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August 27, 2006

TWO STONES SHORT OF A ROCKERY

What do you get if you cross a dual carriageway, stones, a teenager and a mental illness? Unsure? Intrigued? Read on...

My colleague David and I were driving back from a meeting along a dual carriageway towards the M1. I was behind the wheel and we were discussing the meeting's outcome and our consequent plan of action. We approached a bridge and from a distance I could see someone leaning over the railings with what looked like a bicycle. As we got nearer, I could see that the person on the bridge was practising his aim and timing like a darts player would, and as David and I went under the bridge, it became clear that the person was throwing stones from the bridge at cars passing underneath. There was no time to react. When you see something like that, you do not have time to check your mirrors and swerve into the other lane for fear of either crashing into someone else, or losing control and smashing into the barrier or the bridge itself. I had to grit my teeth and hope that this idiot's aim and timing was wayward. We passed under the bridge and the windscreen was still intact. My temper, however, wasn't.

Shortly after the bridge was a roundabout, so rather than carry on to the M1, as was my intended route, I took the first exit and used my sense of direction to find the bridge. "What are you going to do to him when you find him?" David asked, a little worry in his voice. "I'm not sure yet, but he's throwing stones at cars and I'm not having that."

There he was. Even as my car came to a slow stop about twenty yards from the person on the bridge, he didn't look up to see who it was, he carried on taking aim and dropping stones onto the cars underneath. I got out the car, still unsure what I was going to do and not even thinking about the potential consequences of a confrontation.

"I want a word with you" I yelled as I strode forward towards him, pointing my finger accusingly at this person who did indeed have a bike with him. As I approached, I saw that this was a kid of about sixteen years old, still young, but old enough to know better. He stopped dropping stones and stood there, either too scared or too stupid to get on his bike and ride away. "What the f*ck do you think you're doing?" I shouted, letting the anger and the words flow but all the time keeping an arm's length away in case he was carrying a weapon. "Do you know how dangerous it is to throw stones at cars? There are two people in that car, we could have crashed and been killed because of you, you little pr*ck. What the f*ck are you thinking? Do you think it's clever to throw stones at cars? Huh? Do you think it's clever?"

He mumbled a "no" and it became quite clear that this kid was not well mentally. Most other kids would have pedalled like mad to get away, but this one just froze and didn't seem to know that what he was doing was wrong. Just as I was calming down, a car screeched to a halt right next to me and before I know it there's a man with a front tooth missing going mental at the kid for smashing his number plate. "I've only had this car a week" he grunted "and look what you've done to it". The kid said nothing. The man grabbed the bike and held it so that there was no getting away for our unwell stone-thrower. "I'm calling the police" he said, and he did.

"Only picked this up last week" the man said as we waited for the police to arrive, at which point I glanced at the car and it dawned on me that it was a maroon Ford Escort from about 1996. His wife then got out of the car and I realised why they were both so angry. They had their 12 month old son in the back. The wife checked on "the boy" at the same time as informing David and I that it cost them £1300 and had only done 40,000 miles. I ignored my desire to tell them my car was free and had only 5,000 on the clock.

Ten minutes later, the police turned up and took witness statements from the Escort-driving gorilla and me. There was some stone-chip damage to my car where the stone had missed and bounced up again, hitting just above the grill but when asked if I wanted to press charges, I declined and just told her that it's more important to prevent it happening again. The police described the boy as a "mental case" and struggled to get his name out of him, but thanked us for informing them and for preventing a serious accident. So we went on our way.

As I drove home that night, I felt a bit guilty for shouting at the kid, he obviously wasn't well and was probably very scared of the world. I probably didn't help, but then again he endangered not only the lives of myself and my passenger, but the family in the Escort and countless others who had driven on without stopping to confront him.

Posted by jonola14 at August 27, 2006 11:10 AM

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Posted by: David at August 27, 2006 10:17 PM