This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Nakano Bicycle Defender. And all I tried to do was give him a baseball cap.
But I fucked that up.
For a belated Children’s Day, I wanted to give the neighbor boy a brand new Barry Bonds “715 Home Runs” commemorative baseball cap that I happened to have with me. I was outside my rented apartment having a smoke when I saw him playing in the street. I held up the hat and called him over to me in broken Japanese. He heard me, and got an excited look on his face. But as he ran toward me, he tripped on his own feet and took a face plant onto the pavement.
Well then he started to cry and howl. I felt like the biggest jerk in the world. I was horrified. Then the boy got up and went looking for his mother, who I think is one of the managers for my apartment building.
I slunk back into my apartment, hoping the boy was okay and that his mother wouldn’t come looking for me with a frying pan in one of her hands. It turned out fine, though. No one came to curse me, and I saw the boy a short time later playing in the street again. I called him over one more time and gave him the hat, which he cheerfully accepted. He even said ‘thank you’, which children often forget to do.
But as you can see he had blood and bandages on his nose, which made me feel like even more of a jerk.
What a day.
