A lesson in forgiveness

After dropping the kids off to school on Wednesday, I was greeted at my door by two young boys with a cart who were buying recyclable rubbish (or ed-jai). They smile at me like they know me, which is kinda normal as we're pretty impossible to ignore. White skin, big noses, strange contraptions for carrying babies (ie my backpack). But I digress...

I tell them to wait as I hurry inside to find my rubbish - some UHT milk containers, glass jars, an old tap Steve replaced on the weekend and an ashtray left by our tenant. At the same time, I am searching my mind for some hidden memory.

A year ago, I had been dropping off groceries to a pregnant friend who was quite sick. She wasn't answering her door (asleep) and so I squeezed the cartons of milk through the front gate and dropped two breads over. These antics attracted the attention of some local boys who asked me for some of the bread and milk. I refused... it was her stuff! And so I pushed it even further through the fence away from sticky fingers. The boys soon gave up but were obviously brewing up a plan and I was in too much of a hurry to wait around.

As you can guess, my friend reported later that some of the bread and milk was missing. I was furious (particularly at myself for being such an idiot) and later scoured the streets for the little thieves. Unfortunately I have a terrible memory for faces, especially small, brown little Khmer faces... and I couldn't find them. Since then, every young boy who smiles at me down the road with mischief in his eye is a suspect and reminds me of my embarrassment and anger.

But on Wednesday morning, faced with these two young boys earning a living on other people's rubbish, I put aside my hurt pride and warped sense of justice. I grabbed my bag of ed-jai and two packets of biscuits for them to eat down the road, and gave it to them. With this, they also took the internal rubbish I had been carrying for over a year.

They thanked me, rummaged through the bag and then tore into the biscuits. But as I closed my gate and let out a deep, freeing sigh, I realised that I really should have thanked my little ed-jai friends.