When my daughter was 7 or 8, her after-school baby sitter was a high school boy (Olen) whose family we had known for years. He got off the early bus and waited at our house for her to come home on the later bus. He often walked to the end of the street to meet her bus and walk her back home.
One afternoon, Olen didn’t walk to the bus stop at the end of the street, but instead waited in the driveway, and here came the elementary kids up the street. My kid was with a group of neighborhood “pals” and the older boys were fooling around and one of them pantsed her! Yanked my sweet little baboo’s elastic-waist jeans to her ankles and left her standing in her panties for a laugh! Well, Olen tore down the street, pulled her pants up, hoisted her in his arms and brought her home. And instead of kicking that mean boy’s ass (which he could have done a thousand times over), he went to that mean boy’s house and told that mean boy’s mother that if that mean boy ever messed with my sweet baboo again he would make sure that mean boy never drew an easy breath again. Then he made cocoa for my sweet baboo and watched Punky Brewster with her and coddled her until I got home. Olen was my hero. My male babysitter.