Leveling Playing Fields

There are children playing outside. It’s one of those sweet, rare sounds like black folks speaking lovingly to each other on the street. At least, it should be sweet. Not one of the children is over the age of 9 and the youngest is about 5. They’re a mixture of boys and girls, totally engrossed in some made up game where the rules change by the second. “Get off me, you stretchin’ my mu’fuckin shirt!”

Slow down, Toughie (‘member dat?), it’s not that serious!! Somewhere along the lines children got pulled too deep into adult lives and not left to be children. Grown folks making mistakes and then treating their children as such. Baby girls with nail appointments and toddler boys saggin’ their elastic waistband shorts showing their Pull-ups is all a little too much for me.

These are the kids raised on yellow #5 and red #40, sent into the classroom unable to do much more than disrupt. Sugar highs got ‘em crashing just after breakfast and right after lunch, leaving a teacher roughly 25 minutes to get a day’s worth of information in.

Every now and then…it works.
Play hard little people and maybe one day you can get your parents ready to learn.
Break time is almost over.

Watch me move.