Playground justice

By Randy Butler
HCP columnist

I think no matter how old we are, we all have opinions about how kids should be corrected. Let’s be honest: Every kid needs it sometimes. That correction can come from parents, relatives, friends and when I was growing up, even total strangers.

We’ve all heard the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” And yeah, you’ve got to be careful who’s in that village. But sometimes it really did take the whole neighborhood. Mom and Dad couldn’t be everywhere.

Back in the 1970s, we didn’t have many rules. Honestly, the big one was simple: Be home before dark. That was it. There were several farms around Hoagland, and we basically had free run of all of them. I still don’t know how it worked, but if we did something wrong (besides breaking the “home by dark” rule), Mom and Dad somehow knew the full story before we even walked through the door. Word traveled fast.

And any adult in the area, had full permission – maybe even a duty – to straighten us out if we stepped out of line. Looking back, the community thing might’ve gone a little overboard.

But even that took a back seat to what I call “playground justice.” Every adult has been part of either giving it or getting it. Kids have a way of handling things on their own with no adult supervision required. It happened all the time back then, and I’m sure it still does. Honestly, it worked. Sometimes adults just need to step back and let it play out.

Playground justice was great at fixing things like: Saying something dumb, wearing something dumb, being mean to your little brother, being rude to a girl, taking someone else’s stuff, acting selfish, losing the only baseball you had, or eating all the marshmallows out of the Lucky Charms box.

But the worst offense of all? Crying. Not just crying – but crying in front of your friends. That kind of mistake could follow you for years.

Now, I am sure I was on both ends of playground justice many times. But the one that sticks out had nothing to do with me. I watched my younger brother Mark get a heavy dose. And I saw the whole thing go down.

As almost unthinkable as it was, we made fun of each other’s mom daily, and I am not even sure why we did it. Nevertheless, we did. And we got very cruel at times. It was ruthless – no rules, no mercy.

One evening, Mark came home right before dark. Good job on that part. But there was a problem. A big one.

He had a BB lodged in his leg.

And yes, he was crying. Full-on, big-daddy-rule-breaking crying. His friend Stevie had shot him. It might sound funny now, but at the time, not funny at all.

Stevie lived with his grandma. And yes, we made fun of her too. Just like we did everybody else’s mom.

Mom was a wreck. Her son had been shot. Mark was a wreck. The evidence was literally stuck in his leg.

Dad walked in right at the peak of the chaos. Mom was ready for justice – serious justice. Immediate justice. The kind only Dad could deliver.

But Dad stayed calm. He asked one simple question: “Why did he shoot you?”

When Mark finally admitted he’d been making fun of Stevie’s grandma, Dad didn’t miss a beat.

“Well,” he said, “he should’ve shot you. You don’t make fun of someone’s grandma.”

And just like that, playground justice had officially been served.

Randy Butler is a longtime local real estate professional and a columnist for The Highland County Press.