i have been planning a permanent move over from virginia usa and brought my son over for a temp visit for the month of feb. since i love the place i was hoping he would too. one sunday afternoon about 3pm i asked him if he wanted to walk with me to the haworth gallery. it had snowed the day before and i wanted to take some pics. as we were leaving the gallery while walking on the side of the road a car was coming towards us. as it saw us it sped up until it was doing between 65 and 70 mph and was coming right for us, on purpose. 5 kids in the car and missed us by a few inches. it wasn't until it was halfway down the street that i realized i had a camera and took a pic of it. it was a blue clio. if it was an older couple walking that afternoon they would have died from a heart attack. it was that scary.
i just kind of shrugged it off and just took it as bad luck.
a few days later it warmed up a little and my son said he was walking to the skate park in town. when i heard the door open about 20 mins later i knew something had happened. it was 3pm and just as he got near the skate park some hit him in the head with a snow ball. he turned and 6 teens jumped him, hitting him in the back of the head with something and stomped him.
no one i spoke to about it was surprised, no one was shocked, like it happens all the time. there were lots of other kids and other people walking by and on the street but no one stopped to help him. i don't understand that.
i have traveled a lot and i have been to big cities all over the usa. i have heard people in the uk and in australia say how dangerous the usa is. how there are guns and killings and they talk about it like they would about a cowboy movie....but i KNOW that if that happened in my town and in any of the towns i've lived in in the usa people would have stopped those 6 punks from beating one kid. no doubt about it. it has nothing to do with guns, it has to do with respect and order and knowing right from wrong.
i don't care how little i am, IF i was there with him that day i would have fought them tooth and nail to help him....whether it was my son or yours...or your mother or father. (of course i would have probably been beaten worse than he was but i would have taken at least one down with me).
but seriously IS that normal here? do you have to be afraid just walking home from town or through the park in the middle of the afternoon?
after coming here probably 25 times in the last 5 years for the first time i am seriously rethinking the move. and for the first time in my life i was scared of a place.
