In a lighter mood, I was having a conversation with a coworker towards the end of May, and I had a very random childhood memory. My late cousin, Gabriel, got scammed by a neighborhood bully. The bully, Ifeanyi, had extorted some money from my cousin and gave him some kind of eggs, in exchange. Gabriel was about eight or nine years old and Ifeanyi may have been two or three years older. Every day Gabriel would come home from school, and instead of going out to play, would spend his afternoons, watching the eggs, waiting for them to hatch. Eventually I think my Aunt realized Gabriel wasn’t going outside to play anymore and when she questioned him, he responded that he did not want to miss out on seeing his rabbit eggs hatch. Auntie had a hearty laugh and then had to point out to her son that rabbits don’t lay eggs…what did he know, at that age? The recollection of how the story was told, in the local Ibibio language was hilarious…and it took my coworker a while to come to the realization that rabbits don’t lay eggs.
I have to congratulate my son, Javin Inanga, who all in the spate of a week, has turned 18 years old, a week later graduated from High School here in Dallas, and by God’s grace will be going on to College in the fall. It seems like yesterday; we had just brought him home from Sibley Memorial in DC and I could not get over the excitement of being a father. Now I am the father of a young adult, teaching how to drive a car among other things. Don’t worry I am not getting old. I am not feeling old… I now find myself adapting to interacting with him as a young adult. Nothing but the grace of God has brought me this far with Javin, and this includes us being hit by a tractor trailer on I-66 West in 2018 and God miraculously saved us. His side took the impact and all he got was a scratch on his finger and I got whiplash. The SUV was written off.
We’ve got to protect our children. I will spare some of the details, but please be alert when you are outdoors with your children, grandchildren or nieces and nephews. A lady in Dallas had a situation where she went to a nail salon with her daughter for a mother-daughter spa day. The plan was to get their nails done. Mum was getting her nails done by one person while the daughter was being attended to by another employee in the same establishment. She said her teenage daughter got up and told her she did not want to do her nails anymore, and besides that she was not comfortable. Apparently, the female nail technician was on her cell phone talking to somebody and was videotaping, live, her teenage client. The teenager said she saw the male at the other end give a thumbs up to the nail technician. The girl went to the car and locked herself in there until her mother came out. She explained to her mother what had transpired. Long and short of it is that law enforcement had to be called in, to take control of a charged atmosphere. Nobody is sure what the intent of the nail technician was, but human trafficking is very real, especially here in Texas. I put this out there so you, my reader, can be vigilant at all times. Things happen when we least expect them to.
As we go through the month of May into June, please be a bit more alert when you drive, as we have a new set of drivers on the road, a lot of them inexperienced. High School graduation has a lot of new drivers who have to be weaned into everyday driving. Next month – what mischief did Jason get into, in his High School Years? Find out next month. That’s The Jive!