♥ ur children... because i won't

Since I seemed their age, they pulled on my braids...

On the bus headed way uptown during a gusty, but clear day-off I find myself transported way back to the times of elementary academic age. The actions of two little girls are my ticket to this type of travel that unraveled itself into the front of my memory bank. These thoughts skipped the line to cash themselves before all others on this afternoon. Those timid, but tactical tugs of my tendrils became a vacuumed vortex. I'd felt like I was in 5th grade again getting teased for being tiny. Teasing became torture once I opened my mouth in protest to the tormentors. Wicked words went from said to dirty deeds displayed. This was what they could afford before adolescence... attacking what they did not understand.

It became the same scene for these two terrors of today's time. I opened my mouth to open their eyes; I wanted them to realize that they could not feel free to invade anyone's personal space. Even if some wayward hair had been hanging over the partition which marked the border into their realm.
I said sternly, "Don't do that. You don't know me. Don't touch people like that."
So shaken my matter-of-fact reaction to their wrongdoings, their eyes widened with surprise. However, because they figured I at most only added up to an adolescent they took comfort in contemplating a repeat of raping my weave by whispering to one another.
"Go ahead, pull it again. It's right there."
"No, you do it. I dare you."
"Okay..." [giggles]
I turn toward these tots, letting them know I've heard their verbal blueprint.
"No! You won't. Don't even!"
At this, they both become quiet and focus themselves onto something else. Until the end of their ride. As they go to exit (behind their mothers) at their stop, I am given rolled whites, raspberries and haughty "ha ha ha's".

And I think then about absence of friends during elementary days. I am so glad to be an adult now, but question the value of the post-adolescence of others. Like mothers who talk amongst themselves in coded language, ignoring their children whom are in desperate need of discipline. The strain of my early days is still being cultivated within the blood of socialization. This makes me so sad sometimes I wish to be a shut-in.