More than six weeks have flown by since I’ve sat down and composed a real blog entry in the good ole’ Meredith Green spirit. What have I been writing in the meantime? Oh, all sorts of things, like the world’s most detailed Wedding Day schedule, replete with timelines, task assignments, maps, and seating charts; 58 Thank You cards, in which the first paragraph formulaically thanks the guest for the wedding gift and the second paragraph either free-styles a heartfelt appreciation for the guest’s attendance or expresses understanding and absolution over the guest’s inability to attend; oodles of technical documentation; journal entries that ricochet from manic to meditative to mirthful; and, most recently, an awkward sympathy email to a co-worker who blasted the whole company with an email entitled “My X-wife had a brain aneurysm.”
So here I am, trying to drum up the irreverance and wit that once brimmed within my brain. I’m out of practice. I started writing about this motley group of about 15 teenagers that I walked passed while crossing a bridge over the Fort Point channel during lunchtime. More than half were minorities, most were boys, and all wore large dark-colored hooded sweatshirts and baggy jeans. This ragtag group fanned themselves out over the width of the bridge’s sidewalk, forcing oncoming pedestrians to weave between them. And when the innocent pedestrian was caught in their web, a white kid whose scrawny body swan in his black hoodie would lean towards them and bark loudly in their ear: “WORRF! WORRF!” He timed it so the pedestrian could not see him and would turn around in confusion, upon which his croonies would laugh.
I saw this happen twice as I approached the gang, both times to lone men. Dread mounted in my stomach as the gap between myself and the teenagers shrunk. I tried to manuever myself to the far left of the sidewalk so that I would not pass by the chief rogue, but his associates were configured in such a way that blocked any avoidance. I steeled myself as our paths began to converge, but then! Reprieve in the form of a large hairy black kid calling attention to himself by chanting a nonsensical jingle that caused his audience to crack the fuck up! I passed by unmolested and somewhat disappointed that I could not mentally spew retorts to the young man such as “Why don’t you ease the pressure on our judical system by just willing give yourself up to the custody of the American penal system right now?”
But as I wrote a retelling of the episode, I found myself hesistating. Is it fair to point out that the youth were mostly minorities? Must I sound so fustic about typical teenager hijinks? Maybe the problem isn’t them, it’s me for being so goddamned old and anxious. I was young once. I looked at people like me, with their 9-5 jobs and innocuous office clothes, with their smell of fear and desperation, with their all-consuming own personal ennui… AND I JUST ABOUT BARFED. Fools! Sycophants! Sheeple! We deserve to be accosted on the streets by the problems that we try to ignore. We deserve a bark in the ear!
