Lesson learned

There's a kid down the street who I think I have judged unfairly. His name is Phillip. He and his family have lived here almost as long as we have but we've never formally met them. They usually keep to themselves, as do we. I want to say the dad is a former football player and currently a bodyguard or roadie. My husband has had brief conversations with him on one of the rare occasions that they're both outside. Anyway, this guy also has a motorcycle, the crotch rocket kind, and rides it up and down and up and down the street. And this is not a quiet kind of motorcycle. Every time it goes by my house, I can hear it outside. As if the annoyance of the noisy motorcycle wasn't enough... several times I've seen him taking one of his younger children on a ride on the motorcycle. But I'm pretty sure I remember the child, who couldn't have been older than 3 or 4, riding with his dad without a helmet. That's right, NO helmet. I don't even let my daughter ride her bicycle without a helmet.

So, I couldn't help it - I judged the family as a bunch of idiots and lumped Phillip in with them. Phillip waits for the bus with my daughter and now I see that Phillip is a nice kid. It's not his fault his dad is an idiot. Phillip came down to my house recently, rang the doorbell, and asked if I could fix his bike - his derailleur would only change between 2 gears. He was polite and soft spoken. I felt really bad that I had to tell him I didn't know how to fix it after my husband told him I could look at it. I might have been able to tinker with it but I didn't want to mess it up because I was guessing. I apologized and he seemed to take my rejection well.

The other thing that changed my opinion is his behavior at the bus stop. Every morning, he and my daughter wait for the bus. And every morning, he lets her get on first. No matter where he's standing when the bus pulls up, he lets her get on first. He's in 5th grade and even though he's twice as big as my 1st grader, he doesn't push or bully his way on to the bus - even when it's 16 degrees like it was this morning. In my book, that makes him a good kid.

I made a judgment of him unfairly because I didn't know him. I made a decision about him based on the behavior of his father and that was definitely not fair to him. I wouldn't want anyone to make a judgment of my daughter because of me - I need to remember that for other people as well.