In theory most people want to see people get their comeuppance but they also want control over it. I suppose this is primarily a Saturn function though I could argue some other angles.
The fact is people think they can break the rules be them social or societal and boy are they surprised when someone breaks the rules on them. They think THEY are the force of nature, see. They are the special one who can do whatever they want while the people around them be decent and I have a story to illustrate.
One time the soldier pulled into a video store parking lot, went inside to rent a movie. He came out to find some kid had gone through the parking lot with his knife and slashed tires on four vehicles, including his own truck. He caught him in the act.
Spotting the soldier coming for him the kid took off. He was teenager, about 17 years old, fast and wiry. The soldier, in his late 30’s, maybe even 40, took off after him.
The kid was fast and the soldier was getting madder and madder having to chase his young ass, you can imagine. My husband is a lazy man and if you make him have to run after you like this… get his heart pounding and shit, well he is going to make you very sorry when he catches you. He did catch the kid.
He told the kid he should be ashamed that an old man like him could catch him, “What’s the matter with you, some old man like me can catch you?” At this point the kid tried to stick him with his knife. Yep, he tried to stab him and not appreciating that, the soldier wrapped his arm around his back, disarming him and then he slammed his whole body, including his head into a brick wall. “Now we’re going back to the store,” he told him.
He commenced to holding him up by his shirt neck and half dragging him down the road with his arm wrenched behind his back. No doubt he was talking to him the whole time, something along the lines of how he was going to back to the store and and apologize to everyone and if not, how he’d be happy to take it out on the kid in the form of an ass-kicking.
The soldier explained it was nice people who got their tires slashed, a mother with a baby, never mind his own truck so you can imagine how pissed he was. He said he has to drag the kid by the scruff of his neck a long way (almost a mile) but it was the kids own fault because he was the one who ran. Eventually they made it back to the store and then the police showed up.
Seeing the police car, the soldier drug the kid over to it, picked him up and threw him on the hood of the car, and announced,”This is the motherfucker right here.”
He said everyone was pretty stunned – the kid was looking a little rough by now and to his great surprise no one wanted to press charges. That’s right. They thought the kid has gotten his comeuppance already but the soldier did not agree – he pressed charges.
He owned a machine shop at the time and the kid and his mother came to his work and asked him to drop the charges. They said they would buy him a tire and he said, “You’ll buy me a tire and you’ll put it on.”
He said they came out to do this and he made the kid stand there and listen to him rant for a half hour. Like this:
“Why don’t you try working, you little bastard? Work for a living why don’t you. Ever work a motherfucking day in your life? See that,” he said, pointing the machines. “That is work. I had to work for the money to pay for that tire and then some little asshole like you comes along and you’re going to stick you knife in it? I’m telling you, if I ever catch you doing anything like this again, I will beat the living shit out of you, I will beat you to a pulp if I see you slash another tire, you better not let me catch you or my boot’ll go so far up your…”
He said the kid stood there the whole time, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir…”
Eventually he allowed the kid to replace the tire and he did drop the charges but my point is this:
There are people out there like my husband (and like me for that matter) and when you try your little games with us, you get a whole lot more than you bargained for.
For the record, if I was this boy’s mother, I’d have thanked the soldier for what he did. This because I’d have obviously taught my kid right from wrong and if he didn’t learn from me, my hope would be that he learned from someone and as far as I am concerned the soldier’s method is as good as any.
What I don’t understand is leniency in a circumstance like this. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to run around and pop people’s tires when they’ve done nothing at all to you and if you have forgotten this, then this story is a reminder.
It’s like a rapist going down the block from house to house. You get to mine, I am going to kill you.
Or like the boss who methodically sexually harassed every young woman who ever worked for him right up until he fucked with me. I was 17 years old and I took him out.
Comeuppance at times is violent. Violent and effective and as far as I am concerned – just.
Have you ever been taught a lesson but good?
“My husband is a lazy man and if you make him have to run after you like this… get his heart pounding and shit, well he is going to make you very sorry when he catches you. He did catch the kid.”
LMAO!!! Ah man, I was laughing at that one!!!
I agree that anyway of learning a lesson is a good way! I babysit foster kids and some of them are VERY turbulent but once they’re placed in my foster family (my dad’s friend and she’s a kindergarden institute, as been for the past 20 years and she’s TOUGH!!!) they don’t have much choices!!! Either you learn fast or else.. no physical violence but no back-talking or rudeness are accepted. Had to teach some kids some lessons about that and yep, they learned and the others learn through that kid so you don’t have to do it twice.
