I grew up in the city. Basically in the middle of the 'hood. Mr. Weasel grew up on a farm. Basically in the middle of nowhere. We now live in the suburbs and do the white picket fence thing, albeit without the white picket fence.
These are completely different lifestyles. Completely different cultures and play by completely different rules. Growing up within the culture of the inner city, there are some things that just become second nature. You never have to think about them, they are just a given. The #1 rule is that you don't ever let anybody push you around. You don't go looking for a fight, but you never let anybody see fear or weakness. Word will spread fast and you will become an instant mark. If you ever came home crying because Joey or Dawn or anybody beat you up, Mom would push you back out the door and tell you that you better go defend yourself. It's not that she didn't care that you were about to get your butt kicked, but as long as you were willing to fight back is what the world needed to see. She sent you back for your own good. I so know that this is not PC, but without it you would never survive in the city.
You learn not to take crap from anybody and to always defend your honor and your property. You learn not to start anything you don't want to finish and people learn not to mess with you unless they are willing to take a good thumping. You become street smart.
After so many years of living the life in the 'burbs with the farm boy and the lawn Weasels I have softened on the exterior. However my street rat instincts, although dormant most of the time, are right beneath the surface. Lying in wait, like Mount ST. Helen.
Last night The entire Weasel family was in the car and on our way home. We were in a time crunch and had to get Eldest Weasel home to change and back out to cheer for a basketball game. Mr. Weasel is driving down a busy street at about 30Mph, when an ice ball crashes into my door. I see some teens scrambling to hide behind the tree line after playing target practice with moving traffic. We pull over in a parking lot to check for damage and find another car doing the same thing. I ask Mr. Weasel to drive back. I'm gonna find the little snots. He's hesitant. We are short on time. His instincts say let it go and move on. My instincts say, "somebody's gonna get a thumping". The Weasels are dead silent in the back. These suburban kids are sitting in shock. This stuff doesn't happen in their Norman Rockwell world. Mr. Weasel drives back, but wants me to let him handle this. I have steam rolling out of my ears waiting to explode at these(insert foul language here). I do agree to let him handle things. That is until ~ bang~ they do it again while we are looking for them. I quickly taught my family an new word as Mr. Weasel shouts "GO!" and I fly out of the car and into the tree line shouting every obscenity you've ever heard and probably a few you haven't.
As I was running cross country in snow and woods, the other pelted driver, who had also turned back to look for these morons, pulled up to Mr. Weasel to find out that I was in chase and responded "good for her" and proceeded to shine his high beams into the woods so that I may see better. I am chasing them through small woods and back yards until they disappeared into some cul-de-sac. I start knocking on doors but no one answered and finally called the cops to report these little delinquents are trying to cause an accident.
I didn't catch them, but I am sure that I scared the crap out of 'em. Hopefully they were stupid enough to continue until they could pelt a cop car.
When I returned to the car, the Weasels still had that deer in the headlights look about them. The only sound breaking their trance was Boy Weasel, "Mom, I didn't know you could run like that!".
It's too bad you can't teach street smarts.
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