When I saw the guy repeatedly slap his young son in the face in the grocery store, I didn't do anything about it. Now I'm kicking myself for being like everybody else who also witnessed and ignored it. We didn't want to get involved.

This was on a Saturday morning a few weeks ago at the IGA in Clifton. The man was well dressed and so was the boy, maybe 6 or 7 years old. I have no idea what prompted the slapping. The kid seemed well behaved, but the father was very angry.

I watched him push his child against the shopping cart and hit him over and over again in the face, hand not in a fist but pretty hard blows. The boy stood there and took the physical abuse, and after it was over, with tears in the boy's eyes, the father continued to grocery shop.

I watched this, probably with my mouth open. Other customers just kept on going with their shopping carts. I thought about approaching the store manager, even thought about getting on my cell phone and calling the police.

My gut was telling me to approach the man and tell him to stop, but was any of it my business? I had some doubt, so like the rest of the customers who witnessed this I closed my mouth and continued on my way, pretended like everything was alright.

The reality is, I'm getting use to seeing this. Watching parents hit their kids in public is becoming pretty commonplace.

I see it on the bus -- mothers slapping their small children to make them stop crying. I see it on the sidewalks -- grownups physically hitting their children because they don't like their behavior or maybe they themselves are having a bad day. We all see it, and we do nothing. We pretend to look out the window on the bus or we keep walking down the sidewalk.

If you're a parent who's reading this column and if you verbally or physically beat your children, I have a message for you: You're damaging your child for life. They will carry the pain with them forever.

I also have a question for you: Did you bring this child in the world just so you can fuck them up? Is that what you really want to do?

I think I know what I'm talking about. My mother beat me when I was a child. Back in the old days, it was mostly done in private, or at least that's how my mother did it.

To her credit, she would always wait until the company had gone home or other relatives weren't around before she would start in on me. But in some ways, that made it worse, because a kid usually knows when he or she screws up and the anticipation of waiting for the whipping, slapping or verbal humiliation can be torturous.

Once, while visiting my grandparents, I remember saying something wrong -- I don't recall what it was now -- and I'll never forget the look on her face, a look I'd see often. I knew I was in for it when I got home, and I was right.

Her favorite weapon was a yardstick beating my bare legs with my pants pulled down. That's not exactly a slap on the behind just to get my attention. This was child abuse, and I carry the scars, mentally and physically, to this day.

As a child who went through this myself, why have I become passive in my response to it when I see it happening to children now? If a parent feels free to beat his or her child in public, it must be pure hell for that kid at home. I need to put myself in that child's shoes and remember the hell.

The next time I see child abuse in public -- and I'm sure I won't have to wait too long -- I'm going to intervene. If I see that guy at IGA slap his son in the face again, I'll be lining up witnesses in the store as I approach the asshole and tell him if he doesn't stop hitting his kid he's gonna have to deal with me.

If I see a child getting beat on the bus for simply crying, I'll get off when they get off, follow them home and then whip out my cell phone and call the police. I'll put the fear of the law into that parent.

I think the worst possible thing a person can do in this world is to hurt a child. I'm not going to stand back and watch it anymore. I think this is what you call getting involved.