The older I get the more fiercely protective I get of younger girls. I was heading into work yesterday and I saw that 12 year old (I mentioned her before, the one who wore makeup) talking to this older man. She’s normally really bubbly but she looked a little more subdued talking to him so I go over and loudly say “Hey sweetheart, who’s this?” And the guys just glares at me and she says “oh um his name is Justin.” And I’m like “Hi Justin, how do you know her?” And he gets nervous and is like “I just saw her jogging and thought I’d give her pointers.” So I just kinda tilted my head and looked at him for a minute. He literally asked me “are you a cop or something? I haven’t done anything wrong.” So I took her to the McDonald’s near by, bought her something and had a talk about not talking to strangers. Low key I’m debating the next time I see her parents (they drop her off at the gym and leave her there for hours) to maybe have a talk with them or something. Idk if it’s my place tho
Just to add because some messaged me saying that I was being a nosey bitch: so a woman who used to go to my gym (and my same university. Like I used to see her at my job and on campus) actually went missing not far from my intersection (literally a 5 min walk away from the major intersection) on may 10 and they found her body literally last week (June 19). Everyone has been on high alert lately so when I saw this random dude talking to this little girl, my brain immediately went into defence panic mode. So yeah call me nosey if you want
This world could use more nosey b*tches.
I’ll stop being a nosey bitch when males stop being predators
Always be a nosy bitch where young girls are concerned. Always be a nosy bitch where creepy old men are concerned
His first reaction was to go on the defensive and ask if she was a cop. HE WAS UP TO NO GOOD AND KNEW IT. That girl he was talking to was 12. TWELVE.
Be a nosey bitch til the day you die. No regrets.
Reminder, BE A NOSEY BITCH
Embrace being the mama bear/lioness the world needs.
There are middle-aged men who can have entirely innocent reasons for talking with a 12-year-old girl: Confirming that she’s not lost/knows the way home, noticing something amiss (shoes not tied, backpack unzipped, jacket is torn, etc.), she’s new in the neighborhood and he’s saying hi, he has a kid near her age, he has a dog that sometimes needs pet-sitting, he teaches at her school sometimes… whatever.
None of those reasons will result in him saying, “why, are you a cop?” to someone else who asks how he knows her. Instead, he’d say, “I don’t, we just met, and [reason he introduced himself].”
And he’s not likely to make her shut down and look nervous in the first place, because even when we can’t articulate why someone is creepy, we recognize creepy when we find it. Even if his reasons are not friendly - “I raise exotic flowers and I don’t want kids on my lawn!!” - it wouldn’t set off the creep-o-meter. And, again, he wouldn’t get defensive when someone else asked why he’s talking to her.
A guy who recognized her as Girl-Scout-aged and wanted to know if she’s involved in a local cookie drive, would not be dimming her normally bubbly nature.
Occasionally, autistic people will come across as creepy. This, again, is mitigated by asking him what he wants. An autistic person will not say “are you a cop?” He’d say something like, “I saw Wonder Woman on her t-shirt and I have a comic collection and wanted to know if she reads comics or if she likes the movie more.”
People who have a non-predatory reason to interact with kids will give that reason when asked. If pestered about it because the initial explanation sounds weird, they’ll double down on that reason, not jump to “why are you accusing me of wrongdoing?”
If the guy in this incident were a track star (”wanted to give her some pointers”) and he saw her jogging and wanted to correct her posture or tell her she’s got the wrong kind of shoes… he’d talk about how much he knows about running, not insist that he’s not breaking any laws.
TRUST YOUR CREEP SENSE.
