Am I wrong for screaming at a grown man in front of hundreds of people at the county fair because of what he did to a kid who wasn’t even mine?
I’ve been waitressing at Darlene’s Grill since I was nineteen. Seven years, double shifts, bad tips, worse knees. The county fair is our busiest weekend because we run the food tent near the livestock barns, and this year I was pulling a fourteen-hour Saturday solo on the register.
There’s this kid, Brandon, maybe ten or eleven, who comes to the fair every year with his 4-H goat. He’s got some kind of speech thing – a stutter, pretty bad – and he’s one of those kids who talks to you anyway because he doesn’t care, he’s just HAPPY. He’d been coming up to my window all day buying lemonades and telling me about his goat, Pepper, and how she was going to win a ribbon this year.
Around four o’clock I heard yelling near the picnic tables.
This guy – big dude, maybe forty-five, fifty, red polo, wraparound sunglasses pushed up on his forehead – was standing over Brandon with a half-eaten corn dog in his hand. Brandon had apparently bumped into him and spilled the guy’s beer. The kid was trying to apologize but every word was getting stuck and the guy was MOCKING HIM. Repeating his stutter back to him. Exaggerating it. Doing a little head-bob thing like it was a comedy routine.
Brandon’s face was bright red. His chin was shaking.
People were watching. Nobody moved.
I came around the side of the tent and I was about to say something when this biker – full leather vest, beard down to his chest, arms like fence posts – walked up from nowhere. He set his plate down on the table, real calm, and stepped between the guy and Brandon.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t touch the man. He just said, “You’re done.”
The red polo guy puffed up. “Mind your own business, pal. Kid ruined my shirt.”
The biker looked down at Brandon and said, “Hey buddy, you want to go show me your goat?” Brandon nodded, wiping his face. The biker put his hand on Brandon’s shoulder and started walking him away.
That should have been the end of it.
But red polo followed them. He grabbed the biker’s vest from behind and said, “I’m talking to you, asshole. That little r – “
He used the word.
The ACTUAL word.
About a child.
I lost it. I came out from behind that tent so fast I knocked over a tray of napkin dispensers. I got between them and I was screaming – not at the biker, at red polo – and I said things I’m not proud of, loud enough that the entire midway heard me. I called him every name I could think of. I told him exactly what kind of man mocks a child with a disability. I told him his mother should be ASHAMED.
Turns out red polo is married to one of the county fair board members. My boss got a call that night. Now half the people I work with are saying I made a scene and could cost us the food tent contract next year. My manager Darlene told me she understood but I “can’t be doing that in the uniform.” My friends are split – some say I was a hero, some say I should’ve let the biker handle it and kept my mouth shut.
The biker found me after everything calmed down. He walked back to my tent with Brandon still next to him, and he said, “I need to tell you something about that man. The one in the red polo.”
I said okay.
He leaned in close so Brandon couldn’t hear, and he said –
What He Actually Said
“That’s Dale Pruitt. He’s on the school board.”
I just stared at him.
The biker’s name was Gary. Gary Hatch. He’d been coming to this fair for twenty-two years, he told me later, because his daughter used to show rabbits in the 4-H barn until she aged out. He knew half the county. He knew Dale Pruitt by name, by reputation, and apparently by a specific incident two years back involving a parent meeting that Gary described as “the kind of thing that doesn’t get written up anywhere but everybody remembers.”
School board. The man who just stood over a stuttering ten-year-old and did a mocking head-bob for a crowd of strangers sat on the school board.
I didn’t say anything for a second. I was still running hot. My hands were doing that thing where they shake slightly but you don’t notice until you try to pick something up.
Gary watched me work through it. He wasn’t in a hurry.
“Brandon’s going to be in middle school next year,” he said. Just that. No further explanation. He didn’t need to draw me a picture.
Brandon was right there next to him, drinking what I realized was a lemonade Gary must have bought him, reading the prize ribbons hanging on the fence of the livestock pen. Not listening to us. Watching a goat two stalls down like it had personally offended him.
The Part I Keep Turning Over
Here’s what I can’t stop thinking about.
When I came around that tent, I wasn’t thinking about the contract. I wasn’t thinking about Darlene or the uniform or the fair board or any of it. I was thinking about Brandon’s chin shaking. That’s the whole thing. That’s the entire reason.
