Christ, yes. The worst thing I think I’ve seen was I witnessed what was probably a mugging down a darkened street in New Orleans, and that was about 20 years ago. I’ve known about violence among people I know, but haven’t come nearly as close to it as you have.
We live in a relatively safe place and seldom hear gun shots but my wife once heard a commotion outside and peaked out the front window only to see two guys shooting at each other.
So random violent events can happen in places that don’t normally experience them.
On the other hand I did live for a couple years in an area that experienced semi frequent shootings and a lot of gun fire. Coming home one day I had to drive around a guy that was passed out in the middle of the road. When I parked and looked out my third floor window there was a car stopped in the middle of the road and the man who had passed out was now standing in front of the car with his hands on the hood. Four guys got out of the car, a couple incoherent words were uttered then the four started to beat this guy so badly that I could hear the blows a half block away. I called 9-11 and when I looked out again the guy was staggering down the street covered in blood. That was the worst thing I ever saw living there and maybe anywhere. That was the year the NY Times dubbed us Murderapolis.
Last summer, I saw a mother holding a 4 year old boy steady while he stood up on the edge of thisfountain, trousers and pants dropped, pissing into the water. This was during my lunch break on a weekday and (unlike in the photo which was taken about 8AM), it was very busy in town.
Last week, and in fact in the doorway of the Primark store that replaced the Woolworth’s visible in that photo - literally, standing in the shop door, with people having to sidle around them on both sides to get in and out of the place, a mother held a young girl up by her legs in a sort of seated position, so the girl could piss on the floor - on the doorstep of the shop - again, during a packed and busy lunch hour.
I’ve reported this one before, and it was more hilarious than disgraceful upon seeing it, but it could be taken as disgraceful too:
Singburi province in central Thailand, 1988. I’m sitting at an outdoor table at a restaurant. Down the street comes a Thai couple. She is furiously screaming at the man with a blood lust while chasing him waving a butcher knife. He is running ahead of her with his penis hanging out, but far from being scared, he keeps stopping when he gets a little ahead of her, turns around, laughs maniacally and waves his penis at her. This enrages her all the more, and she speeds up and yells louder each time. This cycle keeps repeating until they’ve passed from view.
I still wonder what that was all about.
I once saw a staggering drunk who had peed his pants. Yeah, I have had a peaceful existence. But it was disgraceful.
It wouldn’t surprise me if she then went in the store and complained about the puddle of urine on the floor.
This is pages in, but Mahaloth, that really is not unusual in China. It’s getting less usual as the years go by, and it’s less usual in the big cities. But it certainly is not unusual and Chinese wouldn’t bat an eye over it.
When I worked as a security guard at a small annex of a school administration building, one legal holiday, a car pulled onto the lot and the parents got out with a very young boy, whom they had urinate against a side wall at the edge of the lot. I would have been happy to allow them to bring ther child into the building to use the restroom, but for some reason they insisted on doing it outiside.
NOOOOOOO. Really?
In other news, cycling home on Tuesday I had to swing out of the bike lane as there was a guy standing in the middle of it pissing into a drain.
Maybe I just notice more or something. Or it could be an example of a statistical anomaly.
I don’t live a particularly high-risk life. Well, I worked as a bouncer many, many years ago (a 5’5" under 8 stone/about 112lb female bouncer) and saw more terrible things there, I’ve slept rough, and I’ve seen quite a lot of fucking awful things working as a teacher in an inner city school, but I didn’t even include anything I saw in those times; the list would get far too long.
For the rest of the time I’ve either worked in a very low-risk job or even worked from home, or, for the kids attacking an old man then me, been a kid on the way to Catholic youth group. I genuinely find it weird that for some of you the worst you’ve seen is a kid pissing in the street.
One time I was out hiking some trails and this kid was peeing into a bush just off the trail and the poor excuse of a mother was just standing by letting him. Jesus Christ what is wrong with people there were port-a-johns just a few miles back.
A few MILES? I don’t see anything wrong with this at all. But then I live in the sticks and I’ll just pee in my ‘yard’ if I’m outside doing something (specially if I have muddy shoes)
Some kids can’t hold it for a “few mile hike”.
I agree. Some observations: (1) Bad things happen all the time. (2) People who’ve had little or no exposure to such things will probably be unaware of them. (3) People who have been exposed to such things may not want to talk about them.
I think that post and a few others were made sarcastically.
I hope so. I can’t make it through a hike of a couple of miles without a pee stop. And I’m a girl so you have to do a Full Monty.
I usually have a friend take watch but it’s the woods. Every other animal pees there, why can’t I?
You’re a girl, so I have to do a Full Monty? Will, ok, since you asked for it.
You could say the same about city streets, although I’d like to think that the wilderness “brings out our animal instinct” or something like that.
Is her name really Will?
Some of the things I saw when I was in school: Chewing gum in class, running down the halls, loud talking, breaking in line, littering, and probably even more than I can’t think of at this time.
Who knows? My Mom’s eldest sister’s given names are Willie Marie; my grandfather was named Willie, and he decided his first child would be named Willie, boy or girl!
You’re very lucky then, Colophon. I have lived in London and Kent all my life (over 50 years) and seen numerous acts of violence - the worst probably being a fight between two men, one armed with a large knife and the other with a half-brick in a sock - The emergency services had to get two ambulances as they were still trying to kill each other when the police and paramedics arrived despite both of them being seriously wounded (I later heard that one of them was DoA at the local hospital, though they both still looked prettify lively when the police were trying to get them into the ambulances). This was on a Saturday lunchtime in Sheerness High Street, Kent. The fight had apparently started in a pub and spilled out into the road.
That is not the most disgraceful thing I have seen, though. That was also in Sheerness in a block of flats I used to live in. Some of the flats were rented to absentee landlords who sub-let them to… well, lets just say not very nice people. One young couple with a baby moved in and within a week had sold their entire bathroom suite. They spent the rest of their tenancy (about a year) crapping in a bucket and emptying it out of the window. Presumably they didn’t wash at all. No complaints were made because both of them (presumably not the baby, though one never knew in that part of the world) were known to be ‘a bit handy with a blade’.