When Your Adversary Turns Out to Be a Benefactor in Disguise

A lesson in not judging the moment

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“Should I go and pay for it even though he threatened me?” I asked my husband.

“That man didn’t threaten you. To threaten you, he would’ve had to say he’s going to do something to you if you don’t do what he says.” My husband’s objectivity was on an even keel.

“Okay… he may not have verbally threatened me but my body felt threatened anyway”.

I showed him my still trembling hands.

The events leading to my threatened state of being

I was grabbing a quick and early lunch together with my husband at a food court.

Putian-style vermicelli — super thin rice noodles braised in bone stock, then stir-fried with seafood and vegetables and topped with seaweed and roasted peanuts — called out to me.

No queue at the food stall, what luck!

I ordered a plate of the vermicelli and handed over my stored value card to the stallholder to make payment. The transaction couldn’t go through because there wasn’t enough cash value on my card. My bad.

I took my card back from the stallholder and headed towards a top-up machine. When I re-approached the food stall with my topped-up card, I noticed there was already a queue with 2 customers. Bummer.

To save time, I ordered a bowl of noodles from another food stall that had no queue.

Shortly after I sat down and started eating my bowl of noodles, that first stallholder — he’s a tall man with some bulk — left his work station, marched up to me and loudly demanded that I tell him what to do with the plate of vermicelli that he had cooked for me.

I was flabbergasted.

The transaction didn’t go through because of the shortfall in my stored value card. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t place any valid order with him. And I certainly wasn’t expecting him to cook my order without payment in advance.

I told him as much.

He then claimed he had told me he was preparing my order as I walked away in search of a top-up machine. I did not hear that and if he did say it, it did not register in my mind.

It almost seemed like this man was trying to arm-twist me into buying a plate of vermicelli from him.

My cheap shot moment

The stallholder making a scene publicly at my table in the food court was making me feel embarrassed and cornered.

And that activated my threat response. If I couldn’t flee, my mammalian brain could still avail itself of 4 other threat responses: fight, freeze, fawn, or flop.

My instincts chose fight.

My way of fighting was taking a surprising cheap shot at the stallholder’s accent.

I retorted that he spoke with a heavy regional accent — it’s from his country of origin — that was hard for me to understand, which explained why I didn’t register that he was going to cook my order in advance.

What I said was true. But it was also unkind.

I could have said I didn’t hear him properly — that would still have been truthful. But my threatened brain insisted on striking back.

The stallholder’s response to my unkind retort was to throw his hands up in the air, retreat wordlessly to his stall, and — with a distinct flavour of passive-aggression — push the plate of cooked vermicelli to the pass area at his work station, as if waiting for it to be picked up.

My cheap shot moment made me face an unpleasant truth about myself, which was that xenophobic prejudices lurk within me. And if I’m not mindful of my thoughts, speech, and behaviours, those suppressed prejudices will find any fissure to escape and wreak havoc.

Maybe I’ll neutralise those prejudices one day… one can hope.

This whole scene was, in fairness to both parties, a misunderstanding.

The man — as a vendor — thought that my order was a done deal and that payment would be forthcoming whereas I — as a consumer — thought that no payment meant no order was placed. It was a mismatch of assumptions and expectations.

And now somebody needed to be out-of-pocket for that plate of vermicelli.

Noticing that my hands were still trembling was helpful. It reminded me that I was in a triggered state and it’s unwise to make decisions when feeling triggered. I took deep breaths and took in a few more mouthfuls of noodles to give my body time to calm down.

I then decided that the person to be out-of-pocket would have to be me.

I didn’t want to risk this man’s employer penalising him by making him pay for an order that was not settled by a customer. He’s clearly a migrant worker and life was probably not easy for him.

Still feeling annoyed, I walked over to his food stall to make payment and asked his co-worker to pack the noodles for me as a takeaway order.

Satisfied that things were set right for him, my triumphant adversary ignored my grudging concession and started calling out to other passersby, cheerily hawking his fare.

An unexpected insight into coping with bereavement

My pragmatic husband suggested giving the packet of vermicelli to his mum. It was still early and she wouldn’t have had her lunch yet.

I briefly explained the circumstances of this unexpected takeaway order to my mother-in-law. She had not tried Putian-style vermicelli before and was game to have it for lunch.

Later on, I received a text message from her thanking me for the meal.

Going by what she wrote, she found the novel dish delightful. She even said my late father-in-law would also have enjoyed it.

Receiving that text message from my mother-in-law set off a lightbulb in my head — I just gained insight into one coping strategy for bereavement. And I mentally gave thanks for that very unpleasant experience earlier in the day at the food court.

You see, my father-in-law passed away recently and my bereaved mother-in-law has been experiencing profound sorrow from losing her beloved husband of 60 years.

To find out that she found small joy — a hard-to-come-by bright spark in the dim and grey landscape that is her current outlook — in the novel dish was illuminating for me.

In their retirement years, my parents-in-law had been inseparable. For my mother-in-law to continue her daily routine exactly the way it was would constantly remind her that half of herself is missing. The old routines relentlessly re-focus her attention on her loss and heartbreak, which can result in feeling stuck or lost.

Engaging in new routines or novel activities, on the other hand, and finding small joys in them may show her a way to move forward with life while still carrying her grief with her.

The small joys in novel everyday tasks can give a person hope that life needn’t remain this gloomy and grey and that a new way of being is ahead. Life will look different but there is still potential for life to be expansive rather than diminished.

In a way, my late father-in-law had left a clue for his wife on how she could try to cope with life without him. The clue was in one of his favourite refrains:

Something different.

That misunderstanding with the stallholder was necessary for this insight to materialise in me. Initially an unpleasant experience I’d rather not have, it transformed into a precious gift from the universe.

It’s a reminder to not judge the moment but instead allow events to unfold over time. And who knows, you might find that your adversary with a heavy regional accent turns out to be a benefactor in disguise.

Thank you for reading.

Check out this link for my tribute — my first boosted story on Medium— to my late father-in-law.