photo by jon_nawaikula www.flickr.com
With the almost-bombing scare in Times Square over the weekend, I’ve been watching a lot of news to see if they catch this person who almost caused great havoc in New York City. While listening to a press conference with New York’s mayor, I heard him say that the reason why they were lucky enough to stop this bombing before it became a tragedy is because a vendor in the area noticed something that seemed a little strange to him–smoke coming out of an SUV parked in a strange way on the street. Then the vendor said something to a police officer, and the rest is history–in a good way for once.
So, many times we go through our weeks and see things that we think may be a little bit off or a little bit strange, but we don’t say anything or do anything because we don’t want to be embarrassed or we don’t want to cause anyone trouble. I even have a friend who heard someone trying to get in her back door and didn’t call 911 because the person went away. Thank God the door was locked, and thank God the person wasn’t persistent. Did we learn this not-speaking-up action from teachers and parents when we were young? Did they tell us that we aren’t supposed to cause trouble or doubt people’s genuine goodness?
What’s my point?
My point is that we need to teach kids and teens the exact lesson that this vendor and many tourists and citizens of New York City learned on Saturday night–we need to speak when something seems wrong to us. We should go to the authorities–not try to handle things ourselves. If your child sees someone lurking around the house that’s not supposed to be there–they should call 911. If someone tries to give them a ride home from the bus stop, they should scream and run away. If it’s a good person who was innocently offering a ride, he will understand why the child reacted as he or she did. I used to teach my students this technique when I taught third through fifth graders. I told them to never, ever go anywhere with a stranger; and if a stranger got to close to them, scream, call for help, and run away as fast as they could. If they overhear a friend or classmate say something dangerous, they should tell someone they trust. You want to teach them how they DON’T want to be one of those kids after a suicide or school shooting who knew something and did nothing.
Let’s end the days of worrying so much about being politically correct and hurting people’s feelings. In a world where some people aren’t worried about even their own lives or safety, then we need to arm kids with the tools to notice when something doesn’t seem right and to speak up about it. It could save their lives, their friends’ lives, or even a whole community’s lives–just like our heroic t-shirt vendor in Times Square.
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