Speaking Up

A friend posted this on his Facebook page this morning (for people who don't know, Publix is a supermarket chain):

In Publix this morning when a young boy pushing shopping cart for grandmother(?) Turned down wrong aisle. Loudly she barks, "G*d D@$#% it! THIS AISLE!"
Without thinking, I blurt out "HEY! That's a child you're talking to!"
Angrily she replies, "he needs to learn!"
To which I said, "Yeah, he needs to learn respect, and that's not the way."
She walked away without further comment.
People wonder why this new generation has no respect, because they're not being taught it.

It reminds me of an event that I regret... was on an airplane to Cincinnati, and there was a family across the aisle from me. A mother and father in one row, and their two pre-teen children, a boy and a girl, (maybe 11-13 years old) in another row. The father was a total bully and made the kids sit there, not reading, not playing, not talking. He wanted them to just sit there silently for the entire flight. Every so often he'd turn around and bully them. The mother did nothing. It was making my skin crawl.

When the airplane landed and we were getting up to leave, in my mind, I said something to him like, "You are a bully and your kids are going to grow up hating you." To the kids I wanted to tell them how beautiful and wonderful they are, but I didn't say anything. I have relived that moment so many times since and so regretted that I was silent.