Big dumb, white boy
That white boy causes me all kinds of trouble
A hippie mother, who ought to watch what comes out of his mouth.
Sure, I acted almighty important.
Maybe that’s because nobody else treated me – a kid from Spanish Harlem – with any respect, and I had to make myself feel important by acting like I was.
And maybe I did talk down to that white boy, telling him to do this and than when he actually got hired before I did.
But that’s no reason for him to call me what he did.
This didn’t start today.
He’d been bristling at me for weeks, giving me looks and mumbling under his breath.
As big as he his and me being so short as I am, I couldn’t believe he was afraid of me.
But he was.
That’s when kept me on him.
In a fair fight, he only had to lean on me a little to break me.
Some how I thought we’d never get to far as that, him too nervous to do anything but grumble.
So naturally, I wondered just how far I could go.
At what point would that big white boy snap and try to get at me?
All I really wanted was for him to open his mouth, to say out loud what he’d been muttering for weeks.
Sure, I looked for an excuse, figuring I had it all over him, even if he was as big as an ox. – me being a street kid in a neighborhood where even Latinos beat on Latinos, and people got tough or they didn’t survive.
I survived.
To tell you the truth, I’d never met anybody like this white boy before, never saw anybody who didn’t know his own strength.
I knew weak people.
I knew strong people.
In ever case, strong people picked on weak people as a way of life, and the weak got strong friends to help protect themselves.
I’m not weak. But I look weak and so people were always testing me, leaning on me until I could prove I wasn’t as weak as they thought I was.
And maybe that drove me, too, making me push this white boy more and more, to get even with all the other boys his size who had pushed hard on me.
Then I guess I pushed him too far, and out of his mouth came a string of words that even made me blush.
I hit him – square in the face, and when he didn’t fall down, I hit him again.
He just blinked.
You could see something going on in his eyes, like my hitting him had turned on a switch.
I panicked.
I knew just how tough he could be if he ever woke up.
I knew that my hitting him at woken him up and that he intended now to test his own strength on me.
That’s why I’m here, boss.
That’s why I want to quit.
I know if that big white boy sees me again, I’m history, and no force on earth is going to stop him.
Maybe it was bound to happen that someone would have to wake the sleeping giant up.
I just wish it hadn’t been me.