This is another one of those situations in which you have no idea how you will react until it happens to you. Lots of folks have told me about the problem of rock throwing in Columbia Heights but I’ve probably spent half my time walking around CH and have never seen it and certainly hadn’t experienced it. Sadly, that changed this evening. I was heading up 14th Street on my way to an interview at Commonwealth (more on that later).
At 7:50 pm I felt something hit the top of my head. It was more of a lob shot than a fastball. I was actually quite confused. There were 4 twelve year old boys behind me. So I had to decide what to do. Oh yeah, this happened at the corner of 14th and Harvard. So I have my ipod on and am just staring at them, thinking to myself, ‘did they really just throw a rock at me’. I was definitely in disbelief.
Well, I’m not a super tough guy but I’m pretty sure I can beat the shit out of a 12 year old kid. So I’m thinking to myself, do I just go over there and punch one of the kids? No, I can’t do that. You can’t punch a 12 year old kid. I’m also thinking, ‘well I don’t want to break my ipod if they all jump on me’. I swear to you, these are the thoughts going through my head. I’m not necessarily proud of them.
I decided to just turn around and continue my walk up 14th Street as I had an appointment and all. But then an older man comes up to me and says, “did those boys just hit you with a rock”. I said, ‘yeah they did, I was just deciding how to react’. He said, “yeah I saw that”. Then he said, “what you should’ve done was grab a stick and whoop them good, then they’d know not to throw rocks”.
So, I don’t know if there is a lesson here but this is not good. I don’t necessarily think violence would’ve prevented this in the future. Not to mention violent crime is not unheard of on this street corner and who knows how these things could escalate if someone else decided to get involved. I don’t know if there is a proper response. What would you have done?
