I was out for my walk, in the (relative) cool of the evening, around 10:30 last night. The police were out, in front of a home, with an ambulance as well, and as I walked past I heard a homeowner saying something about a man who "spoke perfect English" but wrote something or other in Spanish. I heard no more and kept walking on because I'm just not one of those looky-loos who have to stop and luxuriate in the fact that something bad happened to someone else. (A little further on, there were plenty of other homeowners lurking behind half-opens doors, peering through.) And I was just about home, just reaching an intersection that would leave me only a block-and-a-half away.
That's when something hit me on the shoulder. Something damned hard, yet with some give to it. Took a second to put it all together, to realize that someone in that car speeding past had thrown something at me, had thrown an egg at me. And by the time I had all that worked out, the car was already well past, without sufficient street lighting for me to even tell what kind of car it was, let alone its license plate number.
My shirt was wet with egg yolk, but it had been a glancing blow, and most of the egg was on the sidewalk a little beyond me. Still, it had been a surprisingly heavy hit; kinetically speaking, the egg had all the energy of a moving car behind it, plus added energy from a not-bad throw. I was very glad that I hadn't been hit in the face, because that would have hurt like hell.
A passer-by simply shrugged and turned the corner, plainly glad that it hadn't happened to him. (And if I hadn't been just reaching that corner, it absolutely would have been him 'cause he was the next one down the road.) I followed the tail lights of the car until it turned at an intersection a little too far away, and disappeared. And then I stood there like an idiot for a long time, hoping they might come 'round looking for new victims, in the vain hope that I might be able to somehow Get Them with better warning this time. Nothing happened, and I went home to soak my shirt.
Big red welt on the shoulder, nicely egg-shaped; it has lingered, and was still there this morning. Friends tell me I ought to be go to the police and report the incident, just in case my eggsailants were making a night of it. I'm still undecided on that; I'm at work now, and there's a meeting about the movie at 7:00 so I'm not sure when I would have time to wander over to the police station.
I called my 21 year old brother this afternoon to ask him if he had ever done anything like that. Not that it would affect my opinion of him; but if he ever had, when younger and stupider, I was hoping that maybe he might have some insight on the psychology of such a thing. Because I was never that kind of a teenager, I never got my kicks from causing random harm to strangers. Bullying never appealed to me either, probably because I got bullied so often.
It was too dark to see who was in that car. But I think anyone hearing the story automatically assumes they were teenaged boys because who else would think egging someone was funny? (Unless they were dairy terrorists....) I can just picture it, like a movie scene: one guy driving, the other sitting in the passenger seat with a carton of eggs open in his lap. One egg at the ready in his hand, and maybe there's already been one try that missed. Then a new opportunity, just appearing at an intersection, no time to aim, he just had to trust his instinct. It hit, he heard me yell something profane, then he and his buddy high-fived as they sped away. "Dude, that was awesome!"
Of course, it ain't awesome. It's the sort of thing that just makes people angry, and there's way too much anger in the world already. Lord knows how pissed off I still am; it's all I can do to restrain myself from using some really foul language about these two kids and teenaged boys in particular. I'm not a public figure, this wasn't a political statement like the eggings of Bill Clinton or Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was just random mayhem, the attempted humiliation of someone just to make them feel powerful. It is axiomatic that really the opposite occurs: a drive-by egging is pure cowardice; real power would be daring to go up to someone face-to-face, but that would surely make these young louts piss their pants.
When I asked my brother whether he'd ever egged anyone, he said he never had. That once, when he was five and washing the cars with Dad, some neighbors drove by and he turned the hose on them. And Dad gave him such a clout to the back of his head that he never ever considered doing any such thing to anyone ever again. "Huh," I said. "Well let's hear it for corporal punishment."
Damn straight.
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