I like the soldier’s methods!!!! LMAO!!
Wow good for the Soldier!! I agree that was the right way to handle it. I think parents are way to lenient these days.
I have never been taught a hard lesson per se like this but I sure have learned a few on my own due to assumption. And man, that stings as bad as anything else in some cases.
That kid is “lucky” the soldier knew how to disarm him. Can you imagine if it was someone else who caught the kid, the kid tries to stab in self defense (or whatever), and the guy actually gets stabbed? The kid’s future would have been over!
Oooh! Love this story!
Reminds me of a story my Dad told me: when he was about 8, he spat a piece of tar through a straw at the postman and hit him in the face. The postman chased him and gave him a slap back, right in the face.
So my Dad ran home to tell his mum, and his mum was like, “Served you right!”
he likes to remind me, “I’ve never picked a fight but if you ask for one, you’ll get it.” his way to teach us not to pick fights, I think. he’s a Libra, with Mars in Taurus.
Sitara, he is lucky as is the collective. Bottom line, we need people who are willing to take on criminals, etc. You can’t just stick a tit in this kid’s mouth and make it be okay or worse…
These days a kid acts like this and it’s the parent’s fault. ::rolls eyes::
Ah, well. Not violently. But Scorpios never forget. We’re score keepers, even if we never say it out loud.
I think many of us are also pretty strict parents. I know I am. If my kid ever pulled a knife on someone, he’d have to “work” off his behavior at home. Just like juvy. No phone, no computer, nothing. Just school and chores, maybe some community service.
“These days a kid acts like this and it’s the parent’s fault. ::rolls eyes::”
But I would TOTALLY take the blame if I were his parent, Elsa. Because if my kid thought this was acceptable behavior, clearly I did something wrong somewhere!
“Because if my kid thought this was acceptable behavior, clearly I did something wrong somewhere!”
well that is the difference between me and you, LCDU! 🙂
I know for a fact parents can do everything right (or good enough by far) and have the kid come out wrong as easy as parents can do everything wrong and have the kid come out right.
People have free will. The kid knows damned well he is not supposed to stab tires, he is just a jerk.
I pulled shit when I was a kid and I assure you it was by my own design.
Love this story. I call it KARMA. Are you and your husband Sicilian?
Pat, I am Italian but not Sicilian. My husband is 1/8 Italian and claims he is Italian. 😉
Recently refound you, Elsa (went hunting after I realized I missed you so). Have been sitting back and reading/enjoying for some time now, but this post? Super trong urge to join in this conversation.
It’s funny (sad funny-not haha funny)…I got to the part about the police car and presupposed an ending where the Soldier was charged with assault.
I’m a born “comeuppancer”–mess with me or mine? mess with an underdog?..I’ll make the time and find the energy to make you think three times about that ever again. I took it as a matter of fact-a natural law, if you will.
But these last 5 or so years have been a maelstrom where bad people routinely not only get away with bad things but are able to inflict some nasty collateral damage as they whistle down the road.
Old habits die hard, and I’m not wired as a roll-over…but boy oh, I hope to someday shake this nervous tick of flinching for the other shoe to drop.
And yeah-I’ve been fairly and rightly ‘set straight’ by comeuppancers more than a time or two. Usually spot-on timing for some life lesson I was sorely needing to be lit up in giant scary neon at the time. All the more reason I’d thought of it as a natural force of nature.
Thank you and the Soldier for this story. Makes me downright nostalgic.
In whatever case, sometimes you run into a bigger fish and frankly, I think we are agents of the universe just like people who serve in other ways.
I mean you’re just running amok and then BAM. Into a wall you go and who cares about this? Who thinks you do not have a wall coming?
As for violence, it is definitely a deterrent. My son at the moment is being teased and taunted at school. Teased and taunted is one thing but if someone lays so much as one hand on him, he has been instructed to beat the kid up to the best of his ability by me, his father and his step father. We have all told him to not hold back because it would be his chance to stop the bullies.
The soldier has gone so far as to say that it would be a good idea to break the bully’s nose because of the blood. I mean, my son gets picked on all the time and the fact is if you do something like this, people bother you again. Know how I know?
MY sisters used to beat the shit out of me. They did all kinds of shit to me, I was the youngest.
We had a younger brother but he was off limits so all the burden fell to me right up until what?
