Saturday, July 30, 2011 @ 1:35 PM

Yesterday at the doctor, I saw the most heartbreaking scene ever.

So I was waiting for my turn to see the doctor, trying to ignore the burning pain in my throat when I saw this little Vietnamese kid who couldn't have been more than 3 years old. He looked at me while waiting for his turn and gave me the cheekiest grin ever. He was really so adorable with his hair waxed up and looking all cool and everything. And he was so little that his tiny legs couldn't even touch the floor when he sat on the chair. He was sitting next to this man (who wasn't Vietnamese but I don't wanna say his race here) and a woman that I assume to be his mom.

When it was his turn, he jumped off the chair and followed his mom into the room, and roughly 5 minutes later, he started screaming and shouting. I assumed it to be just another kid who didn't want a vaccination, which is normal, since I'm almost 18 and I still hate vaccinations. But then the man started shouting back at him, telling him to stop it and that he was a big boy now. That obviously made the crying worse and they both kept shouting at each other and I could hear the mom yelling something in Vietnamese. The boy kept screaming "it's painful it's painful!" in agony and I immediately felt tears spring into my eyes cause I know what it's like to go through the anxiety of waiting for the darn needle to pierce your skin. But it must have been 100 times worse for him cause he's just a little toddler, and not to mention his yelling mom.

After a couple of minutes of the back and forth yelling, the man was like "____ this shit, you're going home. You're going back to Vietnam." and he dragged the boy out, basically threw him onto a chair, hurled his shoes at him and paced around the waiting room while everyone looked on in shock.

The boy continued sobbing softly and kept looking at me and I wanted to go over and comfort him so badly, to tell him that it's okay and that I know how evil vaccinations are, and that it's perfectly okay to cry because they really are painful. I felt like crying with him but I had to hold my tears back because it'd just be ridiculous if I did that. It'd make things so much worse too.

And the man suddenly just jumped at him and the boy started wailing and shouted "it's painful!" over and over again and the man screamed "you wanna know what's painful? This is painful!" and started smacking the boy's ass repeatedly as the boy started screaming and crying even harder.

After a while, the man picked him up and walked straight out of the clinic and started shouting at the boy even more, accusing him of humiliating him in public and for being such a nuisance and a waste of money. The mom then came out of the doctor's office, looked around embarrassedly and walked out of the clinic to join the man and her son. I thought that she'd stop the man from beating her kid or at least comfort her son, as I thought any normal mom would do. But instead, she joined in the screaming and basically made the boy cry even more. She called him a wimp and a baby. But he's 3. He is a baby.

They then walked off. Or more like they dragged the boy off by force and the whole clinic fell silent after witnessing what had just happened.

And I couldn't help but cry and cry at what I had just seen, because I felt like I should have done something. I wanted so badly to go out and stop it but I didn't know what to do. I wanted someone to do something, but how can I expect others to do something if I won't even do it myself. I felt ridiculous and stupid to cry so hard at something that didn't even concern me, and everyone was staring at me in slight amusement, but I couldn't help it. It really was the most heartbreaking thing I'd ever seen in real life.

I hate how we're all jut passive onlookers. I hate how I can't do anything but cry.