Nature Boy: The Southside Slap-a-Ho Crew

I was telling my friend Mike today about some recent problems my son has been having.

He asked jokingly, "Is he in a gang?"

I responded, "Yeah, the Southside Slap-a-Ho Crew."

Let me backtrack a bit.

I got a call (all these stories about my son seem to all begin with... I got a call... strange) the other day at work. The caller id showed the number to my kid's father's house where they get off the schoolbus. I'm thinking, cool, they're just calling to check in.

Noooooo, the boy is calling to tell me he's in trouble, again.

He began with, "Well, see, what had happened was..."

You know anytime you hear that, you're in for some comedy. And in the boy's case, an ass whoopin'.

"This girl, on the bus, she kept pushing me and I told her to stop but she wouldn't."

I answered slowly, "Okayyyyyy....and?"

"Well, she pushed me on the bus..."

"You already said that. Get to it."

"Well, I told her to stop, then when we were getting off the bus she pushed me again down the steps. I told her again to stop pushing me and that if she pushed me again I was gonna slap her."

Oh Lord.

"Ok, continue."

"Well when I got to the garage door, she pushed me again... and so I slapped her."

Oh LORD.

"But I didn't slap her hard, I really didn't. But she didn't get mad because I slapped her, she got mad because her shoe came off."

"You slapped her so hard her shoe came off Donovan?"

"No, I promise I didn't slap her hard! I don't know what happened to make her shoe fall off but then she picked it up and threw it at me and started crying. That's when Daddy came outside."

"Oh Lord." How many times must I call upon the Lord for this ONE conversation?

I'm thinking that little girl was probably just trying to flirt with him and he went and slapped the shit out of her. People, the days of little notes that say, "I like you, do you like me? Check Yes or No", are GONE. Outta here. Never to be seen again.

Now they say, "I like you, do you like me? Check Yes or Slap a Ho"

I investigated that line of thinking and no, come to find out this little random girl on the bus is actually his cousin (his dad's neice). Great, now I'm prolly gonna have to deal with her mama and we already don't like each other. We just tolerate each other for the sake of the kid's sleepovers, birthday parties, movie dates, etc.

Getting back to the boy... "What did your dad say when he came outside?"

"He told me to call you."

"Wonderful. I'm at work so we'll talk about it when I get home."

Fastforward to my conversation with Mike today...

He asked, "Isn't he too old to be getting spankings?"

I thought, ummm.... My grandmother, and I loved her dearly, used to tell me and my brother we weren't ever going to be too old to catch a beatdown from our parents. That's like an unspoken rule or something in the black community.

I still have to duck shoes and stuff whenever I get on my mother's nerves too bad, so no, he's not too old.

~N