The Unknown Ending

Two weeks ago, I went to my younger grandson’s football preview. A football preview, for those of you who don’t know, is a quick display of a football team’s offensive and defensive capabilities in a game-like situation, but not really in game.

The preview lasted about an hour and as we were leaving, I noticed a well built, obviously going to the gym and weight lifting, guy start pushing a teammate of my grandson’s. Then he pushed him again and again and again. By the way these kids are 12 and under. This kid is a year younger than my grandson, so he would be around 11 years old.

They were not playful pushes, there were serious, I’m going to knock you to the ground and kick your ass pushes, as he was screaming at the boy.

I started to start swearing and wanted to walk over there to confront the guy, but my son told me it was none of my business and I shouldn’t make a scene and embarrass my grandsons.

Then I started arguing with my son, saying that we can’t stand by while abuse was happening, and it was our obligation to do or say something.

His point was that we can’t change something or someone, so why try?

As we were walking to our cars and arguing about this, the guy, the boy, an older white woman, and a younger, around 30ish or so, light skinned black woman passed us and got into their vehicle.

The man sat in the back with the boy, and the white woman drove. We could hear him cussing out his family as they drove away.

I got in my car and started driving home.

About a mile from my house, I saw the boy on the side of the road; he was puking. The guy was wiping out the inside of the vehicle with a rag.

I knew I couldn’t just drive on by, so I pulled off to the side of the road and parked ahead of them. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew was going to do something.

My gut was telling me that while on the way home, that guy was probably beating that kid in the back seat and that’s why the kid was puking on the side of the road.

I called my son to tell him what was happening. While I was talking, the guy got back into the vehicle, this time he was driving. As he was pulling around me, his vehicle’s windows were rolled down, as were mine, I yelled at him, “Stop abusing your kid!”

I pulled out behind him. After we got through a traffic light, he suddenly stopped right in the middle of the road, and because of the traffic, I had no way around him.

Then he got out of the vehicle and started coming towards me. Oh, god, I thought, he’s going to drag me out of my car and beat the shit out of me.

I frantically tried to dial 911, but I was still on the call with Asher, so my call wasn’t getting through. And I was too freaked out to try to get his plate with my iPhone. Gosh, my brain was scrambled in all directions!

When he got to my car, he asked me if I “was the one who was paying for his college education, paying for his food, paying to take care of him.” He told me it was none of my business how the kid was treated.

I yelled at him that he was a bad parent. And he shouldn’t even be a parent. That a weak ass thing to yell at someone, isn’t it?

Then he walked away and got back in his vehicle. He made a sharp left turn, probably to see if I was going to follow him.

I didn’t. I drove on home.

When I got in the house, I just started crying, because I was so mad at myself for not doing more to help the boy. I blew my chance to call the police. I didn’t know the boy’s name or the license plate of the car. I had no information.

Then Susan came by with the boys. My younger grandson told us what the boy’s name was. He said that all the kids kind of knew that he was getting beaten at home.

Susan called the recreation center where the boys play football and found out that they tried to report this guy last year, but they were told that they needed a police report to do so.

This was my chance to redeem myself, so I drove to the police precinct and filed a report about this guy. The police officer wasn’t thrilled – “I’ve seen worse abuse” is what he told me, but he gave me a case number and that was that.

The boys’ football coach also filed a police report; he had seen the entire shoving incident.

We didn’t know what was going for a while. The kids didn’t have football practice the next week because it was so hot, plus going into Labor Day weekend, there were no games.

Practice started this past week and my younger grandson told me that the guy no longer stayed at practices yelling and screaming at the kid, but left after dropping him off.

By the way, we found out that this guy is the kid’s uncle. I’m not sure where the father is or who the mother is, but it doesn’t matter. No one should be abused like that. And sometimes it takes many calls to get the right people to pay attention.

As for my younger grandson, he and his teammates make sure that they praise this kid any time he does something good. And instead of hanging back from making friends, now the kid is allowing himself to get to know his teammates.

The boys had their first football game yesterday. The uncle was there. But there were no after game dramatics.

It’s obvious someone talked to this guy – if it was the coach or the rec center or child protection – things have changed.

Whether the abuse still goes on at home is anyone’s guess, but maybe, just maybe at least during football practice this boy can find some peace.

The ending to the story is not known. Hopefully, it’s the happy ending that we all want; the man has realized his mistakes and will discipline the boy in a reasonable manner.