Could kids be any softer these days?

LOWELL — A 48-year-old Lowell man was in police custody last night, unable to post $40 bail on charges he punched an 11-year-old girl outside the South Common pool.

Mario Vazquez was arrested a short distance from the pool on Spring Street shortly after the girl’s mother called police.

The girl told Officer Brian Kinney that she was outside the pool with her mother and a friend about 3:20 p.m. when a man they believed was drunk approached them, yelling and cursing, telling them to be quiet.

The girls told police they tried to ignore the man, but that he made a fist and punched the 11-year-old in the stomach, then walked away toward Appleton Street. The girl threw up on the sidewalk from the punch. Her mother took her to a city hospital afterward.

My how things change. I guess this is what we get in a world where we over parent and turn our kids into little babies. A world where an 11-year-old girl can’t take a punch from a 48 year-old dude…and then has the nerve to cry about to the cops. What is this, Andover? What happened to the South Common kids that I used to know? The ones that used to hide blades under their swimmies. Those kids would’ve had this guy buried in the Roger School dumpster before the cops even had to get involved.