The last time I was in the bookstore, she was blocking my path as she looked at the fantasy books on display.
She had an adult haircut, wore adult clothing and had an adult figure-but her face was that of a 16 year old wishing she were 18. In the high school I attended, she would have been a cheerleader, or the prom queen or on the homecomming court. More than likely, all of that.
Her midriff was bare and her shorts were too short, showing juvenile flesh no one should be privy to for at least a few more years. A flock of boys hovered around her. She relished their attention, but acted aloof. This only encouraged them.
“Excuse me”, I said.
She turns and looks at me, something of a smirk crosses her face and she turns and walks away. The boys look at me as if I have disturbed them, then they too turn and follow her.
I wanted to tell her that this was not the way. For I have been 16 and know what those boys are thinking. I know the thoughts they think, the late nights lying in bed, the solitary explosions while thinking of her, or rather their objectification of her. To them, she is a life support system for their fantasies.
“Don’t smirk at me, kiddo”, I want to tell her.
I remember what it means to be 16 – to have all your life in front of you, to believe whether you get asked to the homecoming dance will have eternal implications and to not yet know what heartbreak truly means. It is an age where you are yet to watch the things you have given your life to be destroyed by false friends, bringing on long cleansing cries in the shower.
Yes, to you I look like some random middle aged guy with a bad haircut and no sense of fashion, but I know things you do not, little girl. I know things you will not know for many years, and some things I know, I pray you need never learn.
Or maybe I know nothing. Hell, if I were you, I would probably smirk too.
