Humanity, responsibility lacking

I hear constant conversation about how we need change in this country – change in foreign policy, economic policy and every kind of politically-charged policy you could imagine. But what about simple human decency?

A 14-year-old boy in Texas was recently beaten with a baseball bat by Minique Stokes, a grown woman. The boy had just fought and injured Stokes’ 12-year-old son, Carl.

But the violent act was not even really in defense of her son, as the fight was over. She had been doing laundry when Carl entered and told her he had been “jumped.” She then had to go to the other boy’s house to find him.

Somehow, Stokes’ first instinct was to grab a baseball bat and go after her son’s attacker. She claims to have been under the impression there could have been several attackers, but that is not important. What matters is that she went out and, according to witnesses, hit the 14-year-old kid with the bat.

The boy’s mother, Darla Barlow, claims Stokes was aiming for his head and only hit his arm when he lifted it to protect himself. Either way, this grown woman and mother – the leader and molder of a child – went after a teenage boy with a bat, swinging.

I try to put my own mother in this situation and no matter how I look at it; I cannot see it playing out the same way. Maybe that is why I am relatively normal and healthy. I don’t know. The reaction I keep seeing from her is, “what in the world did you do to make him do that?”

Seriously, I imagine she would have approached the other boy’s parents, so they could, together, decipher the real story. Which, I am sure would have been bits and pieces from each of our – mine and his– stories. At least, this is what a rational, halfway decent human being would do.

But no, she decided to go after the kid with a bat. And it is not as if she gave him a love tap on the arm, either. She broke skin. That is not real easy to do with a bat. Bruises and bumps, yes, but blood is hard to come by in that way. You can watch batters get hit by 100-mile-an-hour fastballs over and over and rarely see blood.

I am doing my best to figure out what could have been running through her mind. I keep failing. But here’s my best shot at a possible thought process.

“I hate doing laundry. My son cannot defend himself. I have to clean the dirty clothes of this sissy boy. Wow, my life sucks. Maybe I should take it out on a neighborhood kid. Oh hey, there’s a bat…”

So maybe that is not exactly how it happened, but it is just as reasonable as any way of thinking that could possibly lead to such an outcome.

And to make things worse, Stokes had the nerve to call the police and press charges on the other boy. As sad as this story is, this made me laugh.

How about taking responsibility for our own situations and seeing they are solved responsibly and humanely.