In which I'm threatened by a fifteen-year-old boy

Saturday 5/2/26

There are these kids who ride around Boston on bikes trying to get into it with people. They swear at car drivers, passerby. Call people “faggots.” That's a big one of theirs. They get hyper-aggressive. Pass in front of cars near lights, ride up against driver side windows, giving drivers the finger, don't slow down at all in crosswalks (and I saw them do this with a pregnant woman recently). Probably twenty of them. Early yesterday evening, I was crossing the street coming back from Haymarket near the disused toll booth.

Along came these kids down Cross Street from the direction of Christopher Columbus Park--that is, in the same direction as the traffic--not having stopped as people were trying to cross with the walk sign (it takes a while, too, at this intersection, which definitely favors vehicular traffic; and when you do get the signal to walk, it's only lasts like ten seconds). A fifteen-year-old boy on a bike makes like to run me over--he would have gone right into me if I hadn't slowed down--and says, “Better watch yourself, pal," in as threatening as a "I'm a little murderer" voice as he could muster. A voice that you know he deploys many times each day on these...outings.

It's a strange thing to be threatened physically by a child. How do children get like this? I ask that question about many people, regardless of age. I ask it about the people I see in the Monument with their over-the-top rudeness and entitlement, who always act as if they're in the right, forever in the right, no matter how wrong they are, how stupid, uncomprehending, clown-like.

A child like this, of course, is broken, but it's hard to have any sympathy. We do have a say in how we'll conduct ourselves, even when things have been hard for us, and I also have no reason to think that things have been out of the ordinary--or what passes for such--for a boy like this. He could come from a family of affluence.

So much in this world now goes back to poor parenting. Most parents are bad at parenting. This is what happens when bad people, who take no responsibility, who have no character, who are unthinking and uneducated and functionally illiterate at best, breed and, for lack of a better term, attempt to rear. They're not fit to do this. To bring a child up right, with all that entails mentally, emotionally, morally, intellectually.

You know that this kid will always be some of a monster. He's never going to read a book, never going to think in terms of what kindnesses he could do for others. He's not going to give but rather take at every opportunity. He'll be some form of violent, or various forms. Violence isn't just physical. It doesn't have to be physical at all. People can be emotionally violent. They can be violently with their moods.

What someone like this never realizes as a child, nor as an adult--which, for them, will only and ever entail being an adult in name only--is that the secure person who isn't this way pities them at best, and more likely regards them as a joke.

I would have burst out laughing at this child were I not so troubled by the latest bit of evidence of how so many of us are, which is why the world is what it is. And being alive right now for an intelligent person who is also a good and caring person is like a nightmare. It's hard to laugh then.

And of course, the cowardice. The thing the person says while going past on the swifter means of conveyance. It's like the people in publishing. Cowards. They're quite similar to this kid in some regards.

Or the people in the Monument who say something to my back after they've been in the wrong when I'm going down the stairs and they think they won't be seeing me again. That almost always plays out the same way when I turn around, head up once more, and we pass as they descend. Their eyes drop to the ground so fast. They don't have anything to say then. And it's not like I'm saying anything. I'm just looking at them.

I see a boy like this and I think of all the bad things that will be a result of his life. The people he'll hurt. His lack of meaning, purpose. His anger. His fear. He won't learn anything. He won't be able to communicate. Obviously he won't be able to write anything. He won't be gentle. Won't give a child what a child needs, should he ever have a child.

I know that people often want to play devil's advocate, which speaks more to other things than it does the possibility of alternative truths. But when you're ever like this, you tend to be someone who is always like this, unless you grow. Growth takes honesty, self-awareness, courage, recognition, acceptance, and humility. These are both tools and attributes. They require mental discipline, follow through, and commitment to be put into practice.

All of which is way beyond the capacity of almost all people now, as well as way beyond the remit of their wishes. These concepts are utterly foreign to how they live and have usually lived for so long. They have no idea that such things exist, or what they're like, that they're even a theoretical option, and it would hardly ever occur to them. Then they live a life of hurting. The hurting of others, the hurting of themselves.