Not Raised “Perfectly Right”

This incident in a Wal-Mart was recently on the news and I thought it would make an interesting topic to discuss. I embedded the original videos filmed by one of the witnesses and pay attention to the second one as this one has more footage of the involvement of the six year son of the dark haired woman.

In the next video, a woman named Amber called the Smiley Morning Show on WZPL claiming to be the dark haired woman, to talk about the fight. She told the hosts she was in Wal-Mart when she heard a woman on a motorized scooter, a woman she would later fight, refer to an employee as a “ni****.”   “(The woman) was sitting there yelling at an employee at Wal-Mart, and she was telling her that she was a ni**** and that she was going to get out of the chair and whoop her a**,” the woman said.    “She used the ‘n-word?’” the host asked.    “Yes, she used the ‘n-word,’” the woman said. “So in my defense, I was standing up for the employee.”

Now, there are a number of things wrong with this scenario, the first being that “Amber” took up the offense of a Wal-Mart employee and etiquette typically does not extend grace towards those who make it their business to be nosy about other people’s lives, including the things that might offend them.   For all we know, the employee may not have been as offended as Amber thinks she should have been.

Second, is that Amber does not de-escalate the conflict, she ramps it right up with returned insults.  This is where retaliatory rudeness gets you…into physical fights with entitled loons.

Third, the blond haired woman is clearly not handicapped yet she is utilizing a motorized scooter intended for the handicapped. If you can get up and start swinging fists at an assailant, you don’t need a scooter to haul your lazy backside around Wal-Mart.   And if this woman did insult the Wal-Mart employee with a nasty pejorative word, then the warning signs were already there that this is a dangerous person who should be avoided at all costs, particularly if you have a young child at your side.

And this takes us to Number Four,  Amber’s mistaken belief that her six year year old son is being be “raised perfectly right”.   In the above video, Amber states:

“My son takes martial arts classes. He’s been going to the gym for several years with his father. I mean, he’s been in the gym for a long time,” she said. “He got a little crazy. I don’t have to worry about him ever being bullied.”

She described the boy as a straight-A, honor roll student and teacher’s pet. She said his martial arts teachers have taught him not to back down.

“My son is raised perfectly right.

This is the topic I wish us to discuss.   First there is the poor judgment of getting into an escalating scream-o-rama with an obviously entitled and angry person while in custody of a very minor-aged child.  He witnessed his mother’s poor judgment in engaging the crazy with actions that did nothing to calm the situation down but rather ramped it up to the point of violence.   The child was abandoned by his mother who chose to concentrate her attention on battling a loon.

And the worst of it is that Amber calls on her son to get involved in inflicting physical blows on the blond haired woman once she is down on the ground. Long time Ehellions know I have a special place in Etiquette Hell for parents who exploit their children in their adult dealings and conflicts and Amber does this in spades thus earning her a deep, hot, miserable corner of Ehell.  He’s six years old and Amber draws him into the physical fight thus making him a target of the blond woman’s defensive actions and potentially even her aggressive ones.   You don’t expose children to that kind of danger…ever.

So, brat child does as his mother commands and proceeds to hit the blond haired woman on the head with a shampoo bottle and appears to kick her.   Sorry, Amber you raised a son who does not know restraint and will pile on when given the advantage over a downed opponent rather  than it be a fair fight between equally matched persons.   He’s already a bully because it was obvious his mother had the woman under control on the floor and he takes advantage of this to attack her.    And when other adults witnessing the fight call out to the boy to stop what he’s doing, his reaction is pure, unadulterated bratness, “Don’t tell me what to do!”, and he almost appears to take an aggressive, threatening posture with these spectator adults.  No respect for adult authority, no sense of fairness, no idea how to back down gracefully and why that skill is needed at times, no restraint on his aggressiveness thus leading to physical involvement in a fight that was not his to have….I could go on but my point is made. Amber has and is raising the next generation of bully who thinks it’s OK to insert himself aggressively into someone else’s fights.

Update: According to snopes.com, the dark haired woman, Amber Stephenson, was charged with neglect of a dependent and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.