#406 Kick It

I’m a positive person and like to keep things positive on my blog, but something happened to me over the weekend that is still bothering me. 

While running errands Sunday afternoon I drove west on Washington Street and turned right onto Ritter.  I had just turned the corner when four people started walking across the street.  The middle of the street.  No crosswalk, no pedestrian walkway.  They slowly wandered across the street with no care in the world that a car might drive over them.  I stopped and waited patiently.  Oh I was perturbed, but had no reaction.  The last two decided to walk back across from whence they came.  For some reason they couldn’t make up their mind what they wanted to do.  I finally honked at them to get out of the road since I had the right of way. 

They finally finished crossing to meet their friends but were not happy that I had honked.  As I proceeded to drive by them, one of the boys kicked my car on the driver’s side.  Yes, he KICKED MY CAR.  I stomped on the brakes, put the car in park and got out to inspect the damage.  The kick had made a loud noise and I just knew there was a mark of some kind.  Miraculously, there was no permanent mark, just a smudge of dirt. 

They had continued walking down the street so after I looked at my car, I looked up at them.  Well, glared at them is more like it.  I heard the girl say, “I don’t care about that car!”  Seeing no damage, I got back in the car and drove away.  As I did so, I started thinking, “That’s where some people get shot.”  What if they thought I was coming after them and shot at me?  I was shaking, partly because I was so angry.  If there had been any kind of mark, I would have called 911. 

I kept thinking about the altercation the rest of the day.  The thing that bothers me the most is that these kids have no consideration of others.  They don’t care about anyone but themselves.  They don’t care that they are walking in the middle of the street possibly in front of a car.  They know that the car will stop so they don’t get hit.  (I hope they all do stop.)  They don’t care that they are making someone wait in the street, possibly to get hit by another car from behind.  And they certainly don’t care about other people’s property.  They kicked MY car because THEY got mad that I honked at them while standing in the middle of a STREET.  WTF? 

I’m not saying all kids are like this, but it’s sad that a lot of them are like this.  They just don’t care.  There are no consequences.  That’s why a lot of them shoot each other.  They made me mad so I’ll just shoot them.  So what? 

After my nerves finally calmed down, all I could do was say a prayer for these kids.  Maybe they feel like nobody cares about them, so why should they care.  It’s so frustrating. 

Be careful out there.  Be careful who you honk at.  I will try to be a bit more patient.  But I can only take so much.  I have no fun ending for this story; I just pray that these kids have a good ending to their story, wherever it takes them.