I fail to see how anything you report doing here rises to the level of being any worse than just yelling at them, which is about how I picture a typical member of the proverbial child-raising village would react.
The irony of your pictures of them taking pictures of doing something dumb delights me. It's very Web-2.0. (I wouldn't publish the pictures or show them to third parties other than the police, though-if the police do get involved I doubt they'd look kindly on it, whatever the law might say.)
Good on you for instilling a fear the the Mean Old Lady might be watching around any corner, ready to leap out with her gigantic camera. You'll be the stuff of campfire ghost stories in no time.
The irony of your pictures of them taking pictures of doing something dumb delights me. It's very Web-2.0. (I wouldn't publish the pictures or show them to third parties other than the police, though-if the police do get involved I doubt they'd look kindly on it, whatever the law might say.)
Ah. I live with the question of whether to be a nosey-parker or stay well out of it, every day. You're doing well, in my book. Great writing, m'dear, you've gotten it down and I for one appreciate it.
Thanks, Max, thanks, Ned, and thanks, Jason. I needed to get it down, just in case, and I needed some reassurance, too. I didn't feel *mean*, the way I did after having a grandmother present her bawling tweenie granddaughter to me to apologize for stealing something from the store (I wanted to cry, too), but oy, that mother, defending her darling unsupervised vandals at all costs, apparently. I don't believe she'd go to the police - or at least, I'm sure she's well known to them, one way or another - but I do worry about nasty talk or actions against me or the store, and, well, it just felt bad to be yelled at. Bah. Nosey-Parker, indeed - that feeling of "well, you needn't have gotten involved", so that anything after was due to me, not them, I guess
( ... )
As someone who was once on the other end of that kind of situation when much younger (not fire in my case, but something else majorly stupid and dangerous to others; nor were friends or parents involved), let me say: you did the right thing there in calling them on their behavior.
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I fail to see how anything you report doing here rises to the level of being any worse than just yelling at them, which is about how I picture a typical member of the proverbial child-raising village would react.
The irony of your pictures of them taking pictures of doing something dumb delights me. It's very Web-2.0. (I wouldn't publish the pictures or show them to third parties other than the police, though-if the police do get involved I doubt they'd look kindly on it, whatever the law might say.)
Good on you for instilling a fear the the Mean Old Lady might be watching around any corner, ready to leap out with her gigantic camera. You'll be the stuff of campfire ghost stories in no time.
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Dammit, I was going to put them on flickr!
[thanks]
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Nah, good for you for taking a stand. It's certainly easier to just let it pass. But the "it takes a village" attitude is important.
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You did the right and difficult thing.
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