Today I have lost all hope in society, and am officially sworn off buses. Normally I complain about the unreliability, infrequency of buses and occasionally about the rudeness of bus drivers. Often I have been waiting over an hour an half for my bus to turn up in the freezing cold and once in the snow. Its really the most annoying thing immaginable. Because you are totally powerless, you have no information. Just have to wait and assume it will come at some stage.
But today something entirely different happened and put my rather minor meek complaints into perspective, Today my bus arrived rather uncharacteristically early at about 4.10pm just about school finish time. It was a double decker bus as usual and I sat on top about 4 rows from the front. Stared out the window watched the world go by. The bus was full of secondary school kids from various different schools Newpark, Gerrards, Blackrock college. So it was pretty lively and noisy. 3 college hefty guys were sitting in front of me chatting away.
Suddenly, out of the blew I heard "stop stop I don't have any money, Help, somebody Help. Me and the 3 college guys looked behind us and saw 3 kids about 13 years old attacking a small little younger boy maybe 11 or 12 years old. I ushered the guys in front of me to go and help because I knew myself there is no way I would have a chance.
They told the boys to stop and leave him alone and next thing the boys started to get rowdy and viscious and gave the younger boy a huge whallop in the eye and then started cursing and telling the college guys to fuck off, mind your own business, watch out we'll get you... They wouldn't let the boy get to the front of the bus one of the bigger college guys had to grab him and next thing the 3 guys legged it off the bus. Leaving the little boy crying and saying "Why me, what did i do?
The poor little boy was left with a really badly swollen eye. I tried to comfort him and asked him to call his mom while the other college guys asked around did anyone have anything cold to put on his eye. Then 5 minutes later it was his bus stop and the bus driver saw his eye and stopped the bus and asked the boy what happened and then the police were called his mom was called and an ambulance was called.
The whole thing was absolutely horrible.Initially I felt really annoyed all those kids around him hadn't tried to stop the bad boys and had just watched I just felt it was so disgusting. However when I got home I talked to my boyfriend about it and he said can you really blame them for not wanting to interfere, perhaps if they interfered they may have to look over there shoulder every time they go out to do normal things. Because those boys might come around and attack them from behind next time. so after reflecting on it I guess they were afraid they would be attacked...
But the saddest part about the whole thing was that I actually knew the younger boy, Last semester I used to have one class on a Tuesday, International Business management which started at 8.30am so I always used to have to catch 7.20 bus. Which coincidentally he used to catch that bus as well and every Tuesday we used to exchange our little morning chit chats and every Tuesday I used to watch out for him at the bus stop and if he wasn't there i would automatically know I had missed the bus.
there's a lot bullying in the U.S. too but usually the bullies don't bully in front of adults.
ReplyDeleteWow.. that is horrible! I remember when I was in elementary school, this older boy tried to choke me (I don't quite remember what happened or why) but then my older brother came and either threatened him or beat him up. It was really terrifying and I feel sorry for the boy you met but I think it's hard. If one kid "tattle-tales" then there will be some kind of revenge afterward. :/ Everyone wants to save their own skin so it's hard to stop these things from happening.
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