A crowd of students was watching from the sidewalk. But the adult drivers, rather than stopping to help, were one by one negotiating their cars around the boys and their bicycles, which had been dropped in the middle of the street.
"I sat there for 15 or 30 seconds, thinking that the person who was stopped in front of me was going to get out," said the father. "But they drove on. What flashed in my mind was that article about the kid in Mountain View being beaten up. I'm thinking to myself, 'This kind of stuff can't go on in this city.'"
The father, who is an active parent participant at JLS, got out of his car, grabbed the boys--one with one hand, the other with the other--and awaited help for several more minutes as cars continued to navigate past. With no assistance restraining the boys, he finally had to let one of them run away. Eventually, a passenger in one car, using a cell phone, summoned police.
"The thing that sticks with me in this," said the father, "is, here's somebody crying for help and people are just saying 'ah, somebody else will take care of it.' It's the same thing as that woman in New York (Kitty Genovese, who was killed in 1964 within earshot of many people who failed to respond to her cries). The difference is only in degree."
Why, in such a civic-minded community as Palo Alto, the father wondered, were other adults so hesitant to step forward and get involved?
Others apparently saw the incident somewhat differently. A JLS staff member noted that some who witnessed the fight, while uncomfortable with confronting the boys directly, did return to the school seeking help.
And surely there are risks in stepping forward. The family of one of the boys involved is reported to be angry with the father who broke up the fight, feeling that he had hurt their son.
In my experience, Palo Altans are generally very responsive in situations that demand involvement from strangers passing by. Still, this JLS father poses a question--and a reminder--that is worth considering, causing me to review similar situations I myself have chosen not to notice.
Not long ago, my father was with me as we watched my 4-year-old son on the playground at Bowden Park. It was dusk and the park was empty except for us and two teen-age boys, maybe 10 or 20 yards away, who appeared to be attempting to set fire to a park bench.
I confess that I'd scarcely noticed the boys and certainly hadn't thought of confronting them in an empty, darkening park. Without a word to me, my dad, ever the cheerful Rotarian, strolled over and engaged the boys in a conversation about what they were doing and how it could harm a park that many people enjoy. It didn't take much to persuade them to stop.
Three or four weeks after the East Meadow incident, the JLS father is still turning it over in his mind.
"The first question I have to ask is if you're going down the street and you see one person beating another, are you going to stop and help? What if it's a big burly man beating on a little old lady? Of course you stop. If it's two big guys, are you going to stop? Tougher. If it's kids, will you stop?
"When I think of people driving by kids who were struggling in the middle of the street where they could get hurt, I look at something like that as being a threat to my children--to all of our children. Their parents may not even know what's going on. We have to be a parent to all of our kids in some sense. Somebody has to step up to the plate and say, 'I'm going to get involved, I'm going to help in whatever way I can.'
"Why didn't anybody else stop? Did they think it doesn't matter, it's just a couple of kids? I don't have the answer to these questions, but I think they need to be asked."
Chris Kenrick edits the Spectrum and ReaderWire pages of the Palo Alto Weekly. "We have to be a parent to all of our kids in some sense."
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