face changed over time, and that made for a very interesting situation. I knew the baby but at the same time, I really didn’t. That was just not what exactly I had in mind when coming to meet the baby for this second time.
So what happened was that I was really then given a chance to meet this baby anew. At the same time, the last time I saw the baby, he was just not in a time for me to hold him. He just cried away, and almost never stopped crying. That made for a very difficult first meet.
But this time, the baby wasn’t crying. His mom (my friend) and me, walked together from a stop light, and made our way over to the house, and we sat down together to look at the baby and just talk with the baby.
The baby lay flat on his tummy. This made for a very interesting looking scenario, and I decided that I will stroke the baby’s head, if that would be helpful. Honestly, I was thinking of my family’s dog that I just visited, and not that a baby is a dog in any case, just that my most recent form of care within that past few hours was my family’s dog. I just saw that coming together that way.
I stroked the baby’s head, slowly and really just gently, as much as I could. He was pretty chill about it, and then started to rest his feet on my arms, he was curled up like a little prawn, with his feet coming near to his face. At that point also, he was just drooling all over his shirt, and he had a little bib on that he just continuously chewed on. He also chewed on his shirt buttons, and just yanked them around.
I was resting my other hand on his tummy, to pat him, and his hands somehow caught a grasp of my hands. Then he pulled my hands towards his hands, and decided to start biting on my thumb. That was fine, I didn’t really mind that. But what was really strange was that he started to really chew on it. Like hard, with the back of his teeth. He went on like this for a good ten minutes, and then he decided to move on to my other fingers, one by one. I think he ate on my hand for a good half an hour or more.
His mom had to go take a phone call at some point, and he was just with me alone. He decided to break out in tears completely and just freak out. I just held him, as he cried, and just felt his helplessness, and just resonated with it.
Later, he needed to get distracted, as he was putting his tiny shirt on after his shower. I decided to try and give him my knuckle to chew on, and he grabbed it really quick, and just straight up chewed away.
Both incidents were pretty gross, and kinda disturbing. But the baby’s one was okay. But the man’s one was not okay. I would think that at some point, we actually hope and think that our men would grow up and not be babies. But the truth of it really is that both are in need of comfort.
If there was a hygienic way for me to have helped the man, I think I would really like to find out, and to just try. I would appreciate comfort like that any day, especially from the ones I love, but even from a stranger, that would be just fine.