Time to Kick Some Ass

We recently had a run-in with a kid who is older than Psizzle- 2-ish.  We have been to two other places with this kid and I observed behavior that I did not like.  The most recent encounter involved this kid being mean to Pman.  The kid pushed/grabbed from/hit him several times until P was crying.  I'm actually really (REALLY) upset about this.  I like the mom, but the attendance of the little...one...at future outings makes me question my own. 

So.

Rather than dwell on it or rehash the entire thing, I will post a story from my past that speaks volumes about how some people close to me, not me, but those I know, handle conflict.


WARNING: This is a true story and therefore I will be telling it as it actually happened. Harsh language is involved- an F-bomb or two. Honestly, saying Fudge! or Fiddlesticks! does not have the same impact. Proceed with caution.

When I graduated from Salisbury with my undergrad, my older sister- Megan (M), a friend of ours- Meghan (H) and I went on a cross country trip together. The trip lasted a month and we put ten thousand miles on the car. There are many stories, this is one of them.

We were on the return portion of our trip and planned to stop in Wyoming to visit friends of M's and camp out in Yellowstone National Park. Of course, as we are pulling into the Park, it starts raining- not pouring, just a heavy drizzle to rain. We decide to forge ahead and camp anyway. After finding a proper location, we popped up our tent. Even though we had camped before on this specific trip, "us" popping up the tent usually meant H did the major portion of the work, while M and I watched and pretended to know where this pole or that stake belonged. After the tent was up we figured it would be best to fashion a sort of canopy over it using a blue tarp and several bungee cords. I wish I had a picture of this because there are no words that would do this masterpiece justice. Attempt to picture it though- the tent was just big enough for the three of us and over top was a HUGE blue tarp that was bungeed to the surrounding trees with various colored cords in a spider-web pattern. We threw our sleeping bags in and though we were wet and more than a little muddy, we headed over to the dining hall for some grub.

While there in our sweat suit finest, we were invited by one of the cafeteria employees to a "party" later than night. Having nothing else to do we took him up on the invitation- he had a kind face- and decided on a meet up time.

Since we were camping and going to a "party" thrown by someone who works at the Yellowstone National Park cafeteria we figured muddy sweats were perfect attire. We were wrong.

These kids got decked out for this party, which by the way, ended up being about 30 people sitting on soggy logs in the shape of a square with a bonfire that gave off the same glow as a 5 year olds birthday cake. There was one guy with a guitar and a CASE...A- case...24 beers being passed around. M, H and I looked at each other and nonverbally decided drinking wine out of the bottle in our dark, wet tarp covered tent was better than this.

We thanked our host for the invite and headed back toward to road that led to the parking lot where our car was parked and head back to our tent. As we walked away we heard warnings of buffalo and bison and deer- Oh My! (or was it elk?  no matter)

The walk back involved walking through an fairly empty field and up a very steep hill. M and H walked side-by-side and I was about one step behind them. It was very dark, but not pitch black. A spindly guy in an oversized fatigue jacket walked passed us. He was headed in the direction of the party and said something to the effect of us heading in the wrong direction because the fun was about to begin at the "party". The three of us more or less ignored him.

Soon after, we passed a tree- in my memory, it was the only tree around, but logic tells me that cannot be the case- H grabbed a branch off the tree. M asked, "Why did you do that?" And for reasons I still do not understand I replied, "Don't worry, she'll use it." It should be noted the branch just happened to look exactly like a gun.

After what felt like seconds, but was likely longer, I heard something behind me. I turned to look and it was that spindly guy running toward us. He was running so fast his jacket was flying behind him. Truth be told, I was the shortest of the three of us and I was taller than this guy. His waist was about the width of my thigh- pre baby- dude was small. Anyway, I see him running toward us, so I yell, "It's him!" while pushing through and past M and H. I did not stop running until I was up the hill, which at this point was just a few feet away. I must have pushed my sister on the ground because when I got to the top of the hill I saw her on the ground like a dead bug.

I saw H crack this guy twice in the head with her gun stick. While screaming, "I'LL FUCK YOU UP MOTHERFUCKER!"

While the man's defenses were compromised, H ran up the hill to meet me.

By this time M was getting up and saying to the stick victim, "Look, you're just freaking us out."

He's freaking us out? This tiny douche bag just got cracked in the head with a stick, TWICE for running in our direction. He didn't say anything. He never made any threats (up to this point). We were all taller than him by at least 5 inches and outweighed him...well by some amount of poundage. There were three of us and one of him and HE is freaking US out.

M steadies herself and meets H and I at the top of the hill. As she is running toward us, stick victim is calling us crazy bitches and telling us he is going to find us. Now, if you have never been to Yellowstone, it is HUGE- it was dark, it was rainy. Aside from knowing we were from Maryland, there is no way he or anyone really could "get us". Not to mention our tent was surrounded by many others and was mere feet away from the bathroom. If anyone attempted to "get us" they would not be successful for the simple fact of the very public location of our tent. Plus H still had her stick.

We ran to our car and headed back to our tent. After a conversation recapping the recent events, we drifted into quietness and each thought the others were sleeping. However, we were all in a frozen state of paranoia. We eventually each thought we heard either footsteps, breathing or whispering- which we probably did, I mean re-read the previous paragraph about the location of our tent. Instead of toughing it out we folded up the tent, tarp, bungees and sleeping bags and threw it in the back of the car and rolled out.

I got pulled over for speeding and I must have seemed very freaked out because the cop wrote down my story and told me to watch out for bison and let me go despite not being about to produce my licensee as it was in the mud tent heap in the back of the car.

The next morning as we told our story to M's friends we realized, perhaps we reacted, or overacted a bit. Maybe he was running for another reason. We were headed in the direction of the mess hall, where he likely worked. We envisioned him the next day serving crappy chicken parm nuggets to some Yellowstone cafeteria go-er with two huge welts on his forehead.

To the Yellowstone guy I say, sorry.

To the kid who is mean to P, I say- please keep your hands to yourself.