Encountered a racist Karen who picks on children

This morning, my wife and I took our newborn son to Fulham GP at Cloverdale for a post-birth checkup. We also had our 3-year-old daughter with us. While waiting in the nurses’ area for vaccinations, our daughter was chirpier than usual but was not disruptive in any way. There’s an elderly patient in the same area with her daughter (the Karen), in their 80s and 60s respectively if I had to guess. Karen picked up her phone at some point and was visibly annoyed by my daughter continuously asking questions so I asked my daughter to tone it down which she did.

As we were leaving the clinic at the same time as Karen and her mother, my daughter stopped at the main door not wanting to leave until I carried her. They went past her and I thought nothing of it, so I carried my daughter and as we passed by their car, Karen decided to throw out a gem of wisdom: “No discipline,” aimed squarely at our kid and closed her door immediately. Not impressed, but okay, we let it slide.

As she was leaving the parking lot, Karen then rolled down her window and told us to discipline our child which escalated to an argument with me, after I told her to shut it and f off a, she ended it with the pièce de résistance of bigotry: “Why don’t you go back to where you came from.”

The kicker? This woman had just been cared for by a nurse and a doctor who are both of Asian descent that looks like me. Like, really? You’re happily accepting their care and then pulling this stunt in the car park? The irony is apparently lost on her.

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d wake up today and have to defend my 3-year-old’s right to being a kid or deal with someone’s racism at a family-friendly, multicultural clinic. But here we are.

Shoutout to the lovely reception staff and the kind patient who reassured us afterward that our kid had done nothing wrong and Karen was out of line. You’re the real MVPs.

To the woman who decided to target a 3-year-old and spew racist garbage at the start of a lovely weekend: maybe take a good, hard look at yourself.

Rant over.