public servant

I would like to tell a story in response to a blogger I respect:

http://www.mynameiswilliamsmythe.blogspot.com/

He asks " what would you do in the situation" while watching a display of poor parenting...Read his post and here's a couple of my experiences...


My wife and I were departing a Falcon's home game, after a dissapointing loss to an opponent we were expected to beat, a couple years ago. Before the words 'rape stand' became part of our lexicon...

With 80,000 fans streaming out in various egresses, we took a route that required a long escalator ride in a nearby Marta station. This is a loooong escalator, and since the game was over, they switched the 'in/out' to 'out/out' meaning we were bottlenecked from a drunken crowd into 2 narrow lanes exiting.

I observed an older man of about 50, a typical 'redneck' type with 3 kids in tow, no wife, screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs at a 'Godammned Cocksucking Fuck-a-neers Fan'. He continued this assault, at which point I turned to the guy 4 feet behind him on the escalator " Hey man, ignore this guy...Good game! "

This was almost too much for Bubba. He then turned to me, who was exactly next to him on the escalator down, and said " Hey, you fuckin' punk! Mind your own goddamned business!This guy bumped into my child! He didn't apologize, that piece of shit!"

At this point, I was standing next to my wife and looking down the escalator at the landing below. I knew that the radio station I worked for at the time had an engineer near a van parked near the bottom of the landing. I looked about me, and could tell that most of the people around me were embarrassed as hell, too.

So this one time, I calmly said to him " Well, excuse me but I didn't recognize your 'Father of the year' badge because you were too busy swearing like that in front of your 'children'! ( which were like 13, 10 and 5 yrs old..)

This set him OFF. He then started to say " I'll talk to your punk ass at the bottom! "

Then about 10 people around him said " Shut up and go home! " and I observed his 13 year old boy tuggin on his arms, saying 'c'mon Daddy, dont do this....dont do this!"

He left when we got to the bottom, dragged away by his kids, and the guy I told 'good game' said thanks, looked a little hammered.

I still wonder to this day if he bumped that guys kid!

I puffed up and felt proud at the time. But later, when I got home, I felt like a douchebag. Because I remember being that kid with the faced Daddy looking like a prick at a sporting event, and I challenged the guy. He would have muttered and walked away, but I was being 'a good servant' and thought I was doing the right thing.

About a year ago, while driving down Boulevard, I noticed a pimp beating the daylights out of one of his ho's in broad daylight while my baby was in the car..I slowed and rolled down the window and screamed " Hey! "

The guy hit that girl so hard and looked at me as if to say "Get involved, motherfucker! I need 2 asses to kick today "....So I drove on, and never even called 9-11. But I feel worse about the incident at the Falcons game then this one, and I cannot justify it.

Sometimes you just cannot win. My little man makes a decent cowboy, though.