Leave Him Alone

I took my son to the skate park today. It was supposed to be an easy afternoon. Him on the ramps, me on a bench, nothing to do but watch.

There were three boys there, a little older than him. I still can’t tell you whether they were bullies or just mean the way kids can be mean without really thinking about it. Crowding him. Saying things. Making the park feel like it belonged to them and he was borrowing it. I watched it for a while, telling myself to let him handle it, that he has to learn how.

And then I didn’t let him handle it. I stood up and yelled at them to leave my son alone. I screamed it, loud enough that other people turned around.

What happened next is the part I keep replaying. Two of them backed off. They drifted away, and as far as I could tell, that was the end of it for them. But one of them didn’t. Later he was still at it, and not only with my son now. With me too. As if my yelling had given him something to push against.

So I don’t know what I accomplished. Maybe I protected my son from two of them. Maybe I just made the third one worse. Maybe the two who left would have left anyway.

The part of me that’s a father doesn’t feel very sorry. I saw my kid being pushed around and I moved. I think that’s supposed to happen. When Nehemiah’s people were rebuilding the wall with enemies all around them, he didn’t tell them to stay calm. He told them to fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters. There is a kind of anger that’s just love standing up.

But the other part of me keeps landing on James.

For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

I know what was in me when I screamed. Some of it was love. Some of it was something hotter and less clean than that. Those were somebody else’s kids. Somebody else’s sons, who maybe don’t have anyone yelling leave him alone on their behalf. I was a grown man screaming at children, and I’m not sure “they started it” holds up from that side of the age gap.

Paul manages to say both at once: Be ye angry, and sin not. I used to read that as permission. Tonight it reads more like a tightrope. The anger itself isn’t the failure. The question is what I did with it, and I’m honestly not sure I stayed on the rope.

I keep asking what the better version would have looked like. Walking over instead of yelling from the bench. Saying it low and steady, close enough that they knew I meant it, without the whole park hearing. Talking to my son first and asking him what he wanted. A soft answer turneth away wrath. It might have. It might have turned away the third boy too, the one my volume only seemed to sharpen.

What I don’t want is for my son to take away the wrong lesson from either direction. I don’t want him to learn that his dad won’t show up. But I don’t want him to learn that the way you show up is by being the loudest person in the room, either.

Maybe I’ll ask him about it. What he saw. Whether it helped. He might have a clearer read on it than I do.

So that’s where I am tonight. I stood up for my son. I’m glad I did. I’m just not sure I did it the way I’d want him to do it someday.