【年终征文】无题# LeisureTime - 读书听歌看电影
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The year has not yet officially come to a close, and the world still may—or
may not—end at midnight tonight, in about 14 hours. For the second year
in a row, however, my memory of 2012 is already destined to be stained, and
indeed haunted, by the images from a horrific event that took place during
the holiday season, and both events involved young children close to the age
of my own daughter.
Last year, it was 王悦, better known today as 小悦悦. Like most people
around the globe, I first met the two-year-old little girl who lived in
Foshan, China, through grainy video images taken by a surveillance camera.
She was about the size of my daughter at the time, and was wearing an outfit
that was strikingly similar to one that my daughter always favored. In the
video footage, as if in a nightmare, we saw her run over by a careless
driver in the dark alley and then, for seven long minutes, trying in vain to
call for help from the passers-by—all 18 of them—by feebly waving her
arms, until a second vehicle came along and nonchalantly drover over her
broken legs again. She was only a few yards from her parents' store,
surrounded by a bustling city of seven million, but one can certainly feel
the suffocating loneliness that must have filled her mind as she lay there
on the cold, hard pavement, her precious life slowly bleeding away from her
tiny, twisted form.
On the next day, all of a sudden, she became the focus of attention for the
entire nation, and much of the rest of the world. Eloquent expressions of
sympathy, sadness, and outrage exploded on the Internet, followed quickly by
the traditional media. But by then, she no longer needed, wanted, or was
even aware of them. She never regained consciousness before succumbing to
the grave injuries about a week later, and thus never got to learn how
sympathetic, kind, concerned, compassionate, and helpful the world and its
human inhabitants really could be when they so chose.
This year, it was more than one child. Rather, it was 20 children at the
ages of five and six, to be exact, who just happened to be attending the
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, on that dreadful day,
December 14, 2012. This time around, I learned my lesson from similar
events in the past, and deliberately avoided news photographs and television
reports about the event. But as it turned out, it did not matter, since
the human mind has a wicked ability—and tendency—to come up with the
missing images on its own.
That night, as I patted my daughter into sleep, my mind started drifting
away and tried to comprehend the mindset of the heartless killer during the
last moments of his rampage. Through his eyes, I saw him walking between
the desks and chairs in a rather typical elementary school classroom. I saw
the terrified faces of little boys and girls staring at him, some
undoubtedly crying, others screaming, still others too frightened to cry or
scream. I saw the lifeless body of their slain teacher lying by the door,
in a pool of blood. I saw a pistol in his hand raised, the cold steel
barrel pressing against the soft hair on the back of a young child's head,
or the tender skin of his forehand.
And that was where I ran into a mental block. For the life of me, I could
not imagine what kind of an absolutely sick, deranged, despicable mind it
would take to pull that trigger, let alone as many as 11 times at one
innocent child.
My mind also wandered to the other side, and saw the events of that day
unfolding from the children's perspective. It was just another ordinary
school day a little more than a week before Christmas, in the middle of the
most wonderful time of the year. They had simply come to school to learn
and to play, just as they did on every other ordinary school day. Their
lives may have been rather uneventful up to that fateful moment, but
undoubtedly they had plenty of little things to look forward to, as first
graders always do.
Perhaps they were looking forward to the little Smiley stickers that one can
expect from the teacher at the end of the day for good behavior. Perhaps
they were looking forward to something more mischievous, such as painting
the roses green and the leaves red in the coloring book. Maybe it was pizza
day, and they were looking forward to sharing a few silly jokes over the
mouth-watering slices of well-baked pepperoni pie. Maybe they were looking
forward to leaving an apple instead of cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas
Eve, along with a hand-written note urging him to watch his weight. Or
maybe they were simply looking forward to jumping into their parents'
waiting arms after the final bell of the day.
Instead, they ran into a monster named Adam Lanza, armed to the teeth with a
rifle and two handguns.
may not—end at midnight tonight, in about 14 hours. For the second year
in a row, however, my memory of 2012 is already destined to be stained, and
indeed haunted, by the images from a horrific event that took place during
the holiday season, and both events involved young children close to the age
of my own daughter.
Last year, it was 王悦, better known today as 小悦悦. Like most people
around the globe, I first met the two-year-old little girl who lived in
Foshan, China, through grainy video images taken by a surveillance camera.
She was about the size of my daughter at the time, and was wearing an outfit
that was strikingly similar to one that my daughter always favored. In the
video footage, as if in a nightmare, we saw her run over by a careless
driver in the dark alley and then, for seven long minutes, trying in vain to
call for help from the passers-by—all 18 of them—by feebly waving her
arms, until a second vehicle came along and nonchalantly drover over her
broken legs again. She was only a few yards from her parents' store,
surrounded by a bustling city of seven million, but one can certainly feel
the suffocating loneliness that must have filled her mind as she lay there
on the cold, hard pavement, her precious life slowly bleeding away from her
tiny, twisted form.
On the next day, all of a sudden, she became the focus of attention for the
entire nation, and much of the rest of the world. Eloquent expressions of
sympathy, sadness, and outrage exploded on the Internet, followed quickly by
the traditional media. But by then, she no longer needed, wanted, or was
even aware of them. She never regained consciousness before succumbing to
the grave injuries about a week later, and thus never got to learn how
sympathetic, kind, concerned, compassionate, and helpful the world and its
human inhabitants really could be when they so chose.
This year, it was more than one child. Rather, it was 20 children at the
ages of five and six, to be exact, who just happened to be attending the
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, on that dreadful day,
December 14, 2012. This time around, I learned my lesson from similar
events in the past, and deliberately avoided news photographs and television
reports about the event. But as it turned out, it did not matter, since
the human mind has a wicked ability—and tendency—to come up with the
missing images on its own.
That night, as I patted my daughter into sleep, my mind started drifting
away and tried to comprehend the mindset of the heartless killer during the
last moments of his rampage. Through his eyes, I saw him walking between
the desks and chairs in a rather typical elementary school classroom. I saw
the terrified faces of little boys and girls staring at him, some
undoubtedly crying, others screaming, still others too frightened to cry or
scream. I saw the lifeless body of their slain teacher lying by the door,
in a pool of blood. I saw a pistol in his hand raised, the cold steel
barrel pressing against the soft hair on the back of a young child's head,
or the tender skin of his forehand.
And that was where I ran into a mental block. For the life of me, I could
not imagine what kind of an absolutely sick, deranged, despicable mind it
would take to pull that trigger, let alone as many as 11 times at one
innocent child.
My mind also wandered to the other side, and saw the events of that day
unfolding from the children's perspective. It was just another ordinary
school day a little more than a week before Christmas, in the middle of the
most wonderful time of the year. They had simply come to school to learn
and to play, just as they did on every other ordinary school day. Their
lives may have been rather uneventful up to that fateful moment, but
undoubtedly they had plenty of little things to look forward to, as first
graders always do.
Perhaps they were looking forward to the little Smiley stickers that one can
expect from the teacher at the end of the day for good behavior. Perhaps
they were looking forward to something more mischievous, such as painting
the roses green and the leaves red in the coloring book. Maybe it was pizza
day, and they were looking forward to sharing a few silly jokes over the
mouth-watering slices of well-baked pepperoni pie. Maybe they were looking
forward to leaving an apple instead of cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas
Eve, along with a hand-written note urging him to watch his weight. Or
maybe they were simply looking forward to jumping into their parents'
waiting arms after the final bell of the day.
Instead, they ran into a monster named Adam Lanza, armed to the teeth with a
rifle and two handguns.
