Recently my husband and I were the victims of an assault at a Dairy Queen in Ocean City. A group of unsupervised teenagers struck me and other customers with rocks as we stood on the patio.
Hurt and traumatized I retreated into the restaurant and asked the manager to call police since several people had been injured and wanted to report the incident.
But the manager not only refused to dial 911 to assist those customers, but showed zero empathy for anyone involved, stating that she was too overwhelmed with untrained employees, that "kid will be kids" and that I would just have to live with it.
After a few days my injuries began to heal, the bruises faded and the aches went away. But I was shocked by the manager's lack of empathy, an injury not as easily mended.
The manager was right: Unsupervised kids do make reckless, poor decisions. But my assailant in this case wasn't so much the ones who caused my physical injuries as the one who inflicted the emotional trauma.