4:45 Wednesday afternoon. It had been a long, frustrating day and it wasn’t even over yet. I had been late to
everything; late getting up, late dropping off kids, late to work, late picking up kids, and now late to my doctors appointment.
I was desperate for the traffic lights to simultaneously turn green so that I could reach the uninterrupted freedom of Highway 1. It was in this frustrated state of mind that I overlooked the man standing at the corner, to the right of me. It was in this frustrated state of mind that the message on his homemade sign didn’t quite register…until the sound of the horn from the car behind me interrupted my daze.
Did I just read that correctly? Wait…what? I was in the process of mentally digesting what my eyes had just read when Sofia said,
“That man…that man with the sign, did you read it? Why did it say that? That’s not OK, is it Mama?? Can’t he get in trouble?
”
I’d seen The Man With The Sign earlier that morning on the other side of town when I was rushing to get Sofia to school on time. I was barely able to make out what the white sign said as I sped down the street, “LETS BE TOLERANT” it said in stenciled black letters.
Yeah, we should be, I thought to my self as his existence quickly vanished from my mind. Fast forward to 4:45 in the afternoon and the fury boiling inside my belly and the questioning confusion from Sofia that I was not ready to appease. I pulled into a parking lot, made a too fast U-turn and headed back towards The Man With The Sign. There was a warm deafening in my ears, as if I had been sealed in a jar, and the prickly sweat forming at the back of my neck made me anxious. I was ignoring Sofia’s questions; I think maybe I momentarily forgot that she was even there. All I was thinking about was seeing that sign again…
There he was. I pulled into the Starbucks parking lot adjacent to the sidewalk he was milling about on. I sat staring at the same sign I had seen that morning, the side that beseeched such an encouraging, hopeful message. I sat there waiting for him to turn sideways, or to twirl the sign….And there it was. My breath caught in my throat. The sign, like some version of Dr Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde, had on its flip side a message so frightening and disturbing that it left me speechless. The sign read: “ADULT W/CHILD SEX IS OK” in bold black letters. I felt sick, the broken girl inside me wanted to hurt him…But the real girl pulling at my arm stopped me. I felt sick and I wanted to go home.
Sofia is 8 years old and her knowledge of sex is fuzzy at best. She knows it involves touching and kissing and grown ups—and that’s about it, nothing technical. She’s also had the strangers, bad touching vs. good touching conversation. In her mind, the sign and her knowledge of what sex is, just wasn’t computing. I had to snap out of my fury and attend to her questions…and she had plenty. She wanted to know why the gathering crowd was mumbling “he could say what ever he wants” if what he was saying was bad? She wanted to know
how he knew it was ok.
“When you
know something it’s because you’ve done it, right? Does that mean…
” she asked.
*sigh*
Yes, to an extent you can say what you want, it’s called Freedom of Speech…
Yes, what he was saying was bad, but saying and doing are two different things…
And what I could tell was the most difficult for her to comprehend was the
insinuation of the sign’s message. Sofia took my conversations about “good touch/bad touch” as a theoretical concept
NOT as a reality.
“Then it
does happen??
” Yes. I did my best. Days like this, I have very little faith in my parental abilities…or in humanity.
By the end of the day, Sofia still seemed preoccupied by the days’ events and I was wishing she had never read that damn sign. I could tell everything was still unraveling inside her brain.
My brain was exhausted from coming up with luke-warm answers to her burning questions and my body was tense with memories that I wish would leave me be. Yes, days like this remind me why I have such little faith in so many things.