WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE...
Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 04:40PM There was something frantic in her voice that jolted me out of my sleep.
It was 2 am on an unusually warm March night when I was suddenly awoken by a loud argument coming through my open bedroom window from the schoolyard next door.
It wasn't the first "lovers' quarrel" that I've heard in the middle of the night in our neighborhood, but the woman sounded so anguished that I couldn't just turn over and fall back to sleep.
"Please, PLEASE," the young teenage girl pleaded to her companion, who outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, "give me back my phone so I can call someone and go home."
But the hulking guy - a 19 or 20-year-old punk who lives on my block - refused her request and kept berating her, finally shoving her shoulders so forcefully that she stumbled on the cracked concrete.
That was it. I stuck my head out of the bedroom window and bellowed: DON'T YOU DARE HIT HER."
That interruption from the dark made him freeze, shrink away and quickly respond to my accusation by declaring:"I didn't hit her, I just pushed her." Then he looked at the girl and asked "RIGHT?" to which she rotely replied, "That's right, he just pushed me."
Both of their defenses sounded much too rehearsed, as if they has been through this drill before. Then he regained his macho demeanor and yelled in the direction of my window, "People around here should mind their own *!#!* business" before he and the girl disappeared wordlessly out of sight.
My poor hubby, who almost fell out of bed when I unexpectedly shrieked out the window, begged me to go back to sleep, but I couldn't because I kept thinking of Kitty Genovese.
Do you remember her?
In 1968, 28-year-old Kitty was stabbed and brutally murdered at 3 am on her way home from work to her apartment building in Queens. Authorities estimated that 38 people probably heard her screams as she was being attacked, but although a few turned on their lights and one man yelled down to "let that girl alone," not a single person called the police.
I was just a kid when this story made national headlines, but some cautionary tales stick with you for a lifetime. The lesson learned from her death was that there's a difference between minding your business and minding your conscience.
So even though I might be labeled a busybody, I'm still going to make noise when a weasel who mistakenly thinks he is a Big Man starts to smack - or push - a woman around.
No, I won't physically get in the middle of a confrontation (with age comes wisdom), but I will do what I can to prevent a fellow female's head from meeting the pavement.
Sisterhood and intervention can both be powerful, and a half century after her horrible death, I think that Kitty Genovese would agree.
Reader Comments (1)
Stealing a glace at Facebook while AT WORK; I was reading the Intro about your latest column (on Facebook). When I got to the "see more at didibones.com" part I noticed it was not a link but merely text; unlike the others. I was very dismayed by this. (It's cathartic to used dismayed every once in a while; same for cathartic; but I digress.) I felt like the kid who takes the decoder ring secretly into the bathroom only to decode the message; "be sure to drink your ovaltine'. Soon after, I reconsider and determined that it was no big deal -----but since I typed it I thought I should send it anyway. :)