I also don’t see the need for much guilt here. One afternoon while driving home from work, a bunch of kids waiting for the bus pretended to push one of them off the curb in front of my car! I was thisclose to pulling over and giving the little shits the scare of their lives, after they had given me the scare of mine (there was no place to park along this street. Hell, I should have stopped in the bus zone - the bus driver probably wouldn’t have minded after I told him why I was there.)
I think the kid you ran into got a good, cheap lesson (that adults don’t exist for their amusement, that the whole world doesn’t revolve around them, that they’re not the apple of everyone’s eye; you name it).
I my walks around town, I often encounter folk who walk on the “wrong” side of the sidewalk. Or, they’ll walk side-by-side with no intention of sidling over even an inch, which is even worse. I’ll approach them in a slow-motion game of chicken, edging over as far as I can without stepping off into the street.
I don’t care how old they are (unless it’s somebody’s grandmother, maybe), I’ll give em’ a good nudge with my shoulder and a hearty “Excuse ME!” before I let them run me off the path.
Wow! I got a lot more support than I anticipated in this thread, and I learned about the sport of Tween Tipping, which I expect to be on ESPN “The Ocho” any day now!
You know, I ended up having just about the worst day I’ve ever had in the 5.5 years I’ve held my current job. I was thinking it was karma for my behavior this morning, but based on responses here, perhaps it was my one chance to act out before I was shat upon later.
Shoulda knocked the little bastard down completely.
One had kids running around some store. I stood there thinking, “Boy I’d love too see one of these kids run into someone.” Sure enough about 30 seconds later one of them comes screaming around the corner of the aisle, not watching where he’s going and ran right into me…or more accurately he got LAID OUT. I mean I RAN OVER this kid (unintentionally).
He looked up at me trying not to cry. Embarrassed and trying to remember where he was. I asked him if he was alright, he said yeah then walked off as he started crying.
Wasn’t my damn fault but I did feel a little guilty at wishing I could see it happen in the first place.
Other one was when we went camping when I was younger. This kid was flying down the road right through our camp site over and over on his bike. I remember turning to my mom and saying, “I hope this idiot loses it in the gravel one of these times.” I swear to God my sentence wasn’t even FINISHED before he takes the turn, gets loose on the gravel and eats shit.
Good god. Kids who do that should get pushed down. I’m with WhyNot on a little tiny bit of force isn’t going to hurt. But watch out when I have kids, 'cuz I’ll go after you if you breath in their direction.
But I digress. I was on a crowded train once, and a Western high school brat was speaking in English to his friend and said “Watch how I get off the train!”
At his stop, the kid turned his back to the crowd, leaded back and started pushing, like you would push a car if you were putting your back to the car. Cute. He’s pushing everyone out of the way without looking. I’m in his trajectory, so I move out of the way.
Well, I move mostly out of the way, leaving one leg still in the way. Since he’s not watching, he trips himself and lands flat on the train floor, to the amusement of the people he’s pushed. He looks up, sees an adult that outweighs him and decides his cute act had ended.
I’m quite different from most other parents I know, in that if my kids are behaving like asshats, and I’m not around, I have no problem with a total stranger calling them on it (within reason, of course). I’ve done my best to teach them to not be asshats, but sometimes they need a sharp reminder that I don’t require them to be civilized just for my own sanity - it’s so society at large will accept them and not mistake them for a pair of crack-addled wolverines.
Tween tipping sounds fun! I think I’ll go home and push my 9 year old over.
Nope, it just means to push them over on their ass.
I understand feeling guilty about your anger, but I think you provided a great natural consequence for their actions. And in my experience both as a kid screwing around and watching kids screw around, that’s what sticks with you.
I am curious if they were closer to 8 or 12, though, because that can mean a significant difference in their size. 8 year olds would probably have been pretty small in relation to you, but 12 year olds are often pretty tall, and starting to bulk up for a growth spurt. My brother’s 11, and he’s taller and bulkier than a few small women I know. He could take it. If he was screwing around on an escalator and some guy shoved him out of the way, my parents would just say, “Pffft. Stay out of the way next time. You knew better.” and probably apologize to the guy, if he was still around. Same story for the rest of the 10 - 15 year olds in my family, boys and girls. But of course, that one of the many reasons why they don’t screw around on escalators and the like.
I had a conversation at work the other day about something similar.
Mostly I try to be pretty “Zen”, for want of a better description. Not much annoys me and people often remark, after the event, how I didn’t fly off the handle when most people would or how much crap I took without becoming angry.
And really it is true. Things that drive most people mad, I just shrug off. I could tell you how - it involves a silver ring and lots of hard mental gymnastics, but that’s not the point. I just don’t argue much, any more, except about factual information. If someone has the shits with me I usually just apologise and forget it.
On the weekend I was walking down the aisle of a supermarket. Two teenage girls were standing blocking the aisle talking, they looked at me as I approached. To pass them I turned sideways and crept through but bumped the handbag of the girl I was passing.
She turned and said, “Excuse me usually works.”
I instantly replied, “Not getting in other people’s fucking way works even better.”
Now I don’t know what it was about her manner or her tone that snapped me out of my usual response but I see where you are coming from.
We had an 18 year old pupil who got drunk and started swearing at people.
His mother arrived, saw what was happening, **grasped her son firmly by the ear ** and announced “Who does he apologise to first?!”
The sight of this huge teenager bent double and whining “Oh, Mum, let me go!” is a happy place in my heart.
don’t ask, I’m trying to be more Zen, but when I walk up to a bunch of people standing in front of a doorway, who just watched me walk up to them, and they stand there and stare at me like a bunch of two-legged cows without twitching a muscle, I want to get out a machine gun and mow them all down. Is that wrong?
One of these days I’m just going to stop, look at them, and say something like, “So? You gonna throw your brain in gear and move your ass so I can use the door?” It seems to me like these people are actually waiting for you to say, “Excuse me” before they’ll move - because anticipating someone will want to come in an entrance is…hard?
Sigh… I was a substitute teacher for a year (just a year, but don’t worry, I’m headed back in as soon as I can get some credentials), and I never felt more ridiculous in my life (ok, maybe that’s not quite true) as when within an hour of my first day I wanted to start going around grumbling, “When I was a kid…” This was at 22.
I’m not saying I didn’t do ridiculous things as a kid. Hell, I thought trying to make it down the up escalator was fun, too. But I wasn’t so damn oblivious (or uncaring) that I didn’t notice when I was about to get in other people’s way. It just seemed like common sense that I could only play on the escalator when it was empty. I just don’t get it, I really don’t.
I’ve done something similar, said, “May I use this stairway?” to a clot of clods blocking a stairwell, but they were so braindead they had trouble figuring out that I wanted them to get the hell out of the way.
We need more corporal punishment in this culture. Some people just don’t learn without a physical component to the lesson. A smack across the face would do a lot of people a lot of good.
and announced “Who does he apologise to first?!”