Ongoing cycle

You drive down the street in your beat-up Oldsmobile and it fits right in; you, on the other hand, don't. They see that in the instant the sun beating down on your windows reflects the right way. Slowly, very slowly, they amble out of the path of your oncoming rustbucket. They make sure that they see the whites of your eyes and you can either meet their steady gaze, or look past them. Today, I'll meet them head-on. They can gauge you in an instant and they have no obvious fear; you shouldn't either, or you might be in trouble.

Today, though, they're young, not even coming into their own yet. Their grammas and mammas still hold heavy sway, but they're on a porch talking it up, unseeing, down the street. These kids, maybe 5 or 6 of them all together, stand smack in the middle of the road, daring any oncoming traffic to hit them, honk at them, give them the finger, anything. They want me to do something when they see what I am. You can see a sneer or a look of unbridled confidence in a few of their faces. My music's up and I don't hear words, but a couple open their mouths, miming words that I can tell are curse words that their parents/grandparents and other, older siblings and cousins use frequently. One, a bold boy on a bike who can be no older than 9, reaches over and smacks his small hand on my car as I ease past. I resist the temptation to brake; that's what he wants. He wants me to be afraid that I've hit one of his friends or even him. Then he can laugh and point at me, a 20-something white girl. He sees that I don't care and dismisses me with a wave of his hand, like he's slapping me out of his sight. I can also clearly see that he uses a four-lettered word beginning with 'f' in what he exclaims as I continue past his group.

I'm on the next block and, in the rearview mirror, I can see that they're continuing what they were doing before my rumbling presence broke their mid-street confidences. Capri-suns, Coke cans and juice boxes are tossed to the sides of the road where, in future years, they will mutate into 40 oz. bottles, beer cans and little plastic baggies. It's not unavoidable, but it will happen just the same. Their parents did the same to different drivers when I was their age, living in that same neighborhood.