| We stopped for a bathroom break at a service plaza. I figured this would be the better choice over getting off the highway and using a gas station or fast food joint. We were the only ones in the bathroom at the time and my son was making use of the facilities. My phone rang, so I stepped right outside the bathroom entrance to take the call. During the call, I noticed 5 high school aged boys head into the bathroom. Then I heard some laughing and loud talking and thought it was just them laughing at a joke. About 30 seconds later, my son comes out and he was pretty shaken up. I ended the call and I asked him what had happened. He explained that they came to his stall and started banging on the door and actually pushed it open. He closed it back and relocked it. But they continued yelling at him to get out of there. He told them that he didn't want any trouble and all he wanted to do was to get out of there. They yelled at him some more and then he saw an opportunity to open the door and sprint out the bathroom entrance. I'm thinking they were doing some kind of drug deal and I keep playing it back in my mind that maybe I should have stayed in there. But after running that over, I'm wondering if they would have tried something worse with me in there (pulling a weapon or something). Perhaps - in an odd way - this situation turned out to be the best scenario for what went down. Otherwise, we could have been another statistic.... After he explained to me what had gone on, he was pretty panicked and wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. As we were headed out the door, I looked back and they were exiting the bathroom - I stared back at them but they didn't make eye contact. I continued to try and get as much detail about what happened from my son while we were sitting in the car but when these low-lifes came out of the building they were making noise again and my son panicked again thinking they would try to car-jack us. So to keep him from getting more scared we left before I could get a license plate number or better descriptions of these clowns. I'm thankful that he got out of there safely and that nothing worse happened to either of us. A father's first instinct to protect was kicking in hard and I wanted to confront these idiots about how manly they were for scaring an 11 year old while he was trying to use the bathroom. To be realistic about what happened, this could have happened ANYWHERE. But because of where this happened, it does leave a bad memory of being in the NYC area for my son. He's pretty much over it today (thank goodness) but I think it'll be a while before he wants to travel through that area again. Like I mentioned in the first post, he's already looking forward to going to the next Z meet which is a good sign. Dave
Little did Bob realize that Harold discovered the elusive "brown note" and was about to put the theory to test
 Sig Quotes: "Your sausage scares me!" - TT-XTZ 6/13/05 "Or he's having a rough week like the rest of us and decided to take out his agressions of not being breast fed on me." BigTDogg 15:45, 09/25/03 "Pick her up from day care and take her to Dairy Queen for a snow cone." YugoBernie 1/7/04 of course those are canadian bannings and beatings, which after the conversion rate is really only a "hey! stop that!" Chris(NJ) 1/14/04 see the green "n" next to my name? what's COZ? (n/m) - 300zx88 8/11/04 |
12:36:45 10/22/06
