A welcome sign from young Cypriots

There is this office of a Limassol football club near my house and I often walk past it. The other day, as I crossed it with my son, there was this group of young Cypriot boys hanging around there as usual. It was a relatively quiet late evening when the silence of the street was broken by a fancy car whizzing past at break neck speed, even though its a small road with many by-lanes. I instinctively held my son’s hand tighter. 

Then I watched as this group of boys rose in unison and ran to the road, each one waving and shouting at the driver. The car screeched to a halt and the young driver reversed and came near them in that arrogance of youth and vanity of the automobile he was driving.  

The shouts that I heard were music to my ear, “Children walk around here” , “the road doesn’t belong to you”, “there are other people who use this road”, “there are people with bigger cars you know”…

The driver continued to look them in the eyes but there was no mistaking the sheepishness as he meekly drove away. May be it was because he saw he was outnumbered or may be he did realize that he was at fault. 

The incident made my day. Thus chastised by his compatriots and his peers, I hope one more driver moved over to the side of safe driving.

As they say, ‘all it takes for the wrong to win is for the right to look away’.  A society where youth speaks for the right, at the right time certainly has a bright future.