Right up until I broke Annalisa’s nose!
Yeah, I broke her nose when I was 13 and do you know she never fucked with me again. It was the first time I ever fought back. I was always trying to Libra it, see? Or get out of it with my mind. That might work in some cases but in others it is completely ineffectual as I have just illustrated. But a broken nose? That’s a showstopper, let me tell you.
These kids are taunting my son in a pack. These wonderful kids, right? I am just a little sick of it.
“Names are names, there is nothing you can do but if one of these kids so much as lays on hand on you, I want you to beat the hell out of him, using every trick you know. Don’t worry. I will go to the school and stand up for you, we all will. You have a right to defend yourself, don’t ever forget it.”
I wish someone would have told me this when I was a kid and that’s a fact.
“They lay a hand on you, you have carte blanche to kick their ass so you just go right ahead and have not a care in the world about it.”
There was a case over here in the UK a couple of months ago where two men broke into a house and threatened the family. The father managed to break a window and call to his brother for help whereupon the intruders escaped. The father and brother chased the intruders and when they caught up with them, basically beat the crap out of them.
They were both given jail terms for grievous bodily harm, but get this, THERE WAS SUCH A PUBLIC OUTCRY, the judge eventually had to release the father a month later, and reduced the brothers sentence to something minimal.
What’s even more heartening is that the men involved are Muslim, and the outcry came from right across the community.
CP Griffin- ::waves:: 🙂
opal, I am not surprised. People have had it and the backlash is barely begun.
As I post from the news on the boards around here from time to time – you break in someones’s house or business and get killed, no one cares and I mean NOT A WHIT.
What kills me is those states who have this ‘equal force” laws. The guy comes in with a screwdriver and the intent to stab me with it as he rapes me and I have to find a MATCHING screwdriver if I want to legally defend myself. This stuff is ridiculous. He is stronger than me! I don’t have time to find a matching weapon, I am about to get killed here!
Who comes up with this shit? I mean really – what universe do they live in?
Yeah, that’s what happened in this case. The judge said that the force used against the intruders was out of all proportion, but public opinion was, well hell, if a couple of masked men break in YOUR house and threaten your family you’d be pretty damn mad and hyped up, wouldn’t you? And he had to back down. Especially, I think, since the men were middle-class businessmen with good reputation and standing in the community.
At the time, when all this was on the news, one of the radio programmes interviewed a reformed burglar who said that basically, among these kinds of criminals, it is accepted that if you get caught by the homeowner you expect to have the shit kicked out of you, it’s par for the course, and kind of honourable in a way.
So what the hell is the matter with the people who make the laws then, if the criminals themselves find it acceptable?
“I pulled shit when I was a kid and I assure you it was by my own design.”
Oh, yeah. Me too. But I presented well–good grades, tons of extracurricular stuff. Behind that facade I broke laws! Lots of them. (Midheaven in Aquarius?)
But my dad is Italian AND a Scorpio. He once shut me out for three days when I did something stupid. It was TORTURE! In my family, you knew you did something awful when you were ignored…I shudder when thinking about it to this day…
We’ve been watching lots of British and UK documentaries and there have seen mention several times of the punk kids, vandalism and crime that seems rather prevalent over there – how people try to report it to the police, and it ends up they simply get targeted more specifically for their trouble but nothing happens to the budding criminals of significance. I’d wondered if there were some cultural differences between there and the US that contributes. I’m still confused as to how police can manage without guns.
We were discussing this –
“Sooner or later they meet the jaw drop…”
What a great intro and story! And calling a broken nose a showstopper is just too funny. There are so many delicious visuals to this thread. Love it.
It also reminds me how uncomfortable people are with everyday justice. Everyone wants a free pass and have a million “excuses” for why they are incapable of doing the right thing.
Abuse is one thing, but boy there is just no tolerance for physical consequences, is there? We are so in love with the idea of a civil society that we are shocked and immobilized when we encounter incivility and are ineffective in dealing with it.
The thing is, comeuppance has the potential to NIP IT IN THE BUD and help establish decency, which is probably next to impossible when someone has gotten away with too much.
I guess people do not see this as a major benefit?? Although I do understand the fear of abuse of power.
(A kinda Libra-ish ending, eh?) 🙂
Very good topic.
I agree that sometimes a kid can turn out “bad” even if they have “good” parents, but I am pretty sure if that kid had any kind of father figure in his life who he knew would kick his ass if he found out that he went around slashing tires, I do think he would be less likely to do so. The soldier may very well have saved this kid from continuing on being a useless derelict, because this may have been the first time he got direct consequences for his actions.
