Well bully for you!

Picture this if you will. 

It's a beautiful crisp winter morning with not a cloud in the sky.  I decide to take my son and his friend to the park for a kick of the footy.  The park is a hive of activity - people are everywhere walking their dogs; kids are running, cycling or scooting; the cockatoos are in their hundreds, screeching and swooping in their search for their favourite seed.  Okay, enough of the poetry.  At the park there are three footy fields with a goal post at each end, so that makes...six goal posts in total.  The boys find their goal post and decide to play a game of half-field footy while myself and my faithfull dog, Bindi, sit in the stands to watch.  We remain this way for half an hour. 

Suddenly an SUV pulls up and out hops a stout looking man followed by four small children who immediately congregate around the very goal post my son and his friend are playing at.  The father (presumably) is at the boot of the car busily unloading soccer balls, footy balls and footy tee's, while at the same time shouting instructions to I don't know who.  Now, at this stage as I watched silently on, I thought without a shadow of a doubt that obviously once this guy unpacks the car of this paraphenalia, he'll advise his brood to move on to the next goal post.  So imagine my surprise when he swaggered confidently to the very spot my son was playing his game.  In fact, he swaggered RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of my son's game!

As I got up and silently muttered 'You have got to be kidding me', I felt absolutely certain that once he saw that these guys had a guardian, he would definitely move on.  Nope.  In fact, I don't even think he battered an eyelid in my general direction.  He and the kids proceeded to set up their little sports arena right under the posts, effectively pushing my boys out of the way.  Now my question for you is, did I
a)  Politely make myself known at which time the gentleman apologised and moved on?
b)  Politely show the gentleman the five other goal posts at which stage he apologised and moved on? or
c)  Say nothing and move my boys to another goal post?

Now, I really wish I could confidently tell you it was a) or b).  However, quite unbelievably (mostly to myself), it was c).  I called over to the boys to just move to another goal post and then spent the next hour berating myself, on the verge of tears!  Even as I'm telling the story I cannot believe this was my reaction!  I was and still am so angry at myself for not sticking up for the boys and telling that big bully where to go.  Now I have been known in the past to speak my mind at various injustices.  I once went right up to a car window in a parking lot and confronted a woman who called me a bitch ('Excuse me?  I'm a what?').  I also once yelled in a rage at a trolley boy for almost running me over with about a thousand trollies at the supermarket (how embarrassing!).  Have I lost my spark?  One very well meaning friend pointed out that I was a woman alone and the man in the park could quite easily have lost his temper with me if I'd have said anything.  This is the same well meaning friend who also incredulously pointed out that the lady in the car park could've pulled out a gun and shot me as I stuck my head in her window!!!! 

The boys didn't care, they just moved their game to another field but this incident has been bothering me for a week and I can't let it go.  What's happening to me?  Maybe I'm mellowing; maybe sometimes you have to turn a blind eye; or maybe (gasp) my new-found education has enabled me to think about and choose my battles rather than running in like a bull(y) at a gate.