Confronted

When I first learned how to ride my bike I was already a late bloomer.  I was in fourth grade.  My parents wouldn’t let me ride it on the other side of the main road splitting up the two subdivisions.  I was segregated to only hang out with children on my side of the subdivision known as Indian Ridge.  It was incredulous because I didn’t care who I hung out with as long as they were in my grade or higher.  My friend Joe lived two streets over in an area we all called the horseshoe because two roads connected in a semicircle.  I didn’t go over there too much because the farther you went south, the tougher the neighborhood got.  The roads got worse and the street signs were either knocked down or vandalized with spray paint.  Wonder Lake hit a wave of youthful hatred during the early 21st century.  I didn’t participate in violent demands so I didn’t like being confronted by it either.  One time, while walking home from the park all the way at the south end which only had one basketball hoop with no net, a swing set with no swings and one of those vomit inducing circular contraptions that you swirl around on with friends.  I had three kids follow me that were 2 years older then me.  Yelling at me saying they were going to kick my ass.  I have gotten this before because my dad worked at the local school so they thought it was an easy target and an easy way to get attention.  I never ran from threat so I just ignored them and continued walking.  They did nothing like all the threats I ever got.  They just like to pick fights but never engage in them.  I dealt with a lot of situation like this because I rather give the energy to worry to someone else.  Physiologists say that all humans have a mechanism called fight or flight but it still as never switched on. 

    When I get to Joe's, we went to his best friends house which was on the same block.  Arriving at Zack Zamborono’s house, we just hung out front and rose our bikes off dirt mounds we called jumps or tried to do wheelie's.  I have been here before because his parents don’t show up till about 7 at night so we would be able to do whatever we wanted around the yard until they got home and then it was forbidden for him to come out.  There was not much to do after school so this was a common practice.  We would just ride our bikes in circles for a few hours trying to perfect our grip on the handlebars so we would be able to eventually give it up for a much cooler sport.  We occasionally would make fun of Zack because he was the only Mexican in school and because that was funny back then.  I don’t feel too bad about this anymore because he formed a posse when he moved to Woodstock which is known for it’s Mexican community in our county and named it B-Unit after the rap group G-Unit but the “B” stood for beaner.  
    Once dinner time approached I said my goodbyes even though Joe and Zack were thinking about the same thing.  Dinner was solace when you were a kid.  I never got breakfast because my mom worked third shift and my father didn’t cook.  Lunch was at school so it was prison slop.  But dinner was when you got a home cooked meal and saw your family.  After coming home from dinner you would stay home because your family took your attention away from society and you said grace to the gods of entertainment.  Nintendo, Samsung and Comcast.  I got on my bike and started to ride but everything started to flash like a snap of a picture.  I passed his neighbors house and I saw four guys coming out to their small, compact, gray sedan.  Their house was white and was so small and condensed I thought it was a chicken coop.  They had ski masks in one hand and war starting Glocks in the other.  They were inspecting them while talking to each other waiting for the fifth man.  They were all white, twenty year olds that looked like they were on a mission.  Gang’s started to pop into our vernacular at school but I never heard of any events ever taking place at our home town.  They would always go into the city and break glass and do petty thefts.  But it was my first time seeing a gun in real life and I was beyond scared.  What if they saw me looking?  Would they find out where I lived and break my glass.  I thought just by my sight that I got myself into these gang operations and if I knew too much that I would be obliterated by under-privileged kids with expensive equipment.  But I remember riding my bike to the next street and instantly got off and walked 15 minutes home.