Gasoline

 I usually buy gas at a station downtown.  I run over there at lunch or after work; it's always a few cents cheaper at this one particular station.

In order to get there, I have to cut through a pretty sh*tty neighborhood; delapidated, low-income, high-density housing.  The crap side of town, if you will.

I've never had any problems over there, until yesterday afternoon after work.  I was a block or two from the gas station when I saw a clot of kids in the road up ahead.  There were a lot of them, probably thirty or forty, pre-teens and young teens,  cutting up and running around, and they were clustered in the street in front of two multi-family houses.  I was too far down the street to turn around by the time I saw them, and frankly, I was a little ticked off that they would just block the entire road.  Where the hell were their parents?

I drew closer in my car, and the kids on the fringe started moving out of the street, although a couple of them actually rode their bikes right in front of my car, like they didn't understand what a car could do to a kid on a bike.  Oh, who am I kidding, of COURSE they understood; they were just jerking my chain.  One or two kids ambled in front of me, close enough to touch the hood before they turned and strolled the other direction.  As I slowly drove forward, I could hear catcalls, most of which included the word "white".  Yep, I am.  I am that.

I wasn't scared.  This was a busy street in broad daylight, and I wasn't the only one trying to maneuver a car through the crowd.  I did kind of wonder where the cops were; we were only a block or two from the main station. 

I wasn't angry, particularly.  Just inconvenienced.  I just wanted to get my gas and head home without having to run a gauntlet of kids.

What I was, was sad.

It was four-thirty in the afternoon on a weekday, and here's a bunch of punks harassing cars on the street.  They weren't in an after-school program, they weren't playing sports, they weren't doing homework, they weren't in the park a block away, and they weren't being supervised by their parents.  They were just running wild, acting up, acting ... aimless.

Where will these kids be in five years?  Dealing drugs, some of them.  Doing drugs, some of them.  Some of the girls will be knocked up, and some of the boys will be in jail.  Some of them will be working in fast food, and a lot of them will be on welfare, because that's what they know. 

Very few of them will be in college.  Very few of them will go on to a career as a teacher or a doctor or a cop, with a home and a spouse and a couple of kids and a couple of cars in the garage.

Grim view?

Yep.  It's just a sad fact that very few get out of the hood.  Very few even try.  Kids model what they see, and what they see is welfare and unemployment and drugs and violence and broken homes and taunting the people who pass through their neighborhood.

It's sad, is what it is.  Is what I was, yesterday.