He flashed it, looked at us, put his shirt back over it, and kept right on moving past us.
Now I don’t know what to do except quickly deposit the trash and get back to our group as fast as possible. But once we were amongst the group, the whisper shouting started.
“What?! Should we leave? Are we ok?” And so on.
As one of the adults, I figured I should have some answers, but I didn’t. In my context, guns commanded safety rituals and pomp and circumstance. Nobody walks around with one in a waistband. I was knocked off kilter.
Luckily, my adult partner was our local expert and had spent a lot of time in this neighborhood fixing other people’s homes. He gathered us on the front porch.
“OK, let’s calm down. We shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Think about what y’all look like to him. He has no idea who we are, but he knows we’re not from here. We’re running around, making a commotion, laughing, singing, and walking all over the place. We got a dumpster out front and trucks with new stuff stopping by and unloading.
This is just his way of showing us that regardless of who we are, he’s prepared. And we should know that.
So let’s be a little more respectful of his space and try to put him at ease.”
Context forms the lens through which we see the world, and personal experience shapes that context.
