Have you ever been accused of something you haven't done or more to the point have your children been blamed for a mishap in the local community that they had absolutely nothing to do with?
That is exactly what happened yesterday (Easter Monday) and may I say I was ever so slightly vexed after the occurrence - vexed? Who am I kidding, I was furious and outraged at the fact that a complete stranger could march toward my front door and point the dreaded finger of accusation at my children.
He was a pompous looking man with a sour face and a definitive scowl, scruffy curly grey hair peeped out from under a black woolly hat that sat on the top of his head. He wore glasses that were perched on the end of his nose, they kind of reminded me of a demon head teacher. His clothes were typical of a farmer with his green wellingtons, shirt and body warmer, but he was more of a wannabe farmer than a genuine farmer, the genuine farmers of which I have encountered have all been fairly happy souls with a cheery disposition and this stranger at my door definitely did not fall into this mode.
In the first instance he had come to ask if my partner had been using the children's go-kart on his field, which had been true but not without permission, but instead a misunderstanding of what was intended by permission in the first place.
He had knocked on the door in a very policeman like manner. Upon answering the door my partner received an interrogation as to whether or not he had been using the go-kart in the field for which he admittedly said yes and apologised deeply, assuring the sour faced man that it would never happen again and that it was a misunderstanding on his own part for believing he was able to use the field for a child's go-kart. The man very childishly muttered under his breath has he headed towards the gate some 40 feet away "you'd better not!"
So that was that, a mistake had been made and a sincere apology given. Just as we had already started to feel bad for the errors of our ways there was another policeman's knock. My partner answered the door and I followed right behind him to see what this nonsense was all about.
It was the sour faced man again, this time his face redder than before. He held a plastic bag full of little things that he waved about in front of us.
"What on earth is this all about?" I demanded to know.
"What are your children's names?" he demanded to know in return.
"Why do you need to know that?" I questioned, now ever so slightly confused as to what he was getting at.
We quickly learned what his problem was, he had had a beehive destroyed and some branches sawn off a tree on his land and assumed that because my partner had been in one of his fields with the go kart he immediately assumed it was our children that had done it.
I replied to him "Our children are aged one, three & ten, they do not have the ability to cause the damage you are accusing them of"
He continued to wave a bag in front of us which he said contained evidence such as baby wipes, a note written by a child of about eight and nothing much else really.
He believed that the baby wipes pointed the finger at us because we had young children..... we must be the only people in the village that use baby wipes I suppose based on his theory.
When he learned the age of our children and realised they were not able to have done the destructions he had accused them of he then implied that there must have been an adult with them and truly believed that we were capable of such behaviour. Talk about judgemental, this horrid man had already made his mind up that we were the guilty party and nothing we said made any difference to alter his judgment.
After trying to defend us, my partner later managed to delve deeper into this jumped up jockey's reason for thought. The green wellied man commented that we were the new people in the village and that we were city folk so it must have been us - "I have lived in this village five and twenty years" he grumbled "and I know everyone in it".
Oh so that must make him an expert at solving vandalism cases.
I was disgusted to learn that people use their thoughts in this manner, that they can give birth to such an opinion. We are from the northwest that does not mean we are automatically city folk as some people would seem to have assumed not that there is anything wrong with city folk but his opinion somewhat differed and thought otherwise - it is fact that we came from a village and lived right by the beautiful hills of the Peak District - if that makes us, as so rudely pointed out, vandalising city folk in this mad man's mind then surely there is nothing more we can do to change his opinion.
He threatened us with the police and confirmed he would be taking fingerprints from the vandalised area on his land - an area bear in mind that we had never even been to, didn't even know it was there let alone cause damage to it.
I have never been so disgusted with a grown man's behaviour, his stereotyping and judgement was highly offencive. His wife was not of this country and I would never have stereotyped her, which would have been surely so by some due to her nationality, but yet they both feel it acceptable to point the finger at a completely innocent party and behave in a very un-neighbourly manner towards us.
I was hoping the police would turn up so this man's foolish pride could have been dented by his false accusations and offencive assumptions about the kind of people we are.
I'm glad he never became a police man himself otherwise an awful lot of innocent people would be in jail now just because he thought ill of them and their circumstances gave him reason to believe they were bad people.
Don't ever judge or accuse an individual when you have no reason or right to. How would you feel if the shoe was on the other foot? Would you like to be subject to witch-hunt-like behaviour? I'm sure not.
If a person has less than you or lives differently to you, it does not make them bad in any way. Everybody has faults and this is not a fair reason to point an unsure finger of accusation. Next time your finger of accusation starts to tingle just hold on for a moment and think about your reasons before acting out.
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