Gathering Places
Gathering Places
LOOKING for parking early Sunday morning at the Kamehameha flea market, a man pulled his mini-van up to the passenger side of my car and began cursing me. Rage alone drives
violence both at home
and abroadFace contorted in anger, he leaned out his window and shouted obscenities and blamed me for blocking the road. Never mind that he was able to pull beside (and around) my car. Never mind that the cross traffic ahead stretched in an unbroken line as far as you could see. He ranted and screamed and did not drive away, working himself into a rage.
I told him to go on ahead, that I was looking for a parking place, that I was not blocking him. It did not matter. He continued to shout and threaten for a full minute by the clock, an eternity sitting there in my car.
And, finally, I grew tired of his ranting and raving and obscenities; I told him what I thought in language I knew he understood. Fully in his rage, he leapt from his mini-van and tried to punch me through the passenger window. Swinging and grabbing, he could not connect and so stormed around to my door and began punching through the open window.
Leaning into my car, he began hitting and cursing and clawing me.
Receiving several blows to my face, I fought back. Awkwardly, I fended off his blows and punched him back, trying to give as good as I got. That enraged him even more. He went for my door and almost opened it before I got it locked. Again he flew at me through the window, punching and swearing as I desperately defended myself.
Then, another eternity later, he suddenly stopped and went back to his mini-van cursing me all the way. As he took the driver's seat, his wife (I assume) leaned forward and, with what seemed to me a pleading look in her eyes, said "You really should move your car." And off they lurched into the cross-traffic and out the exit.
Thank you to the family who lent me their cell phone to call the police.
Thank you to the young man who came forward to offer his name and phone number as a witness. Thank you to the police officer who answered my call and took the report.
Before yesterday I firmly believed in cause-and-effect. After the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, I argued for a reevaluation of American policy toward the Middle East, for I thought these policies were the root of the terrorists' terrible hatred for us.
But now I am not so sure. Just as my assailant had no cause to attack me, the men who plan, fund and carry out terrorist attacks on us appear to have no cause to commit these crimes, other than their hatred and violent nature.
Maybe their rage simply drives them as surely as it drove my assailant. If so, the logic of cause-and-effect fails in both cases.
I want them stopped -- for the terrorists, by any means necessary; for my assailant, by any means of the law. I don't care about punishment or retribution. No punishment can atone for the tragedy visited upon us. No retribution will bring back our dead. I simply don't want these people to ever threaten or harm another person again. Period.
And I will do whatever is necessary, in both cases, to make sure they don't.
Dave Sams is a Kaneohe resident.