All’s Good In The Hood

All’s Good In The Hood

Perryville Library Parking Lot

Perryville, MD

November 2016

I am driving in my car ready to pull into a parking spot at the public library what I noticed a group of middle school boys. They’re standing in a circle and in the middle is one big boy who has a smaller boy in a headlock. It looks as if at any second the smaller boy is about to be pantsed. A group of girls eagerly look on.

I can’t help myself, after 30 years of being a high school educator, I still haven’t surrendered that it is my duty to stop each and every act of inappropriate school-aged behavior that I see. So I roll down my window and bark out at them, “hey stop it right this minute. Stop that, do you understand me?”

They stop immediately and strand to look in to my car. None of them recognize me but they recognize that tone of authority. Every middle school kid can recognize the tone of the principal.

“What? What”, the big kid asks.

“It looks to me as is if somebody is about to be humiliated”, I state with my most authoritative voice, “and that isn’t going to happen because I’m watching you”.

"Ma’am, you watching me?” the big kid asks in a stupid asinine voice.

“Yeah you. I’m watching. I got my eye on you. you stop what you’re doing now”, I tell him.

Everybody laughs and the big kid asks, “who are you?”

“I’m someone watching you,” I tell him.

He tells me “no need to worry ma’am. All good in the hood. Nothing going to happen here ma’am. All’s good in this hood”. He laughs and so do I and I release the car brake ever so slightly. I begin to roll away, waving at him and reminding him, “I’ve got my eye on you”. And we all laugh.

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