where the park gets a bit dodgy

Sometimes I ponder my own courageousness. I babble on and on about social issues and how we all need to remember the humanity of it all and on and on and so forth and repeat.

And then I am at the park yesterday, M and I are kicking it, doing slide tricks and squirrel chasing and other mack-daddy park stuff, and we'd (I'd) had enough and were heading back through the non-playground park area when a man whom I will assume is homeless by his carrying of his belongings and his rather tattery clothing (if you were just a dude on the way to the laundry mat, apologies) all of a sudden lunged at M and started yelling. Aggressive, the dingo ate my baby sort of yelling. Norman's mother in the shower yelling.

I am about 5 or so feet away from M at the time, who is now frozen in her wee tracks, and I grab her, and decide I am seriously freaked out. And my mind is colliding with thoughts: 1. stay calm, dude is ill, it's ok, just stay calm. 2. get the fuck away from my kid 3. just plain scared.

So instead of using my power voice I mumbled something like she's a baby, man, please, and took off. Scared get us out of here taking off. And as I did he said something about fucking off uptight white bitch.

Oh, the indignity. Part of me wanted to go back and say lookee here dingo baby eater, I am not an uptight white bitch, in fact, bastard fuck, I could probably HELP you, but you scared my kid, you shithead, and you scared me, and so I can't. I can't, and I AM NOT .

And I've been bothered since. Bothered because I deal with this sort of stuff from time to time at work and I am almost never afraid. But with M, I was fearful and protective, and yes, rightfully so. But on some level I suppose I thought I am still the person I am at work outside of work. And perhaps if M wasn't there I might have reacted differently, but perhaps I would have been just as scared. Perhaps it was just a scary thing. But then I wonder why I am still feeling bad about it.

And a little bothered (how wildly irrational is this?) by the label he gave me, the label representing, maybe, people who walk around and avoid him. But I wouldn't have done that if he wouldn't have scared us.

Or at least I sincerely hope that to be true. All I know is I want to model courage for M. She sees in me what I show her, and I showed her fear and disdain and a lack of compassion, even if he was a scary baby eating dingo. Because maybe he was just having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day instead.