When I was 13, my brand new Huffy Dirt Bike from K-Mart was stolen out of the two garage of my house. I left the garage open that summer and walked into the kitchen to make some Kool-Aid popsicles. When I walked back into the garage my Huffy Dirt Bike was gone. I was in shock.

I snapped out of it and reported what happened to my stepfather. He immediately grabbed his .357 revolver and told me to get in his Chevy Blazer and we went looking for the thief and my Huffy Dirt Bike. 30mins of driving and we saw this boy around my age walking with a...

Huffy Dirt Bike in a grassy ditch. The boy wasn’t riding it and when my stepfather drove up alongside him, he began to cry before my stepfather got out of the Chevy Blazer and raised his .357 and said: “I didn’t steal nothing!” We didn’t accuse him of stealing, but wanted to...

look at the serial number on the new Huffy Dirt Bike. The was terrified and agreed. What I didn’t know was that my stepfather had written the serial numbers down on a piece of paper for all of our lawn mowers, lawn edgers and my new Huffy Dirt Bike in case they were stolen.

The serial number matched and my stepfather stepped back in broad daylight, pulled the hammer back on his .357 and told the boy to run away as fast as he could before he counted to 5. The boy disappeared up and out of that ditch in a flash. I was stunned at seeing all of this...

and started shaking uncontrollably and tears started to fall. I felt bad for the boy and then my stepfather, a Vietnam vet, said: “If I ever catch you stealing, expect the same from me. Now wiped those tears off your face and put your bike in the damn truck Mickey.” I did as I...

was told and as we began to drive back home, my stepfather added: “Let me tell you something, don’t you ever cry about getting justice for yourself when no one else will. You let people take shit from you without a fight to stop them, then you’ll never have nothing in this life.”