As I walk my dog down my local boulevard, what I believe to be an idyllic and verdant symbol of metropolitan peacefulness and our fictional bastion from an otherwise maddening city, I am generally able to decompress from the stresses of urban living. We, the dog and I, stroll leisurely through the tree-lined grassy knolls and even sometimes cruise down the sidewalk. Granted, the constant hum of dysfunctional mufflers and the rattle of loose car bolts further agitated by over-cranked reggae-ton, tends to snap the senses back into the City, but only if either of us is feeling particularly anxious. Nevertheless, we take our walks, our physical meditations, at least once a week. She, the dog, seems to enjoy our Zen exercises. I too, despite initial hesitation, am glad that I have made the effort, more often than not.
To provide a context for the debacle I am about to describe, I must explain how I came about the idea for this particular piece. I had just finished speaking to an old friend with whom I had not spoken in some six or seven years. He explained to me that he was skating around his home, fatter and older than all of the young skater boys with their girl hair and skinny pants. He jokingly said that he didn’t know whether to fuck em’ or fight em’. He regaled me with his tales of the years passed, drinking cheap beers, toiling at a bullshit job, and hating on everything. While he lamented that it sucked not being 16 anymore, being a curmudgeonly king of assholes and hating on everyone suited him just fine.
Immediately after hanging up the phone I picked up a copy of a local magazine and, turning randomly to a page, saw an advert for a band called "Kids These Days." Now I, still feeling the excitement and relative energy of a child, often forget that I am almost 34 years old. My friends seem to often forget this aspect of their personalities, but I haven't, and feel wiser and boyish for not having done so. I suspect retaining this youthful frivolity will serve my children well, should I have more than the one currently nearing the end of gestation. While this trait can sometimes be detrimental it is never so to the point of ever forsaking it in the interest of well-being and the avoidance of injury.
In either case, I don't fault kids these days as being any more rambunctious or disrespectful or irreverent, as a whole, than I, or my peers, were in days past. There are just more people, bombarded by more messages, and inundated with more media, full of more idiots. However, this is not to confuse the real issue. There are members of my generation who had dismal parents, or a lack of proper oversight, or just anyone who really gave a damn enough about them to smack the shit out of for the usual misbehavior. There have been humans with a similar lack of respect, absence of direction, and the inability to formulate a good model of behavior for time immemorial.
So, to state it directly, people that are assholes are likely begotten from assholes who were begotten from assholes. Either that or they are influenced by these people and don’t have a structure in place to dissuade them from associating with these types. We just tend to not notice such things until we, ourselves, graduate from that general life stage. For some of us, evolving takes a bit longer, or at least articulating that we have moved on takes more time. The benefits, however, and I can only speak for myself; typically deepen the understanding of what it means to, essentially, not be a jerk.
These traits of disrespect, animosity, and aggression will perpetuate until people begin to understand that if they conduct themselves with a sense of understanding and treat others with a modicum of respect, that the ignorant, rude, and brutish will slowly and without much fanfare, fall by the wayside for eternity. It is my hope that a rational and thorough discussion about the benefits and drawbacks about a particular course of action with my child should suffice, but I am never beyond issuing a stern ass-cracking should the situation demand it. The same principle should be used with the ogres of the world as a first option, at which time the iron fist in the velvet glove can then be employed, only resorting to projectiles and atoms when all else has been exhausted, but I digress.
With those sentiments established, the real story involves a rude, ignorant, young girl and my quelling an already diminished urge to immediate conflict. So, as I said, the dog and I were walking, approaching an intersection, and now stopping for the oncoming green-lit traffic. This is when I hear "motha-fucka." My bowed head lifted immediately, neck tensed, fist clenched, state of alertness, action-readiness. That the voice was female and young-ish was did not properly register in my initial mental procedure. I am always aware of my surroundings, always alert, always with a plan, likely a result of my youth. This constant awareness has trained my senses to be ready and flight is not often the initial response.
I realize that the voice was that of a young Latina, garbed in her white, short-sleeve, Catholic school, three-buttoned, polo-style shirt and excessively baggy navy-blue sweat pants. She looked like many young girls around the City, a young girl from a good, hard-working, immigrant family currently running with a set of degenerate, ingrate 'friends' that acted harder than they were from a sense of faux-bravado. A bravado learned from bullshit, rap music, modern rap music, with little message, promulgated by, similarly, a group of degenerate, fame hungry ingrates, themselves inflated with a faux-bravado, emulating kids from the streets that don't have shit. That was my initial stereotyping of this girl. If you say you don’t do the same thing you are lying and cannot be trusted. Everyone does this and this is partially how humans have survived for millennia.
