Just turned 50

I have just got back from an evening at the theatre. Whilst waiting at the bus stop a young man crossed the road and started trying to attract the attention of a woman waiting at the same. He was waving his hands around her and she took out her ear phones to hear what he was saying. She was looking very bemused and he eventually wandered off. I could see him approach another pair of women who were walking up the road and they swerved to avoid him. After a while he came back to the bus stop and started to stroke another woman’s hair. He then approached me from behind and I moved away to stand next to the first woman. He then came back to start bothering her again. Eventually I asked him what he thought he was doing. He looked at me and I asked him why he thought he had the right to harass people like this. He was clearly drunk and apologised. I told him that he needed to stop now and move away. But he just stood there and said that he didn’t mean it. That may be so, I replied, but you are harrassing people and you need to stop and move away. Still he didn’t move and apologised again. I asked him another two times to move on and he eventually did. The first young woman thanked me while the woman whose hair he had stroked said that she had rather enjoyed it! That is the second time I have had to ‘rescue’ a younger woman at that bus stop. When I got home my husband commented that I was lucky he didn’t have a knife. But I just couldn’t stand by and let him continue to think that that was an appropriate way to behave.