Still no pictures, you’re stuck with just the stories for now.
I was reading http://highlytrainedmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/05/car-wrecks.html coming from Emergiblog’s Grand Rounds; the blogger writes of her response to an emergency situation in front of her, and how wonderful to find out, much later, that things had turned out much better than she’d feared. And she wonders at the people who saw and simply drove on by.
Memories.
California’s Prop 13, years ago, meant that most of the schoolbuses got ditched; there was no longer the funding for them. The end result is that schools that were designed for a line of buses instead have hundreds of parents dealing with getting their kids to and from each school on their own every day (but I digress). There was awhile where I had kids in elementary, middle, and high school, and I was doing the daily mad dash at 3 pm or so collecting them all.
One day for no reason I could have said I turned right rather than left off my street; that’s certainly the long way around, and it made no sense. I briefly debated doing a U-turn, but, eh, it was a beautiful day, and it felt like, well, all the more time to kick back and enjoy the scenery as I go. How about if I cut through the neighborhood to shave off some of that extra time I just piled on with that turn–nahhh, just keep going all the way to the main road.
Which meant that I happened to be coming up the road the middle school was on in the opposite direction from my usual. Which meant that I saw the two boys.
Now, one of them I recognized immediately, though I had no idea what his name was; I’d seen him since kindergarten, and I knew which mom connected with that kid. He was the one spraddled out on the sidewalk. The other on top of him, who knows, but he’d overpowered the first, was astride him on the ground, and had his hands grabbed on the other kid’s head, pounding it hard into the sidewalk.
They were just barely out of sight of the school. And car after car of parents was driving right on past them. I was as stunned at that as I was at the kids’ behavior.
My happy-go-lucky day was abruptly over, and I jerked my car off to the side, on the opposite side of the street from them. (Where, I realized later, I had the power of parental authority and my lack of physical authority wasn’t evident.) I leaped out of my door, unable to reach them for the passing cars, but screamed at the top of my lungs, “STOP THAT!!!”
They both leaped to their feet and away from each other as if they’d both been caught in the act.
“STOP THAT!! AND DON’T YOU *EVER* LET ME CATCH YOU DOING THAT AGAIN!!!” They were already heading for the hills, in opposite directions.
I was so mad. What a stupid, stupid, adolescent-boy act of testosterone poisoning. Didn’t they know the seriousness of it? Hadn’t they ever been around anybody with any kind of head injury? What did they THINK they were doing!!
I stayed thoroughly mad for about an hour. Glad that both boys knew I could identify them from Back To School nights, (glad that neither knew that I had no idea what their names were. Let them stew.)
Gradually, it dawned on me: I had gone the wrong way. I hadn’t cut through the neighborhood. I had just continued down the path that would bring me to that spot at that moment. And someone’s clueless 13-year-old sons grew up–they’d be 23 now–because I did.