I don’t know how it is where you live, but around here, every local town has a community group on Facebook. While these groups can be a good source of information, they are also hotbeds for gossip and complaints. I find such conversations entertaining. (I also wonder if public schools have stopped teaching English.)
Yesterday, a woman took to the Bryan community page to whine, gripe, and complain about three teen boys on bicycles who gave her the middle finger as she drove by. She hoped that a big man would teach them a lesson by beating them up. Yikes! Talk about overkill.
Other offended commenters added their complaints about being flipped off to the discussion, concluding that modern youths are more disrespectful than they were back in the day; that they never would have given a stranger the middle finger. I tend to roll my eyes when boomers delusively talk about how good life was in the “good old days.” The 60s and 70s were different, to be sure, but better than today? I have my doubts. Teenagers have always been disrespectful. It is part of their rite of passage. Three boys, under the age of sixteen, flipping off someone as they drive by? Not an issue. Older man beating them up for doing so? That’s a felony.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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But, but good people never get the finger, or mooned, or…wait a minute. Sure, I might have muttered (or yelled) stupid little boys or some such. Getting the finger from strangers? Who cares?
I live in New Jersey – the middle finger is an important part of the lexicon here. 🤣🤣🤣
Seriously, hoping a large adult beats up young teens is horrible. Teens are children with underdeveloped brains. You have to reach them with compassion, finding common ground, not with threats.
Why not just finger them back? I agree about the whining on local sites: The big one is shopping carts not returned! You cut me off! Then there is the constant pining for a White Castle restaurant. They really need to read their Bible and turn the other cheek. (tee hee!)
I agree with the annoyance of kids though… I despise electric scooters and my street and sidewalk become a skate park. Unparented kids are left to their own devices, follow no street laws and meander from the sidewalk to the street in one “I’m immortal!” burst of the throttle. (Ok now I’m doing it)
I was a street kid in Bryan 20 yrs before Bruce and i don’t recall we ever confronted adults. We were afraid of them. We knew them and they knew us. We were into whatever mischief we could design but open defiance of adults unrelated to us was simply not done. It’s a case of change ” for ever not for better”
Aww, so those widdwe boize hurted her feewings? Boo hoo.
Boys will be boys. But men beating them up: That’s another story.
Hey Revival Fires,
Be aware that I am deleting ALL of your comments.
Those hoodlums should be thankful the woman only wants them to get beaten up. If those hoodlums had tried something like that in Texas, they probably would have shot dead. In Texas they have a low threshold of patience with obnoxious children. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/court/2025/09/17/531151/houston-man-accused-of-killing-11-year-old-boy-over-prank-asks-judge-for-lower-bond-amount/
Violence and the thirst for violence seems to be infecting the US more and more. I admit that the situation frightens me. I don’t think civil war is out of the question anymore, and those of us who shun violence will be the victims.
Flippin’ the bird 🐦, lol. If peeps wanna talk about ” the good ole days”, they should read, ” Farmer Boy” by Laura Ingalls Wilder” where Almanzo goes to school in a one-room school house, and there are a gang of boys there who routinely drove out new teachers by ganging up on them and physically attacking them. Nothing new under the sun, as one wise guy once said.