**ages and descriptions of parties involved have been changed to protect the innocent.**
The ten year old boy** rides his bicycle down the street only to be screamed at and threatened. This same boy earlier in the day was confronted by a female who accused him of doing something he didn’t and got together a mob of others to try to intimidate him. This may sound like a typical school yard scene where children were the perpetrators, but instead, these “bullies” are adults. And this insidious event didn’t occur on a school yard. It happened at the home of a little boy in my neighborhood. What started this? The ten year old’s bicycle got stolen and the parent went out in the neighborhood on foot to search for it. She asked each child she encountered if they might have seen the bicycle, on the advice of the police officers who took a report about the bike.
After police recovered the bike, the doorbell of the ten year old’s mother rang. She was confronted and promptly screamed at by a woman she’d never seen before, and threatened that she better never accuse her child of stealing a bike again. She took a swing but the ten year old’s mother was fast enough to shut the door before the fist connected. As the irate woman left her yard, she yelled after her that she only asked each child if they’d seen the bike and never accused anyone of stealing it, just informed the kids that the bike was missing and that if they saw it, to come let her know or to call the police.”
The bullying mother didn’t apologize but contended that her child in not so many words, was a perfect little angel who could do no wrong and would never lie to her. Uh huh. Yeah right.
A few days later, this woman’s husband made a scene in public, and started screaming at the ten year old’s mother in public. She went home and found dog excrement in her newspaper delivery box.
Police weren’t called because every time they have been called, something else always happened, due to these people being highly retaliatory. What did the ten year old’s mother do to deserve any of this? She’s yet to figure this out.
A few years ago, I worked at a pre-school in the area. The van used to transport children had a seat belt that would retract too quickly due to the spring loading retraction mechanism being wound a bit too tight. It had a tendency to fly around and hit things in its path if the button was depressed and you didn’t hang onto the belt.
On a field trip, my son was placed in the tricky seat belt, and another little girl was seated next to him. My son let the button go and the seat belt connected with the little girl’s face and put a welt on her forehead and cheek when it did. (After this, only adults were allowed to sit in this seat.)
I filed an incident report and the nurse said she was OK. We sent a note home to the parents of the little girl. We did not name names in the incident report. We simply wrote that the seat belt accidentally hit the little girl in the face.
That evening, the little girl’s father pulled up in my driveway. As soon as I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, he grabbed me by the hair and slung me to the ground and kicked me. Then he punched me in the mouth and said, “see how you like being punched in the face!” The man’s wife just sat there and watched in horror. She did nothing to stop her husband from doing this. I filed charges on him, and he ended up having to pay for the partial denture that replaced the teeth he broke out. I was lucky. Other than a ganglion cyst forming where he had slung me by my hair, I only suffered a few bruises from the kicks he gave me after he threw me down and miscellaneous cuts and scrapes.
Needless to say, I chose a different career path shortly after this. I only got that job because my son was special needs anyway and was there to assist the teachers with his care. He went to kindergarten the following year and they had special ed teachers equipped to deal with his issues. I went into journalism, which I enjoy much better.
In both instances, the people in question were overly protective parents with hair trigger tempers. They sure don’t want their own children to experience bumps and bruises in life, even if they are accidental, as in the case with the little girl who got hit with the seat belt. I am not sure what the major malfunction of the ones who have been terrorizing the mother of the ten year old boy, but she tells me that things were fine until their boys got into a little disagreement and went outside and went to throwing rocks and hit a stop sign. Her son was caught doing this by the police and after this, her son was branded a troublemaker. The parents of this young boy, as well as the boy himself, have been known to stalk and threaten and yell at her son if he’s out riding his bike with friends. She has called the police on her on more than one occasion for “letting her son out by himself after curfew”, but left out the parts where he was taking walks with his mom and uncle at the time. This woman has been known to gather other children up from the neighborhood and accompany her to her house, and trying to encourage vigilantism in all of them.
The bully parents are known to use drugs, drink alcohol, and party a lot. The ten year old’s parents do not. The bully mom works at a local store. She is hateful to customers, and jerked a $20 bill out of my hand with a lot of anger as I paid for a batch of lottery tickets. Why all the pent up anger? Does she resent that she has to work while her husband sits at home all day? I pity her on some level only because there must be something going on in her life to make her and her husband both so bitter and nasty. I have yet to figure out why she has singled out and has such hatred toward my friend, as she doesn’t even know her. My friend is a disabled but high functioning lady who always goes out of her way to be nice to others, help others, and her child is very well-behaved, makes good grades in school, has never been known to act out or act up, and is a Boy Scout.
Bully mom has only one child. I have to wonder if part of the crude behavior exhibited by both her husband and herself has to do with the fact that she just might not know how kids act when they get together. Of course since there are always a lot of beer cans and boxes spilling out of her trash cans, this could have a lot to do with it. Something is definitely altering her perception and common sense.
As a journalist, I have a police scanner. Earlier tonight I heard a call where a woman called the police on a neighbor of hers for beating up her 14-year old daughter. I recognized the address and went stealthily over there to see if I could find out if the perpetrator was the same guy who’s been messing with my friend and her son, but didn’t even see one police car.
I am starting to see an alarming pattern here, but not sure what can be done. I know my friend will be getting a restraining order, but I know it will do her very little good. People are too horrible nowadays. I will never understand what drives people like this to want to pick on a child. EVER.