Because I had a stutter too. Mild, nothing like Brandon’s, mostly grew out of it by high school. But I remember being eight years old and a substitute teacher doing almost exactly what Dale Pruitt did – not as mean, maybe, but the same energy, that little performance for the class – and I remember the way the room felt. How hot my face got. How I couldn’t look at anyone for the rest of the day.
I never told anyone that. Not Darlene, not my coworkers, not Gary.
But I think some part of my body remembered it before my brain caught up. Because I was already moving when I knocked over those napkin dispensers. I didn’t decide to go out there. I just went.
My friend Kacey, who thinks I should’ve kept my mouth shut, said “you can’t fix stupid and you can’t fix mean.” Which, fine. Sure. But I also don’t think I was trying to fix Dale Pruitt. I think I was just done watching.
There’s a difference.
What Darlene Actually Said
My manager Darlene is fifty-eight years old, has run that food tent for fourteen years, and takes exactly zero nonsense from anyone. She told me she “understood” but I “can’t be doing that in the uniform” and at the time I heard it as a reprimand.
I called her the next morning to apologize and she stopped me about four words in.
“Honey,” she said. “I have to say that to you. You understand? I have to say that.”
I said I understood.
“Good,” she said. “Now. What did the man do exactly.”
So I told her. All of it. The head-bob. The word. The school board thing.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “His wife called me personally. Diane Pruitt. You know what she said to me?”
I said no.
“She said her husband had been drinking and she hoped we could handle this privately.” Darlene paused. “I told her I’d look into it.”
She said it the way you say something when you have zero intention of looking into it.
The contract thing might still be real. I don’t know. Darlene didn’t bring it up again and I didn’t push it. What I do know is that when I got to work Monday morning there was a to-go cup of coffee on the register with my name on it, which Darlene never does, and she didn’t say a word about it when I thanked her.
Brandon’s Ribbon
Saturday night, after everything settled and the midway thinned out and I was running on fumes and lukewarm fountain soda, Gary came back to the tent one more time.
Brandon was with him. And Brandon was holding a ribbon.
Second place. Blue and red, little gold lettering. Pepper had taken second in her division.
He held it up at my window and his whole face was doing that thing kids’ faces do when they’re too happy to know what to do with their hands. He started to tell me about the judging and the words got stuck a few times and he just kept going, right through them, like they were speed bumps and not walls.
Gary stood behind him with his arms crossed and his beard down to his chest and he was watching Brandon talk the same way you watch something you want to remember.
I told Brandon Pepper was obviously a champion. I told him second place at this fair was serious business. I told him I wanted a full report next year.
He said he’d b-b-bring me a photo.
I said deal.
Gary gave me a nod when they turned to go. Not a big thing. Just a nod. The kind that means something without needing to be anything more.
The Question I Actually Asked Myself
Am I wrong?
I’ve thought about it for three days now. I’ve run the tape back probably forty times. The napkin dispensers going over, the sound of my own voice louder than I expected, Dale Pruitt’s face going from smug to something else, the people at the picnic tables finally, finally moving.
Here’s where I land.
I was loud. I was profane. I said things about his mother that were probably uncalled for, strictly speaking. I was in a company uniform on company time at a company-contracted event. Those are facts.
Also a fact: I was the only person in that midway, out of however many hundreds of people standing around watching, who said anything after Gary walked Brandon away. Gary couldn’t – he had a kid to look after and a man grabbing his vest. Somebody had to be the one to stay in Dale Pruitt’s face long enough that he understood the crowd had turned.
I think about the version where I stayed behind my register. Where I watched from the tent and told myself it wasn’t my business and Gary had it handled. Where I went home that night and thought, well, at least I didn’t make a scene.
I don’t like that version of me very much.
So no. I don’t think I’m wrong. I think I’m maybe slightly unemployed, depending on how the next board meeting goes. But not wrong.
Pepper got second place. Brandon’s going to middle school next year. And Dale Pruitt heard, in front of everyone he knew, exactly what kind of man he is.
That’ll do.
—
If this one got under your skin the way it got under mine, pass it on to someone who needed to hear it today.
For more stories about standing up for what’s right, check out My Supervisor Watched the Security Footage and Now I Might Lose My License or I Stood in Front of His Truck in a School Parking Lot and I’d Do It Again. And if you’re curious about other biker encounters, read about My Seven-Year-Old Had to Testify in Court. I Called Nine Bikers to Walk Him In..
