THROW A SCARE INTO ’EM

This morning, a post by The Famously Constipated Dooce™ caught my eye:

Today as I was driving to the grocery store I stopped at a four-way intersection near an elementary school. It’s a four-way stop as well as a cross-walk, so I had to stop anyway, but before I even pulled to a stop two kids just walked across the street having full faith that I wouldn’t hit them. I had to think, am I doing them ANY favors by letting them get way with that? Don’t they know you just can’t go around trusting people?

Heather decides, quite wisely, that it just might not be a good idea to “nudge” the kids with the front of the truck...because she’d be incapable of delivering a gentle nudge.

Heather’s story reminded me of one the Dad d’Elisson - Eli his ownself! - told me a few years ago.

Back in the 1970’s, when we lived in our old neighborhood on the south shore of Long Island, there was a family that lived at the end of the next block. They lived in a rundown house with a Yard-Full of Crap and had a swarm of kids, the oldest of which was a couple of years younger than the Bro d’Elisson. And the boys - all four of ’em - were a rowdy, swinish lot. One of them, by way of a Regular Prank, had gotten in the habit of climbing on our roof at night (we had a 1960’s contemporary house with a low, sloped roof, so this was easier than it sounds) and running around, to the enormous consternation of my parents.

My Dad loathed those little snot-noses.

One day, he was on his way to run an errand, and he had just pulled out of the driveway. At the far end of our short street, about 100 yards away, was a knot of kids on bicycles. Those kids. The whole lot of ’em, with a few assorted hangers-on. (Except Alec, who by that time was away at college.)

And the Old Man gets it in his head that he’s going to throw a scare into them.

So he starts accelerating. Not that there’s a lot of room on this short street...but his idea is to zoom down the street and then come to a screeching stop just short of the Crowd o’ Budding Juvenile Delinquents. Make ’em shit their britches.

Faster, faster, down the street.

And that’s when the little light bulb goes on in his head. The little light bulb that starts flashing, “What the fuck am I doing?!!?”

Because one little miscalculation, and one or more of those kids would end up dead, with two families shattered - theirs and ours. One little miscalculation, and my father would never have been able to forgive himself, all as a result of a momentary spasm of General Pissed-Offedness.

So he slowed down, and gave the kids time to get out of the way...which they did in the grudging manner of all kids who have to yield their Rightful Place in the Middle of the Street to automobile traffic.

And thus it was that Billy, Danny (the Roof-Climber), and Stephen lived to adulthood.

The Baldwin brothers. Perhaps you’ve heard of them...