Stoned

If I tell you that little kids sometimes throw rocks at me while I'm riding my bicycle in the evening, does that sound scary?

I wouldn't say the reality of it, however, is very frightening. I live in a quiet residential area full of palm-lined streets and while riding around in the evenings, there are occasionally kids of 7 - 13 years old wandering around the streets, assumably in front of their houses. Occasionally they have bikes themselves, but more often they're on foot, and when I ride buy somebody throws a rock at me.

Not with the intention to hit me, I don't think. Generally there are no angry shouts and they never chase after me. One small rock, or occasionally a handful of pebbles, will fly by, generally coming nowhere near hitting me.

I think they're just curious. They'd probably do something similar to monkeys in the zoo, if they had the opportunity.

One kid threw two at me, however, this afternoon, so I got off the bike and grabbed a couple of small rocks and threw them in his direction. He and his younger companion bolted away.

As for the older teenagers, they occasionally scream "fuck you!" out of the window of their cars at me. Again, they don't do much else -- the first time it happened I was expecting them to run me off the road and get out with tire iron, but they just kept driving.

Somewhere along the line it's possible for youthful unruliness to become dangerous extremism of course -- I haven't encountered it yet, though. One colleague told me that a few years ago, at the height of hostility to foreigners, a group of angry local teens started throwing rocks at his house and daring him to come outside, at which point he thinks they probably would have killed him.

He didn't, and they didn't. They never came back -- he supposes the police identified and had a word with them.


And so international communication continues apace.