The girl had not yet seen me, but I had seen her, sized her up, wondered what was happening, and knew how I would react if there were others around and a potential threatening issue afoot. My brow was already furrowed; muscle's of the upper corners of my mouth pulling up, instinctively, to show clenched teeth, demonstrating a readiness to throw down. As she walked through the intersection she glares at the driver directly to her right, the object of her ire. Apparently, the driver had stopped too close to the girl, ostensibly invading her personal space. The girl, on the phone and not paying attention, screamed at the driver, “motha-fucka." She then eloquently explained her outburst to the other conversant by stating, "some nigga just pissed me off."
As she finally notices me, re-directing her focus to the world around rather than the phone, she steps a little to the side. It was at this point that she became acutely aware of my obvious disdain. Unable to recall my exact mental state prior to being aggravated by this girl's toxicity, I presume that I was in a fairly relaxed mood. Now, angered, I howl down to my dog, without thinking and within ear shot of the girl, "what a piece of shit bitch she is, huh Yoshi?" Our young friend clearly disliked the comment, yet dared say nothing choosing to affect her faux-bravado selectively, and rarely with a citizen seemingly willing to dish back.
Now, I am not the hardest man in the world. I am certainly not in the business of picking fights with puerile girls. Moreover, I am not so stupid to pick fights with gangs of the ignorant and aggressive who are unable to regulate acceptable versus violent behavior. This is particularly so, given the fact that hordes of youth have taken to arming themselves and using those weapons with little, if any, regard for anything but their damaged feelings, already fragile from unstable environments, in many cases. Yes, this in our so-called civilized society. However, if presented with the opportunity to provide a life lesson to someone that may be rationally able to change their outlook, or at the very least, consider the ramifications of their actions, I'll do it, god damn right I will. We all should do such things.
This young girl made me abhor her, and I have said everything that she had before, only without her apparent apathy and aggression. My child is going to be riding public transportation, attending school, and a host of other daily activities with a range of people. These people are going to influence the way my child thinks, for good or poor. I am going to have to explain what these people say to my child.
This little girl, this ignorant jerk-off, is going to be something my child sees and hears. What shall I tell my child? I'll tell him the truth, that's what. The truth that ignorance is more pervasive that reasoned thought. I’ll tell him that, as Mark Twain stated, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” I’ll tell him that some people say "nigga" and "motha-fucka" as a matter of course. I'll have to explain those words, in every context, and every historical use. I'll have to explain the difference between "nigger" and "nigga." I'll have to explain "fuck" and "mother fucker" and what it means to tell somebody to "fuck off" and what "fucking" means. So, maybe I shouldn't be so upset by this girl, but this calm sentiment is a product of rational, clinical, multi-faceted thought, after the fact, not the instant guttural instinct or the moment. This I can assure you.
More importantly, anybody that uses these words hasn't the right to tell me that I am wrong, or insensitive, or whatever nonsense exists to retain license to a word and keep it from my lexicon. My usage of the words will be a pedagogical exercise of an informative and enlightening character, not an affront to cultural identity or a derogation of a person. To assume otherwise, in my opinion, is to suffer from the very ignorance I am trying to mitigate by identification and discussion.
What I find even more frightening, is that I will have to explain to my child, at an early age, the concept of aggression. I will have to teach my child that there are bullies, in schools, in governments, between nations, within families, and that wherever my child may wander danger may lurk. To omit such an inherent truth is a dis-service to my child and our youth.
As a child, I was bullied by scared, infantile, and lonely kids, older and bigger than myself. Their motives remain elusive to me, even some twenty years later. This conduct continued, unflaggingly, until I was unable to withstand the behavior any further at which point I lashed back in unmanageable rage. Of the four attackers, two lay on the floor, and a third pinned against the wall by my hand to his throat. The chronology of the event is still hazy. "Enough" said the fourth. They left the high school bathroom, bloodied. I left, resolving to never back down from anything. Subconsciously, I must have internalized those events and taken them with the utmost sincerity. I have experienced a number of physical conflicts since that time that have left me scarred, numb, broken in several places, and nearly arrested on one occasion. However, none of those scars are psychic, because I have learned how to deal with violence and aggression and fear and for these reasons cannot and will not abide it. This will be a lesson for my child.
Being able to defend himself must be a concern secondary to doing what is right in the face of difficult circumstances. One should not be proud of the ability to waylay drunken idiots, solely for the sake of doing so. What is paramount is that one strives to assist friends in defense of unwarranted aggression. I try to maintain, and speak up in favor of, my core principles even in the face of perceived embarrassment, injury, or of being the lone voice. Sometimes I fail in that endeavor. This may very well be my biggest regret in life. However, I am trying to do better and live up to this ideal and my wish is that my child will be even more successful than I in this respect. He will be unsuccessful in this endeavor unless I am totally honest with him, not just when it is convenient, but always. If I cannot do this, than I will have failed. We all will have.
