Suburban vignette

[Larry Kart]

A week or so ago my 62-year-old wife was walking the dog on the sidewalk when a kid aged 12-14, on a bike came barreling up from behind with no warning and almost knocked her down. She yelled at him that he should be riding on the street (that's the law here) or at least shout in warning "on your left"or "on your right" or walk his bike when approaching a pedestrian from behind at high speed. He did yell "sorry" as he rode away.

So today she was walking the dog again when a woman in a white Cadiliac SUV pulled up alongside her and began yelling at her for yelling at her kid that day -- the kid was in the SUV's front seat, which is  how the mom knew my wife was the "culprit" who dared to admonish her offspring. My wife replied that her son should be riding his bike in the street, per the traffic laws, not mowing down pedestrians from behind;  the mom replied that the streets here are too narrow for that, which is b.s. Then the mom angrily gunned the SUV's engine several times, seemingly to express how furious she was, and drove off. 

[mjzee]

Lovely people.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Get her license plate number and the next time he rides down the sidewalk, call the police and let them know. Maybe when they knock on their door, the mother will realize the error of her approach. The law is the law and in this case, it's on your side.

[Tom 1960]

I'm convinced that this pandemic has made some people batshit crazy. Not making excuses of course.

[jazzbo]

Pandemic, Fox, Breitbart, Facebook et al.

[JSngry]

When empowerment turns to entitlement, bad things.

[Big Beat Steve]

  On 9/24/2020 at 11:45 AM, Tom 1960 said:

I'm convinced that this pandemic has made some people batshit crazy. Not making excuses of course.

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I doubt it. Parent women (some men too, I guess) who are CONVINCED that their offspring can do no wrong at all just because he/she just happens to be THEIR offspring is a not so rare phenomenon over here (and I doubt this is unknown in the US). Made worse by the same kind of parent women who insist on driving SUVs as "parent taxis" through our suburban streets (that often are not really suitable for that kind of show-off tanks) although they are not even capable of really handling them (i.e. they don't know shit about where their monster starts and ends ).

Edited September 24, 2020 by Big Beat Steve

[Larry Kart]

My wife missed getting the license plate. The next time, if there is one, she won't. BTW the official motto of our town -- Highland Park, il. --  is "courtesy counts."
 

[riddlemay]

Someone came within inches of running me over in a strip mall parking lot and threw up her hands in that "WTF, Man?" gesture we love so much.

[JSngry]

Also add the ongoing technological reprogramming of our brains to the paradigm that we are not just the center of our own universes, but that we are the ENTIRETY of our universes and that anything disrupting our self-induced reality is a violation of our own Holy Sanctified Reality Order.

We can expect the worse possible outcome. Somewhere inside, people know better but don't care. And if that place inside no longer exists, hey...