O' Wise Ones, I Need Your Counsel

[Elspode]

So...let's say you are a typical middle-aged ex hippie, living in the quiet suburban house you grew up in, a house you've lived in for over 30 years. Let's say that your kids, ages 12 and 16, are both suffering considerable harrassment and threats from various factions of multiple ethnicities on a nearly daily basis, both in, after and out of school. Let's even go so far as to say that the incidents have escalated over the past few weeks, to the point that one of the harassing youths had come to your house on the pretense of apologizing for incidents at school, reached out his hand to shake your youngest kid's hand to seal the apology, and then, when the kid opened the door to shake, the other kid yanked the door open and sucker punched your kid right in the snoot...with his older brother and mother standing right next to him when he got smacked.

Let's say that these kids have been chasing your kids down the street, both in cars, on foot and on bicycles, shouting obscenities and spitting on your kid or chasing them right up to your front door. Perhaps one day you came home and found a car full of these kids parked in front of your house laying in wait for your oldest to get home. Let's say that after one recent incident, you drove around and found a group of these kids and you talked with them, informing them that you would be making sure the law dealt with them, that you had more money, better lawyers and greater believeability, and one of them spit on your car and challenged you to do something about it..and the kid that spit on your car was about nine years old and wanted really, really badly to be a gangsta instead of a four foot honky. Maybe he even called you 'bitch' and 'asshole'.

Let's say that later that same evening, one of those same kids lurked behind your neatly manicured bushes at the side of your house and then threw a large stick at your oldest kid and then ran away, shouting obscenities as he ran.

Now, assume you are going away on vacation in a couple of days, and you were planning to leave the kids to walk home from school and be alone at home for a few hours before being picked up by their father (did I mention that your kids are your stepkids?). You've called the police some four times in the past month, you've been to the schools to discuss the situation and you've found that the kid who punched your kid had even been seen by the police and was being held back from moving on to high school because of the incidents, and now you find that he is actively seeking revenge.

Maybe an hour after you'd had the talk with that same kid and his posse, he'd ridden by your house and screamed 'You fucking faggots, you can't catch me!"

What do you do now? You can't beat the little bastards up because you're 46 and they're 9, 12, 14...they aren't afraid of you because they know that if you touch them, *you'll* be the one going to jail. The main gangsta's grandma has been informed, she knows the kid is running the streets, but she can't stop it.

How do you keep your kids safe? How do you stop the escalating harassment?