Most Embarassing Moment of My Life

Yesterday, life played a cruel trick on me. Yes, life ITSELF decided ‘it’s time to mess around with Oytun’ and consequently the most embarassing moment of my life occured.

It was 14:35 on a cold Sunday afternoon – I had just gotten out of bed after a week of being lazy enjoying the Chinese New Year. My girlfriend would be back in the country later that day and hence I had spent the previous couple of days cleaning the house and shopping for groceries. I quickly took a shower and put on some clothes but I was already running late, I had to be at the airport at 5 o’clock!  I wondered how in the world I had squandered a week of free time doing almost nothing… and even noticed some stain on my jacket that I had been meaning to clean ALL week long but never got around to. Nevertheless, I decided I couldn’t afford to be late to pick up my girlfriend from the airport!

So I jumped on to the Metro Line 2 on my way to catch the Maglev Train to the airport. In the metro, I usually like to stand in the corner somewhere, where I can avoid the pushing and shoving and just be in my own world and thoughts. I was happily day dreaming and counting down the stops until my arrival, until I just could not escape a DIRECT STARE by this scary but quite unique homeless person.

I’ve seen many homeless and poor people in and outside of Shanghai before – but this guy just had something special about him. He had this huge amout of hair like a caveman and big eyes with fuzzy eyebrows – which itself is quite unordinary for a Chinese person. He didn’t seem menacing at all but that could all change in the split of a second – somewhat like a tranquilized Wild Animal.

He was eating some form of luxury Chocolate Ice Cream in a Cone- Haagen Daazs would be my guess. He was carrying in the other hand a small bag with him that were his sole life possessions. His face was covered in dirt and his mouth was covered in chocolate. And this guy was looking directly at lil ol’ me in the corner! Some people that were standing in between us quickly moved out the way when they noticed his presence. After giving him a small nod and smile to show my friendliness I kept trying to look elsewhere and ignore him as gently as I could.

He then started approaching me and pointed his finger at me. People around the train now were focused in on this showdown with the Homeless Chinese ‘Barbarian’ and the Young ‘Laowai’ Foreigner – it had the makings of an epic CCTV news story. I didn’t know how to respond to his pointing, so I just gave him a raised eyebrow to show I was not understanding or impressed by his actions. But he really had something he wanted to tell me, you could see it in his face behind all the layers of dirt.  Had I dropped my wallet, did he mistake me for someone, was he asking for some warm clothes?

He had a face that showed both confusion and amusement – I never knew those two emotions could be displayed simultaneously. Then he pointed at me once more, but he pointed at exactly what was confusing him so much. This dirt and chocolate faced monster was giving me the puzzled look this whole time to figure out…. WHY IN THE WORLD MY JACKET HAD A STAIN ON IT! After realizing what had just transpired, and noticing the eyes of the other passengers scan me and my jacket, I was literally lost for words. Not that it had anything to do with my inability to speak Chinese, but I never in a million years thought this scenario could have transpired. I was ridiculed by a homeless person in one of the poorest countries in the world….and with reason too!

I tried to compose myself, but it was becoming increasingly difficult with this huge, albeit innocent, grin on the face of my new homeless hygene doctor. I decided to give him a little smile and nod to just get the guy to stop pointing at the stain on my jacket and draw even more attention on to myself. (He was now using the ice cream in his hand to try to ask if it’s ice cream that I have on the jacket!) He gave me another dissapproving look (the same type that a mother would give to their child) and I had to nod again in humiliation that indeed I should be cleaner than that.

It slightly crossed my mind to retaliate with pointing at him and show how dirty he is but 1) getting into a competition with a homeless person in ANYTHING is probably not a good idea and 2) somehow his jacket looked clean and had no major stains on it!

The embarassment was just too much and I could no longer bare it, I decided to just get off at the next stop just to avoid this guy. Luckily enough, the guy was getting off himself at the next stop. But of course, he couldn’t just leave me with a trace of dignity – he had to complete ruin me. He waved at me and said “BYEBYE”, and then as I was waving back to him he made a washing gesture with his hands and pointed at my Jacket once again….in case there were any deaf people on the train who had not yet realized my shambolic situation.

The next couple minutes were awkward as people no doubt were discussing what had just transpired. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is turned into a folk legend similar to those Dragon vs Monkey stories that Chinese love so much. The homeless guy will probably go down in history for thousands of years and have a holiday named after him or something.

Anyways, as soon as I got off the subway I headed into a men’s room and tried to wash the blood from my hands so to speak. This was evidence and humiliation I could no longer carry with me. I would have thrown the damn jacket away if it wasn’t so cold. I ended up missing the Maglev train to the airport and had to wait for a while as result. But it didn’t matter, the popular saying was right all along – it’s better to be late, than sorry!