The kid was driving like an absolute moron. He came screaming down Goff Hill in late-day traffic swerving from side to side. He sped into the middle lane, still weaving, and jolted to a stop.

Most nearby drivers looked nervously away as they waited for the light to change. Others glared. There were two kids in the bright red car and they were grinning and bopping to their music. I placed them at 18 years old. I placed at least the one behind the wheel as a jackass. Not drunk, I don’t believe. Just a jackass.

The red light seemed endless and the kids cranked the stereo up louder. The whole car seemed to hop off the ground with the beat. Other drivers rolled up their windows in spite of the heat.

The light turned green. The boneheads sped off and weaved around as many cars as they could as they tore through the intersection. The driver steered dramatically toward a sidewalk and swerved back into traffic at the last moment. You could see him behind the wheel yucking it up like a cartoon dimwit.

From a lane away, I jotted down the license number on a stray napkin floating around inside my car. By this point, I was seething. I like to think I was seething because these kids were absolute menaces to the roadway. They endangered other drivers. They endangered pedestrians. They no doubt scared older people and probably confused young children.

I despised these kids for the few minutes I watched them tear through the crowded streets like terrorists in an apple-red car. Then they tore around a corner and disappeared in another direction. I heard the squeal of tires, a faint echo of rap music, and they were gone, presumably to victimize busy people coming and going from the supermarket.

Three times, I un-holstered the cell phone from my hip. I had the plate number. I had the location. I had the local cop shop on speed dial and I could report the whelps. At the least, they’d get inconvenienced and suffer the embarrassment of a scolding from a cop.

Three times, I set the phone back into its slot on my hip. I questioned my motivation and my role in this scenario. When had I become this way? When had I developed this righteous indignation about unconscionable people who fly recklessly through society? Did I resent the menace these kids presented, or their youthful exuberance?

I never called police. Had I known then that a small child would be struck by a car an hour later, I most surely would have.

I fumed about the teenage tyrants all the way back to the office. There are lousy drivers and then there are outright idiots. I fumed and grumbled and then I forgot about it. There were stories to write. There were editors to avoid. There were scanner calls to heed.

An hour after I had anguished over whether to report the miscreants, there was a call for help in downtown Lewiston. A child on a bicycle had been struck by a car. The voices over the police radio were frantic. Fire crews were sent. And ambulance and police were on the way. I started in that direction immediately.

You know what I was thinking on the drive over. You know what horrible vision loomed in my thoughts like an accusing eye that refused to blink.

I envisioned a small bicycle twisted at the side of the roadway. I imagined the remains of a child covered by a blanket and surrounded by sobbing parents. I imagined that bright red car with its front end smashed and music still pounding from the speakers.

The intersection was clogged with people when I got there. Four or five cruisers with blue lights spinning, a firetruck parked at an odd angle, dozens of people with nervous hands pressed to taut faces.

I sprinted from my car to the scene. Already, my conscience was punishing me for the horrible, horrible judgment in not making that call earlier in the day. I peered through a knot of people, looking for the child on the ground. I moved past a pair of officers in search of the young victim and the bloody tarp. I braced myself for the image and then found the victim.

The boy was standing upright, looking bewildered and embarrassed by all the attention. His bike was nearby and it did not look damaged beyond repair. The driver who had struck him was a middle-age man, upset and shaking, but he would also recover.

I looked back at the boy with the skinned knees and enjoyed a sense of relief. But the relief was fleeting. It occurred to me that children were playing on other blocks and in other cities. It occurred to me that a pair of punks in a red car were still driving with unabashed recklessness and bopping to jacked-up tunes on the stereo.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.