Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm

It just isn’t right.

Back in my school days (hold the violins, please), boys were boys — especially when the testosterone age hit. There were some differing points of views — maybe even a few fist fights but nothing like the recent incident Diane wrote about in her weblog yesterday. Diane’s the originator and moderator of the clever Dead Guy on the Sidebar game.

She calmly posted an entry about a school district bus full of rambunctious kids, her son ignoring another student in his face, Diane (as any mother would do) trying to mediate what surely could be a nasty physical confrontation.

Do the boys end up duking it out? This is where I shake my head. The in-her-son’s face kid, turns his attitude on Diane and hits her in the chest and knocks her down.

The bus driver lets other kids off the bus to pull this kid back on the bus and then shuts the door on Diane and drives away.

Shame, shame, shame on cowards such as these.

I had to read her post about the incident twice. This kid has some serious issues and unfortunately he’s messed with the wrong person when he assaulted Diane.

I checked back today hoping to read Diane’s weblog entry about how the incident had been resolved and appropriate action taken. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Shame on the coward who assaulted Diane but now also more shame on seemingly unconcerned bureaucrats who should be acting swiftly to resolve the matter.

My jaw dropped as I read Diane’s followup post detailing how the incident is being dealt with — or rather how it is being ignored.

I’m certainly not an expert on raising kids, having none of my own, but if my son hit another boy’s mother hard enough to knock her down, I’d be ashamed. Ashamed of my cowardly son and ashamed at myself for lack of parenting skills to teach my son that hitting someone is simply wrong.

I think of what my father would have done to me had I been such a coward as this boy. That 2 X 4 in the garage would have been parked on my backside so fast I would have never seen it coming.

Diane’s saga is far from over. Just where are the parents of this kid? Who the hell is this incompetent bus driver who would watch a boy assault a woman, let him back on the bus and yet claim not to know who he was? There’s something missing from this entire episode and the way the school district is handling it.

I want to think the next generation will be smarter than we were. I have my doubts and that makes me sad.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 28th, 2006 at 3:45:55 PM and is filed under JOURNAL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.