I was finishing up my run this morning (which means I was at the point where I felt like hell, was sweating buckets, and had to keep playing the Rocky theme in my head to even keep moving), when I rounded the corner on a bunch of kids waiting for the school bus, about 10 of them. I’ve seen these kids before. Our town has this dress code for elementary kids where they have to wear khaki pants and green polo shirts with their school logos on them, and thus appear way more harmless and collegiate than they really are.
So there they all are, looking like a Pink Floyd video, waiting in the dark for their bus. The few other times I’ve seen them, there’s always this one pariah kid, a little weird looking, maybe a little too soft in his manners or features, a little weird in his habits, maybe a little too smart for his own good. I don’t know. He’s always sitting on a curb as far away from the rest of the kids as he can possibly get. Some days I see a car parked there on the street with its headlights on, and I think it may be this kid and his mom, like she’s giving him a safe place to wait, but at the same time probably making the others kids that much more pissed off at him.
As I came around the corner today, there was no car and several of the kids were throwing handfuls of gravel and little rocks at this other kid. I had my dog with me, the iPod was blasting, my lungs were exploding, and I had a block to go before I was home and could stop timing myself, but seeing this, I had to slow down. I fixed my most heinous stink eye and the main rock thrower, and get this: He didn’t stop. He picked up another handful of rocks and pelted this kid right in front of me. I stopped running, yanked out my earphones and amplified the stink eye, walking right towards him and he threw another handful at the kid, some of which hit me in the shin as the other kid ducked and ran.
At this point, any adult would be justified in yelling at this little shit, perhaps addressing him accurately as, “Hey, you little shit,” but I was exhausted, breathless, and stunned, and trying to think how to address the kid without profanity and coming up with nothing, and then, THEN I think I hear this, muttered under his breath: “What are you looking at, bitch?” This is possibly the one instance in my life where a hard core dose of happy-feeling endorphins has not served me well, because in that moment, stunned and sputtering, I made the decision to let it go because I could already see the bus rounding the corner and I knew that for now at least, the rock throwing had to stop. I gave him an extra dose of hate-filled glare and memorized his face, but said nothing.
As soon as I picked up running again I regretted it. I should have given that fat little fuck the yell-down hell-ride of his life. I should have humiliated him in front of his peers. I should, at the very least, have gotten his full name and found out which house he came out of. But I did none of that and instead stood in the shower raging and scrubbing and coming up with vicious things to say to a 10-year-old that would haunt him for the rest of his life. I even considered making the bus stop a regular installation on my morning routes to head off any more rock throwing and maybe even give my anti-people dog another chance to emit piercing warning barks and bare her teeth.
Last year, when we lived in Corpus Christi, my husband terrorized a 10-year-old boy for slinging a handful of rocks at our brand new car. It happened in an alley about a block from our house. He slammed on the brakes, leapt out of the car, and headed straight for the kid, who was trying to mount his bike and escape. My husband was wearing his flight suit and combat boots, so I can only imagine what this must have looked like to the kid—maybe like one of his G.I. Joes, only really pissed.
“Freeze!” he yelled, and the kid froze. “What’s your name?” he asked, and the kid told him. From then on, it was like Cesar Milan with an impudent dog: command, response. The kid led my husband to his home, went inside and brought out his mom, and tearfully reported to her what he’d done to our car. He then apologized to his mom for being bad and to my husband for pelting the car. Everyone said a polite goodbye and that was that.
Now, I have no idea if the mom then went inside and told her kid, “I’m not mad — but that’s what you get for messing with one of those asshole pilots,” and then blew the whole thing off, but I do know that my husband felt a hell of a lot better, and that every time we saw the kid thereafter, he was headed at a full run in the other direction.
Me on the other hand, I’m now thinking about all the times I was bullied, and all the times I did the bullying (mostly to my little brother, which counts double since we’ll know each other for the rest of our lives), and I’ve just got this sick feeling in my stomach for not doing anything, not sticking up for the poor kid getting pelted with rocks. Was it really the exhaustion and disbelief, and the hope that surely I’d misheard or misinterpreted the scene I’d stumbled on? Or was it that old kid fear speaking in me, saying that the best way to stay safe was to keep quiet? Either way, I still feel angry and ashamed.
Comments
That sounds like a horrible experience. What has happened to kids having any fear at all of adults. I guess adults have wound up being afraid of community discipline as well. Too many lawsuits.
Poor little guy getting rocks thrown at him. I’m glad you were there to stop it at least for a moment.
As the mom of an odd little kid, I worry about all the crap out there. It makes me feel good that at least some adults are watching.