My TRUE Near Kidnapping Story
I caught this movie on TV just yesterday and today, and it brought back some memories when I was young. Hopefully what I am about to share will in some way help to save the live of a child somewhere, someday.
It all happened when I was still living in Malaysia. I was about 7 years old. In those days, I used to take the bus to school. Every now and then though, my parents would either give me a ride to school, or back.
One day, after school was finished, I exited the main gate toward my waiting schoolbus. A car was waiting near the main gate to my left. Standing next to the car was a couple, a man and a woman who looked like somewhere in their mid-to-late twenties. They were looking in my direction, and beckoned me to go to them. I stopped and stood rooted to the spot dumbfounded. There was a little distance between me and the couple. For a moment there I thought maybe they were gesturing to another schoolmate, but I knew they were addressing me. I still remember the woman, who did most of the talking, saying that they were my mother's friends, and that my mother could not come to pick me up, and had asked them to help.
Now if there was one thing I know was this. My mother had told me never to trust strangers, and that if my mother had asked anyone to pick me up, she would have told me beforehand. She never broke the pattern throughout the years of my growing up.
Besides, I had a good photographic memory. That couple I definitely did not recognize, and I had never seen them before with my mother. So at the moment, it was either the couple, or the bus. I remember I hesitated, and told them something along the lines of "never mind, I'll take the bus", and ran straight into my schoolbus.
When I reached home, I asked my mother about the couple, and she was like, "What couple?" I told her about what happened, and she was shocked because she had never sent anyone to collect me, and reminded me about what she had told me about strangers and what not.
So there you go. That one moment in my life, had I chosen wrongly, may have totally altered my destiny. Granted, maybe the couple was genuine and just got the wrong child. But that does not totally eliminate the possibility that they could have been potential child kidnappers as well, given that Thailand is just across the border (which needs no elaboration)! Or maybe even a desperate childless couple hoping to get their hands on someone else's child!
Hope the parents who are reading this realize that a little advice from parent to child can go a long way, and could spell the difference between waking up every morning knowing that your kid is still around, or a permanent empty room!