In the late fall of 1980, I was attending a second rate prep school in Boston's Back Bay. I had to take the #78 bus from Arlington to the #1 bus in Harvard Square, then take it on the hoof.
One day we were idling at an intersection in Belmont when a hit and run driver mowed down a middle school girl on the opposite corner.
This poor thing was sprawled in the street in obvious pain with broken bones, crying piteously for her mother.
A most distressing scene.
So, being a newly minted Eagle Scout (just nosed under the wire a few days prior to my 18th Birthday) I piled out of the bus and started banging on doors trying to get someone to call 911.
On my third house I finally got a crabby old pensioner who made a surly call to the police while warning me to get off his front stoop.
In retrospect I'm sure I presented a somewhat suspicous sight, banging on his front door demanding someone call the police.
By the time I got back to the accident scene, the police and EMT's had arrived and gotten down to business.
I think back on this incident because IF Massachusetts had a "Stand Your Ground Law" on the books in 1980, that crabby old retiree would have been well within his rights to shoot me between the eyes out of fear that I might have been a danger to him.
Just sayin'....
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