I had an interesting experience yesterday as I drove up to our complex. There were a few cars ahead of me with other Mom’s driving and also a car full of young girls. We have a traffic circle type of turn around in the complex and as I rounded it I could see the expressions on these women’s faces were of disgust, shock and anger. Then I saw why they were looking so stunned.
On the side of the road was a 13 or 14 year old boy in a yellow jacket. He had a younger kid with him around 9 would be my guess and they were cracking up laughing and thinking they were pretty clever as the older boy was making Extreme sexual gestures to the women in all of the cars. I swear the kid was almost humping the road he was so aggressive in his game of “I’m going to shock and embarrass these girls”. He made a gesture at me also and honestly my first thought was, “what a little punk” but then my Motherly instincts kicked in and I couldn’t ignore it, I couldn’t drive past, I didn’t know what I was going to do but I stopped the car.
The boy looked at me as I rolled down the window and in his most obnoxious teenage voice he could muster said “WHAT??!”, I reached down into my purse and pulled out $5.00 and said to him “Hey you know what, I am going to give you $5.00 but I also want to give you some advice. Not a bad deal hey?” The kid looked at me like I was insane but the prospect of five bucks must have peaked his interest because he said ok.
Then I just said “I’m sure that you are a really great young man, I just want you to know that when you make gestures like that to women it makes you look younger and more immature than you really are. If you learn to treat women with respect right now you’ll have alot more girlfriends in the future. Making gestures like that can also get you into trouble and I’d hate to see that happen to you. Anyway that’s all I wanted to tell you -Here you go, I hope you have a good day.”
He took the $5.00 out of my hand and looked kind of stunned, I imagine that he hadn’t had anyone respond to him in that way before and was expecting some mean old preggo lady like me to pull the car over and yell at him. Anyway, it was a lesson to me that anger isn’t always the best way to get through to someone and sometimes just taking them off guard from the reaction they are expecting can do some good. I’m sure that I have in no way “cured” this boy of immature behavior but I do think that he will remember what I said to him and to me that was worth the five dollars and minute out of my day.
What would you have done?