I left for Church about ten minutes before the service. That's enough time to get there, but it is pushing it a bit. On my way there, I saw three kids in a driveway. Two of one was on his back, on the ground covering his face. The other two were on top of him throwing punches.
I started to park on the side of the street, only to notice a "No Parking" sign right in front of me. I turned the first corner, parked, got out of the car, and ran back to where they were. They were gone. All three of them. There were two kids around, but I didn't remember exactly which driveway it was, nor did I ever see any of the kids faces. Neither of the kids I saw looked like they had been beaten up. Unsure of what to do, I just went on to Church, arriving late.
Looking back on it I wonder a few things:
1) Why were the kids gone? Did they realize I was coming back because I started to park next to them? If so, maybe Jesus used me to stop them without even confronting them. If not, did someone else see them and stop them in the minute it took me to park and get back there?
2) Should I have just stopped and gotten out immediately, even though it wasn't a legal parking spot? If I had the opportunity again, I think I would. I don't think it would have blocked traffic. Being there only a short time, it is unlikely that I would have been towed. Even if I was towed, I think it would have been worth it to help the kid on the bottom.
3) Should I have tried harder before leaving? I could have confronted the kids that I saw. It seems likely that the two kids I saw were the ones beating up the third kid.
4) If I had the opportunity to confront them in the act, what would I have done? I think I would have first told them sternly to cut it out. If they didn't listen, I'm fairly confident that I was big enough relative to them to have physically stopped them.
If you had been driving by, what would you have done?
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2 comments:
I'm ridiculously confrontational in those sort of situations (I have a tendency to break up fights in malls, between bums on the street, between drunk college students I don't know, etc.) I would have parked right there and gotten in the middle of it, probably by grabbing the kid who was getting beat and seeing what the other two did from there. I think that's the right thing to do, but I don't know that I have the best motivations - I think that I really want to be the hero a lot of the time.
As a somewhat petite female, I am reluctant to put myself in the middle of fights, jumping in to stop vandalism, etc. So I try to use my brains rather than non-existant braun. In that case, I would have stopped and looked pointedly at the kids so they knew I was watching. Most of the time that is all it takes to stop it. If the two on top had gone away, and the one on the bottom was bloody or didn't get up quickly, I would have gone to see if I could help him. Sometimes, the people who seem to be fighting just get up and laugh it off and go away together. Which confuses me, but... MAMAEJV
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