Trolley, June 9, 2008
“Yo, you bumped me.”
The 13 trolley was packed like a can of sardines jerking slowly up Chester Avenue. At every stop sign, the driver slammed on his brakes. Sam, who is 4, wasn’t holding onto the pole and I was trying to keep him from falling down as an older woman was trying to make her way from the rear of the trolley to the back doors. I was twisting and contorting trying to keep a hold on the boy while allowing the woman off the car.
“I said YO: you bumped me.” I looked up: an African American kid, about 17 or 18, his hair in cornrows was glaring at me as if I had committed the worst crime imaginable. I’d glanced at the kid a couple of times during the ride, watching him pull up his fashionably oversized jeans a dozen times as they fell to his knees. he had tattoos up and down his left arm, but it was the one on his right that caught my eye, the words “RIP Grandma 9-5-38/5-7-07″ crudely etched into his shoulder.
“Sorry,” I said, “but I have to make sure my little guy doesn’t fall down.”
“Yeah, well I said you bumped me.”
“Yeah, I know,” I repeated. “My bad. I have a little kid to watch out for, and this woman’s trying to get off. Sorry.”
“Yeah, well…” If the wannabe thug was trying to get a reaction out of me, he wasn’t going to get it. I didn’t care whether I bumped into him or not, and his comfort zone was so tiny that he couldn’t deal with being jostled, he probably needed to move out of the city. Nor am I the kind of person who scares easily, and as the young man thrust his shoulders back and tried to look bigger than what he was, I shrugged at the overwrought aggression. And besides it was too fucking hot for me to take his act seriously. I understand that poverty and teenage machismo can conspire to turn a nice kid into a jerk with a chip on his shoulder, but in 90 degree weather with high humidity, I’m don’t care what your trip is.
On the other hand, I’m no fool. About a year after I moved into my house, a group of six or seven young delinquents surrounded me and tried to mug me as I waited for the trolley, which I escaped handily thanks to my fast legs. So I turned to Sam and said, “Here’s our stop.” We were three blocks farther from our stop than I wanted to be, but antagonizing a teenager who might well be carrying a pistol is not a risk I’m willing to take.
Sometimes it sucks living in Philadelphia, and I wish people would grow up.
One Response to “Trolley, June 9, 2008”
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June 9th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Ridiculous. Fucking kids.