The man who patted a head

An elderly man, proprietor of a noodle stall in the covered market, casually pats the head of a young girl as he passes by her café table.

He pauses when the girl's mother reprimands him angrily. The stallholder makes the mistake of defending himself - all he did was pat the kid's head - and at that moment the father arrives at a gallop to see what's going on and valiantly assumes the task of rebuking the assailant.

The noodle man continues to protest his innocence but the girl's father will have none of that and ends up grabbing his arm and hurling him to the floor.

All this was captured by a security camera and presumably by a mobile phone or two because a video is soon circulating on social media.

The stallholder later told a local news channel that he'd patted the little girl's head because she was very adorable. 'Old people like to pat young children's heads,' he explained plaintively.

Isn't this a sad little story?

Well, I think so. It happened in Singapore, but it caught my attention for being such an extraordinary event. If you sit an adorable little kid at a café table anywhere in La Gomera you can fully expect him or her to be patted on the head every few minutes, or get their cheek tweaked or tummy tickled, or find themselves grabbed from their chair by a waitress or waiter to be whisked into the café to meet the other staff, play with the cash register, ring the gratuities bell a few times and emerge with a lollipop.

Children are a joy for all of us, is the general idea. I once went over to say hello to a young shopkeeper we knew, seated at a café table with her toddler in a pushchair. An adorable little lad. I tickled his tummy, winning a smile. 'Llévalo,' his mum said. Take him.

'Take him?'

'Take him.'

I lifted Leo out of his pushchair, perched him on my arm and ferried him around the tables to be introduced to Janine, some foreign friends sitting at another table, a few locals, the café's proprietor and anyone else who fancied tickling his tummy.

The boy could well be expected to be screaming with fear by now in Singapore but for this Gomeran it was all just routine. I returned him to his mum who was deep into something on her phone's screen and barely noticed Leo had come back.

Perhaps this is why Gomerans grow up so much at ease with each other and even with weird foreigners. They experience social interactions of every kind from year zero. They learn who to trust and, I'm quite sure, who not to trust.

Perhaps it also helps to explain another theme I touched on in a much earlier story (Give us a kiss), the essential role of physical contact in every encounter. If you meet someone in the street and pause for a word or two, the need to touch them is irresistible. Arm, shoulder, back, choose the most appropriate, but touch you must. You can even tickle an elderly man's tummy if you know him well enough.

So what happened to the poor guy in Singapore who got thrown to the floor for patting a toddler's head?

It's reported that he suffered light injuries but nothing serious, and the girl's father eventually realised he had overdone his role as family guardian, apologised to the stallholder and invited him to a drink at the cafe table.

The victim said he didn't want to pursue the matter any further. His son did though, declaring that he trusted justice would he done. He smelled money, in other words, and that's sad too, isn't it?