Thursday, June 28, 2007

Gullible

I was a gullible little boy, sitting next to the coolest guy in my fifth grade class. Sometimes he took cheap shots at me; commenting on my raggedy shoes, or the clothes I had worn for the second time in one week. His timing was always perfect, and he only teased me when he had an audience.

One day, after one of his verbal jabs, I scanned him for discrepancies. His shoes were in style; with bellbottoms, a silk shirt, and Afro. Then I noticed that his fingernails had little white streaks. It looked odd to me, and I thought it was my one shot to get even with him.

“Well,” I said, “at least I don’t have white marks on my fingernails.”

He laughed at me, and then fired back. “These marks tell you how many girls like me!” he said, “How many do you have?”

A cloud then hovered above me, as I discreetly studied my nails for marks and found none.





8 comments:

Unknown said...

Seems to me the coolest guy was cold and suffered from self esteem issues hence his ragging on you. Step up out of that seat in the fifth grade and be the strong beautiful you he meant you to be.

Eugene Jackson said...

I should have said “self-appointed” coolest boy, because deep down, I knew -even then- that his armor was poorly made, and that in time it would fall apart. It did. Thank you very much for the thoughtful comment.

flutter said...

Seems to me HE was sitting next to the coolest boy

Anonymous said...

Your stories have always touched my heart

Zeinobia said...

there is always one in every class in every school in every country ,these kids always suffer from troubles back home and weakness they want to cover with some fake mask of power

Ak-Man said...

Cool lil story there.

Oddly enough I was checking my finger nails after I read this . . . no white marks

: (

jafabrit said...

why is it that people like him have such comebacks that leave us stumped at that moment. People like that are pitiable really, I am glad that deep down you knew, even if it felt bad at the time.

Anonymous said...

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