Silly, silly boys

I went for a 1 1/2-hour-long walk in the park near my apartment today to get some exercise. I like walking in the park because there are lots of cute little kids running around with their parents, and that always puts a smile on my face. Unfortunately, there are also groups of unsupervised boys who sometimes enjoy bugging women exercising by themselves.

Well, today I was the woman they picked to bug. There were five or six boys, probably ranging in age from 11 to 14, all on bikes. I first figured out that something was up when a couple of them rode up alongside me, passed me, then turned around and rode back to the rest of their group. But I just kept walking.

I couldn't hear everything they were saying, but I heard enough to know that the older boys were daring the little one to do something to me. Sure enough, here came the little one on his bike, riding as slowly as possible so as to keep pace with me. It was pretty comical... he was going so slowly that he could hardly keep the bike upright. But I ignored him and kept on walking.

He dropped back pretty quickly -- it was obvious he was pretty nervous. I heard the older boys whispering to him and snickering, and then he rode back up alongside me. This time, he swerved at me a couple of times, trying to force me off the sidewalk. It didn't work -- I could tell he was too scared to actually do it, and even if he had tried, he was going so slowly that it wouldn't have hurt me at all and he would have ended up falling off his bike. So I kept on ignoring him and continued on my walk.

He dropped back again. More whispering and snickering from the older boys. They definitely weren't ready to give up. I heard a bike coming up on me pretty quickly, and before I knew what had happened, the little one had smacked me on the butt and sped off like a bat out of hell.

I didn't miss a beat. I just kept on walking, not even turning to look at the kid who hit me or the older boys who were still behind me. If you hadn't seen him hit me, you wouldn't have known that anything had happened.

The older boys were so disappointed. Eventually they rode off, not brave enough to try what they had dared the little one to do.

Silly, silly boys.