Don't Kick

It happened as Marsha was driving home. School had just let out, and as she came to the top of the hill she saw a boy about ten years old kicking a smaller boy who lay on the sidewalk. Enraged, she pulled the car over to the curb and struggled to put down the window. She had been driving her husband’s car for the past week, and his window buttons operated exactly opposite from hers. In her state of agitation, she couldn’t seem to get the window down, and so when the kicker started toward her, she laid on the horn.

“Whatsa matter?” he demanded.

Finally she found the right button, pushed it the right direction, and the passenger window went down. “Stop kicking him!” she yelled.

“We’re just playing around,”the boy said.

“Don’t kick!” she said loudly, not knowing what to do next.

“We were just playing around,” he said again. “Ask him yourself.”

The smaller boy, probably the same age but Hispanic, was on his feet by now. Looking her straight in the eye, he said the same thing.

“Well, don’t kick people,” she said lamely and pulled out from the curb and drove away, thankful that her own children were not around. They would have been mortified.

Angry at herself for being so easily shaken, Marsha went over the scene in her mind. Why had she done that? Should she have ignored it? It hadn’t really looked as if the boy was being hurt, but she didn’t notice that at first. And what if he had been? What would she have done then? She felt old and helpless, but not in the wrong.

The smaller boy appeared to be telling the truth, but what if he had to say that around that bully? That thought crossed her mind, and she was puzzling about it when, out of nowhere, a boy on a bike intruded on her consciousness.