Third Grader

A third grader was perched on top of a table so she cannot get down unless someone helped her. Somehow it seemed like a set up similar to an interrogation room. There were three adult men in their late twenties to mid thirties that took on this little child probably with intent to ‘catechize’. If someone outside of that arrangement would look, it would seems like that the child had committed some awful crime.

One of the men started instigating the child by saying that her mother was radical, non-conforming, characterless and deranged. Others joined by saying that she was useless to the society, family and to friends despite being highly educated. By any means that child wouldn’t or shouldn’t have known how to recourse and retaliate. But she did. She started giving it back to them, much to their disbelief.

That child’s vocabulary and annoyance for being cornered far surpassed any follow-on criticism that those men together could come up with. But one of the men despite that defeat from the child continued to brag about how accomplished his kids would ever be compared to this child who was being unnecessarily evoked of emotions that were unwarranted for her age.

As a final blow to the foolhardy men, that child in a very confident tone said, “I will watch how far your kids will go and hope you’ll be alive to see how I do.” At that time, one of the men might have suddenly realized that they were persecuting another human being that was a fourth of their age, and asked the others to stop doing what they were doing. Decades later, that child’s prophesy came true.

All of them indeed could see her progress. Sadly, their wishes wishes to see their own thrive, didn’t come to fruition as much as they wished. With such experiences accumulating over the years, the then third grader became astute to life’s philosophies, managing personalities, exuding diplomacy and audacity appropriately and most of all spotting abuse from a distance. That child was me. And that mother in question was mine. It was never okay then to be exploited by anyone and it is not okay today to be taken advantage of.