That Time When Parents Actually Parented

So, do I have a story for you this week. 

It occurs around 2 p.m. or so. It's a slow Monday afternoon. Corey and I are working café, but since nobody has shown up in a while, we're sitting at a table and talking. (And I'm working on my novel.) 

Suddenly, Corey leaps to her feet and starts sprinting towards the door, screaming, "STOP! STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!'

I hear a bang, and then I jump up and start running after her, too.

There are three black kids punching the stuffing out of each other. Two of them are holding one of them down, and they're just going at it. I'm terrified that somebody's going to die, right there on the floor. (The bang? Someone had thrown one of the others into the giant metal rolly door.)

Corey screams at them to stop again, and one of them rushes out the door. The other one is slow to get off of the boy on the floor, but once he does, he runs out the door, too. 

The third one stands up shakily.

"Are you okay?" she asks him. He nods, and then he also runs out the door.

We follow them out.

All three are now sitting at a table with two women. Corey asks, "Ma'am, are these your sons?"

They both nod, so she continues.

"Um, they were fighting just inside the door here. I just wanted to make sure that they weren't hurt."

"They were fighting? Thanks for letting me know." And she kinda waves us off, so we go inside and sit down again, thinking that'd be the end of it.

Not ten minutes later, the two ladies are dragging the kids inside by their ears. Literally dragging them. The first lady drags up her kid and stands him in front of us. We stand up. 

"They have something they want to tell you," she says.

The kid starts fidgeting, mumbling and looking at his mother, at the table, at the floor... So his mother grabs his chin and makes him look at us. "You're not apologizing to the floor, to the table, or to me. You're apologizing to these nice young ladies. Now say you're sorry, and what you're sorry for!"

The kid proceeds to apologize for fighting and causing a disturbance. The other two do the same (after also getting a lecture from the first mother to stop looking at the floor and look at the girls!), and Corey says, "As long as they're not hurt..." because we really don't know what to say. Thank you? 

The mother says, "It's not all right. Thank you for letting us know. They're all fine, but they're not gonna be fine when we get home. Have a great day, ladies."

So they drag the kids out of TreeTop. I've never seen such terrified children. 

These mothers knew how to raise nice, polite young men, and then they went outside to talk, leaving the kids to play inside. So the kids proceeded to try and kill each other. That's why I think the mothers were so upset - they had raised the kids to be polite, and they were behaving like a bunch of thugs.

Nothing exciting happens for the rest of the day, and we hope that nothing like that ever happens again. It was terrifying.