So it has come to this. Even Britain's school traffic wardens are now victims of road rage, writes Kilian Doyle
MY VIEW of the world as a shiny happy place full of equally shiny happy people working for the common good has been shattered by the news of the measures being adopted in Britain to tackle the growing scourge of "lollipop rage".
In case you aren't aware of the phenomenon, lollipop rage is the abuse suffered by school traffic wardens.
About a tenth of Britain's lollipop people report being the target of attacks, with 1,400 cases last year alone.
Typically, these involve motorists swearing and using threatening language, revving their engines or leaning on their horns while children are crossing, driving too close to wardens and trying to drive round them while they are on the road.
Some motorists lose the plot completely and resort to physical violence. Others just run them over. Dozens of wardens have needed hospital treatment over the years after being pranged by cars or fists.
It's a source of great sadness to me that things have come to this. When I was a nipper, lollipop people were sacrosanct. Like nuns. You wouldn't even dare think of perpetrating a crime on one for fear of finding yourself transported into a scene from a Hieronymus Bosch painting and being swallowed alive by a gaping hole filled with gargoyles brandishing pointy sticks.
Since I've reached adulthood, I've realised some crossing technicians are pompous power-mad jobsworths, many of them resentment-riddled failed cops who get their kicks by shepherding their charges one by one across dual carriageways, revelling in the fury they are creating. But that's a small price to pay.
The life of a child is worth ever-so-slightly more than shaving a few seconds off a shower curtain salesman's journey time, wouldn't you agree?
While the job may be fulfilling for some, I'd hate it. Knowing my luck, I'd get stationed at a school for psychopathic devil children who'd spend their afternoons trying to rob my wallet to feed their sugar addictions.
Not to mention the ever present danger of being broadsided by a hag in an SUV as she arrives - mascara in one hand, superfrappalatte in the other - to collect her screaming brats.
Being called all sorts by irate taxi drivers while simultaneously dodging goons trying to pizzaficate me with their Subarus because I made them late for court wouldn't exactly fill me with job satisfaction either. All that for €50 a day? No thanks.
Anyway, back to Britain. Their solution is to embed cameras in wardens' lollipops to deter would-be assailants.
I fail to see this licking the problem. Britain is already awash with speed cameras and CCTV. The whole joint is like one massive Big Brother house. And people still break the law. Does anyone honestly believe the type of person who'd run over a lollipop man would be put off by yet another camera?
You won't be surprised to hear that I have a better solution. There is a debate currently raging within the Garda about arming the rank-and-file. On the one hand, there is the argument that if you arm the police, the criminals will arm themselves too.
But that logic is redundant. Most criminals are already as heavily armed as Taliban commanders.
Given that, can the naysayers answer me this: what is unarmed Garda Malachy - fresh out of Templemore and with no experience of violence beyond pucking the chops off farmers' sons on the GAA pitch - to do if confronted by three coked-up hoods with Uzis? Fend them off with his torch?
I say arm the cops. And while we're at it, arm traffic wardens too. Drastic times call for drastic measures.
If they were to begin manning crossings with a lollipop in one hand, an AK-47 in the other, lollipop rage would be eradicated overnight.
Nothing commands respect like a menopausal woman with a machine gun.