Book of Random

Bold

I was just walking doe the street turned a corner onto an almost empty street. When suddenly a guy wearing all black and a bandana covering the lower half of his face and a knife.

"Give me all your money." He said.

I got angry. Who the hell does this guy think he is?

"Oh, how bold of you to assume I have money."

"This isn't time to play around." He warned.

I didn't listen.

"First of all. Do you see what I'm wearing?" Pointing up and down my dress. "I have no bag! So where am I supposed to hold the money you think I have? Look no pockets. My hands can't be conformable."

"I don't care, lady. This is a shopping district. You gotta have money." Trying to reason.

"Okay first of all I have to work damn hard to earn all my dollar bills. And if I had some on me I wouldn't let people like you get it."

"I-I have...Don't make me use it." Referring to his knife he so shakily held.

"Listen I am a colored woman. You think this is the first time someone tried to rob me?" I questioned. I never wanted to be known as the 'easy target' in my neighborhood. Not without a fight. But the kid didn't budge.

"Listen, kid." I said in a motherly tone. "Things can be tough but you continuing doing stuff like that will make things worse. People already judge us and characterize us without ever knowing us. But it doesn't make it okay for you to do this. There's a cafe down 2 blocks that are hiring."

He lowered his hand and looked at the floor. I took it as my chance. I grabbed his hand and twisted that arm of his against his back and took the knife.

"You can't start over if you have a knife." As I threw the knife in a nearby trash bin.

"Yeah but that's my mother's. She doesn't like it when people touch her hardware."

"Oh."

I dug through the trash, recovered the knife, and the kid was off he went to get that job.