How to deal with little shits

And by little shits I mean children you encounter on you runs, so called children who do things as hurtful as their adult counterparts, hurtful things such as name calling, pointing, mimicking and even throwing things.

When I was at college I was sitting round a friends house just chillin when we heard an almighty smash. We ran outside to find a smashed milk bottle by the front door and could just about see the culprits running off down the road.

“Call em a sod ju, call em a sod” my friend cried. This was funny on soooo many levels and still makes me laugh out loud even twenty years later.

Why she couldn’t call em a sod herself I will never know and why would they care about being called a sod anyway? they had just lobbed a glass bottle at her front door for no reason other than just for fun.

I have been thinking recently about why kids can be such little shits, me included I guess as I was the biggest little shit as a kid, just ask my teachers at school oh and my mum!!!

But anyway…

This whole blog came about because of one such challenging child. I was minding my own business carting my size 20 body around a park as part of an organised fun run and he (the grubby little kid) was fishing with his dad. Really he should have just ignored me and concentrated on getting a catch or whatever it is you do when you fish, but no he had to call out.

“Fatty Must Run” and then roll around laughing and soaking up the admiration of his dad and his friends, who should have known better.

I was too mortified at the time to respond but I wonder what I would have said to him anyway? I mean how do you respond.

Unfortunately that wasn’t an isolated incident either. I often find myself the victim of abuse from children not even out of primary school yet. What compels them to be so mean? Where do they learn this behaviour and what are we doing to curb it?

Last year out on a run with my running club a group of kids were initially rude but then ran with us for a while asking some reasonable questions. I think the convo went a little like this…

“What you doing”
“Running”
“Why?”
“To keep fit”
“But you are still Fat doh”
” I know, which is why I am running”
“Oh, right”

At my last 10k race in Regents Park I was about 700 meters away from the finish line when some little kid said “cor look at that Fat lady” he was about 6 or 7 I guess, I heard it clear as day and just looked at him to let him know I had heard, his 9 year old brother looked mortified and told him off…why is it that even at 6 or 7 he already knows (or thinks at least) that fat people don’t run?

And finally in the last mile of the Brighton Marathon last month when I felt like I was actually gonna die, a bunch of kids of about 12 started mimicking my breathing and laughing. I was gutted and if I had the energy I quite possible could have pushed them over the sea wall they were perched on. My running buddies who were supporting me heard them too but ignored them, perhaps at a loss for what to say or maybe hoping I hadn’t noticed it in the first place.

So what are we to do?

One lady on my Facebook page says this is why she runs at night, is this the answer?

If more overweight people ran in public would this make it less of a spectacle? Less funny perhaps?

Answers on a postcard please…what should we do about these little shits???

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