The fact that the mother asked to drop the charges against her son, leads me to believe that. My mother for sure would have let me pay the consequences, whatever they were, but then again she was a Capricorn!
Dorothy – you can’t “kick a kid’s ass”, if you do, that is abuse and you go to jail.
The 12 year old run the show these days. I am sorry but they do. I know of a mother who refused to let her teenage daughter go out with an adult man. She physically restrained her, the daughter called the cops, the cops took the mother to jail and the daughter went off with the man.
Pixie- we have given Vid very smart solutions to his challenge but no kidding, if he is physically attacked as far as we (’round here) are concerned, at that point he has right to respond and if ’round here if we fight, we fight to win.
We see this as a deterrent by the way. “Don’t fight them, they fight back”.
Well, I was “afraid” of my parents, and I do mean actual fear, and it kept me from getting into trouble. I knew it was just not tolerated.
And I think some kids need immediate consequences for their actions. There is a difference from acting up from time to time, and thinking it is fun to slash tires. A kid who does that, if no direction is given, they are most likely on their way to jail-time sooner or later. Just my opinion of course.
Dorothy, I agree with you and also on the no father thing. Even the kids who have involved on the weekend dads – the dads act more like moms, coddling the kids and competing with the mother.
As a result these kids work the system (they’re not stupid!) And on top of that, they are growing up at a time where they are said to be blameless in all circumstances and I am sorry but I find this beyond the pale ridiculous.
It won’t last of course. I just can’t believe people are so snowed. I pulled so much shit when I was a kid and not one bit of it was because of my parents. I just like to fuck around, see? I just liked to mastermind stuff – this just happens to be my personality. As far as I am concerned, a 17 year old has free will and if they decide to be a thief and a liar then I guess they are a thief and a liar.
I was a tricky kid, I liked being tricky and I tricked shit all over the place, night and day. That people want to blame my “mom” for that is pretty funny to me because I assure you my thoughts were my own.
But whatever. Blame her if you want. It’s not like she is going to worry about it. 😉
Elsa,
Good story.
Do you think this kid learned a lesson? I mean, clearly he should have, but you never know and I’m curious…
Pisces, I have no idea. This it the end of the story I know.
It is exactly the bully thing and having a kid that was pushed around by a horribly nasty delinquent type that makes me SURE that kids are not always just misunderstood angels.
I hope they back off Vid, but if not good that he has knows how to defend himself. Seems a basic skill, but it isn’t!
THANK YOU ELSA!! I was raised like this too, and I am raising my 2 boys, and 1 daughter like this too…Be respectful and responsible!
Good God, why are parents not teaching empathy these days?
I’ve never had to learn a lesson that way (yet). To my knowledge. Something like that.
I learn the rules and play by them for a while until I learn where I can bend and what I can break without harm. It’s never been a priority of mine to make anyone’s life harder — in fact, it’s the opposite. Easier lives all around, please!
I’ve had to give comeuppance, though, and more than a few times. The most recent being SuperScorp’s roomie, who is a bipolar/borderline mess and expects that she can treat everyone like shit and not have any splash back on her. (Very related to the dishes-but-can’t-take post, come to think of it.) And I ground my teeth and put up with it for the sake of keeping the peace, because she wasn’t trying her shit on me. When she did try her shit on me, though, I shut her down in about eight seconds flat and she was absolutely stunned that anyone could see her game. She tried to play nicey-nice a few days later, but I let her know at that point that I was willing to be civil but not friendly. So, of course, I’m the devil personified now. *lol* Oh, well. 😀
This week a girl in the middle school where I teach in Dallas refuses to stop on a crowded staircase and I confronted her and lost. I don’t have “Restraint” training and can’t touch a kid. She pushed past me hard- technically assault. This is a regular scenario at school and you learn not to fight the little wars. I’m still waiting to recognize her, though. Part of it for me is feeling I could go too far. I stood up to my father when I was 18 finally (physically). I had always stood up, I thought, but this time I put his back to the wall and told him I’d kill him if he ever got violent again. He never did. BUT I am just now getting the part about how they are all my knives now. What a great metaphor.
I was thinking about this, it can be the new defense. “Not guilty by reason of insanity: becomes. “”not guilty because of my mother.
::shakes head and snorts::
yes…my nickname used to be ‘instant karma’.