Merepek

Ms M called in late for the meeting this morning which was scheduled for 9.30am. According to the message she left with the secretary, something very urgent came up and she had to attend to it straight away.

As the manager was wrapping up the meeting at about 11.00am, in walked Ms M into the conference room looking all red and flustered. She apologised, took her seat and tried to follow the agenda and a short while later, the meeting was over. The assistant manager Mr A then walked over to Ms M to brief her about the meeting. As he was running through his notes, he noticed that Ms M appeared confused and disturbed and was not really taking in what he was saying. On simple question, "What's wrong, Ms M" and the dam broke. This caught Mr A unawares and not knowing what to do, he quickly walked to my office to seek help.

When I went in to the conference room, Ms M had her head on the table still sobbing away softly. I approached her and asked if there is anything I could do and she broke into loud, heavy sobs again. After a minute or so, she calmed down a bit and related what had happened earlier in the morning.

As Ms M was leaving for the office this morning, she received a call from her son's school and she was told to go there immediately. Fearing that her son might have an accident or something, she rushed through the morning traffic to the school. Thank God, it was not. But what waited her was not any good either.

During routine checks in the school that morning, the son was found with 4 pirated copies of porn VCD hidden between the pages of his text books. The boy quickly denied any knowledge and according to the HM and discipline master, he accused some other boys of framing him. He made a ruckus swearing his innocence and God forbid, cursed the HM and the discipline master. He was then told that they will get his mother and that rascal actually challenged the HM to it. "Phone lah, phone lah. You phone who also I not scared. Phone the police ah, you think I scared meh?"

According to the HM, this is not the first time the boy was caught with VCDs in school. There was once a couple of months back when they found 1 pirated VCD(18+) in his bag and he was let off with only a stern warning. He must have gotten bolder this time around.

Ms M was really broken. When M had the boy, her husband decided to leave the boy under the grandma's care in their small home town. As much as Ms M was unhappy about the arrangement at that time, she had not much choice since both she and her husband worked long hours and travelled out of town frequently. By the time, they were able to bring the boy to KL, he was already 13 years old. Ms M and her husband had hard times trying to bond and discipline this boy who is really defiant. He lies and he steals from the parents. Two years into it, both husband and wife have not achieved much headway and they are really at their wits' end what to do next. And now this!

I was shell-shocked and did not know what to say.