The Watercooler : An incident that happened on a tram in Athens

This was many years ago, when I was on holiday. It was a scorching morning and we were headed to the beach, there were a few people on the tram, including a cockney mother and her young children, maybe 5-7 years old and two older, I would say 50's or 60's, upper-middle class women, one of which sporting a lively beehive hairstyle.

So the kids start giggling and making comments about the ladies hair, not openly but kind of loud enough for people to hear, the other people on the carriage, myself included, are grinning (apart from the two women) and watching the cheeky shenanigans but not saying anything.

This goes on for a while and then the friend of the woman says to the child "Stop it! It's not funny" The mother is outraged and has a go at her for shouting at her children, saying "It's not funny, it's bloody hilarious".

So the older woman pipes down and the carriage is quiet for a time, until the two older get off at their stop, afterwards the people around were in general agreement that the woman was wrong to shout at the children, someone commenting that if the woman didn't want to attract comments then she shouldn't wear her hair like that.

That's how I felt at the time too, but I wonder who was in the right, on the one hand, you shouldn't shout at other peoples children, but on the other, she can wear her hair however she likes. Perhaps the mother should have intervened and discouraged the children from making the comments too loud, I mean, it's a little bit rude. What do you think?

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Do you reckon?

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She was standing up for her friend. Her mistake was in shouting it.

Yeah.

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Perhaps the mother should have intervened and discouraged the children from making the comments too loud

That’s what should have happened. Since the mother wasn’t doing anything about it I think it was okay for the friend to raise her voice at them to stop.

I agree. The kids think it's okay to make fun of people and apparently, so does their mother

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If we take the time to see with the heart and not with the mind, we shall see that we are surrounded completely by angels ~ Carlos Santana

They all smelled like HIV.

Of course the people around were in agreement that the older woman was in the wrong. They were themselves guilty of letting the abuse take place and even enjoying it, so they are going to do everything they can to convince themselves they were the ones who were right just to preserve their own sense of morality. Even if they actually did believe the mother was wrong they would never voice that opinion so as to avoid further conflict. The offended people already left the bus, no point in offending those remaining who you have to endure the remainder of the bus ride with. Personally, it's an easy question for me. Making fun of older women for their appearance is obviously wrong. Those kids were assholes and so was the mother.

She was a cockney, they do not even respect themself let alone others, hang them all I say.