21 stitches

These little boys now days are getting out of hand. I don’t know what the deal is, albeit I do have some idea, but it appears as if we are losing our community to estranged forces that come from both within and outside. I heard on the radio today that a young teenager was jumped on a Marta train by a group of other boys, to the extent that he required 21 stitches in his mouth and treatment for other bumps, bruises and lacerations. When I was growing up, this may have happened but more than likely one or two or several men would have intervened and smacked the shit of the fools. But where are we now? Why or better yet, where are the men, like the ones I learned from, like myself located? They or we seem to be invisible.

I often use the phrase female but it is only in reference to a gender specifically. I mean it is possible for a person to be a female but not a woman. For example, to me being a woman regards a specific statement of character that presupposes future possibilities inclusive of being a wife and a mother, whereas female makes reference to “relating to, or being the sex that bears young or produces eggs.” Just as such, I can make the same example regarding men, whereas a male is “an individual that produces small usually motile gametes (as spermatozoa or spermatozoids) which fertilize the eggs of a female.”

I say this to assert that is possible to be a female without being a woman and it is possible to be a male without being a man. This means that any real woman would see the importance of the man in the household, especially as it pertains to raising sons, little boys or what ever one would call them. Any woman that would not appreciate the qualities of such a person would not be a woman. By the same token, any one can be a male, but that doesn’t necessarily make him a man. I know I sound some what confusing as does most formal logic, but it is essential I communicate to those males that don’t understand that a man displays high degrees of “the qualities considered distinctive of manhood - the quality or state of being manly.”

As such, we need to reclaim our neighborhoods and step up to the plate. I just wonder where the men on that Marta train were. For a man would have broken up the savagery that resulted in that child – yes child, having to require 21 stitches. If we don’t, then we will be raising a coterie of males and not men – people who think that what kind of car they drive and how many pair of tennis shoes they can purchase defines them. We will continue to produce a group of unproductive persons who feel that trapping is the best way to make money because they do not have the fortitude to work a nine to five, and pay bills, and taxes, and provide their kids and family with lunch money or whatever else they need.

You women, I admit, yawl trying your best but no matter what u do you can not teach a boy to be a man or what it will be like to be a man. Maybe you can teach him to be a gentleman, but that’s all. We need to do something about these messages that suggest what one has is more important than issues of character. We need to stand up and do whatever as men; we can to fight messages that support the notion of our women being merely hoes and bitches. If we don’t we will continue to look out our windows, and ignore something that we can easily fix ourselves. If we don’t we will not be worthy of any woman, for a woman will not follow a man she does not believe or have any faith in, and I’d hope she would not be with a male that neglects the responsibility of raising his son, or other little boys if he has too.

Note: Notice who takes action in this clip