Once upon a time there was a little boy who was very smart, very playful and mostly happy. Every morning his mum or dad would drop him off at kindergarten, say goodbye with a few recommendations: “Be good, listen to the teachers, stay warm, eat all your food”…and go off to work. Every afternoon his grandma would pick him up, offer him a bottle of tea or milk to drink, wait till it was finished while nursing him like a baby (although he wasn’t even a toddler anymore), then ensure he would be properly dressed and warm enough, and take him home.

He had parents, he had grandparents, and an older sibling, a teenager. The parents were very caring, the grandparents doting, he was obviously a very much loved and a very well looked after little boy.

Then one day he missed school, and the day after, and the day after again. On the forth day, and from that day onwards, a nanny started taking him to and picking him up from kindergarten. For weeks there were no parents in sight, and the doting grandmother never came back to offer him the bottle of milk, nurse him like a baby, and take him home.

Word spread that something terrible had happened to that family. Apparently the older sibling had stolen something at school, and after having been discovered, he was sent to the principal’s office, his parents summoned and after returning the stolen item, he had to make a written apology.

So one morning soon after that, the teenager got ready for school, but the thought of facing the teachers and the fellow students after what had happened must have been a burden too heavy to bear.
 

Inside he was feeling agitated and more and more overwhelmed….

So he went outside on the balcony to catch a breath of fresh air.
 

The balcony of his apartment, an apartment like many in a tall building, one of very many tall buildings in a city where there were as many of those as there are trees in a jungle.

He climbed over the balcony railing and, according to witnesses, he walked back and forth, back and forth for a few minutes… probably pondering what was the hardest thing to do…face the school and the shame, or face the void and be freed of that burden…

He had no wings but he decided to fly.

In the weeks that followed no one told the kindergarten what had happened, no one warned the little boy’s caregivers of the reasons why he had suddenly become so irritable and easily distressed.

The parents “would lose face“ if they did.

The doting grandparents went back to their hometown in a distant province, because they “had lost face”.

The apartment was sold and what was left of the family moved somewhere else, they couldn’t live there anymore because “they had lost face”…

….. “They had lost face”…silly me.. all along I had thought they had lost a son!