The Boy

The Boy

From the corner of my eye, I watched the boy move.

He was lengthy—long, with bony arms and legs. Breakable. He was, at most, ten years old. Nonetheless he was the leader of the other two (a boy and girl) who shared both his complexion and his crooked yellow teeth. All three had tattered clothes, dirty faces, and knotted hair. Their dark brown eyes blended in with their chocolate milk skin and razor sharp cheekbones. The oldest had a rubber smile, stretchy and strong.

I wondered what their parents looked like. Where were they?

Each of them held a pile of wrapped straws in their hands. As we waited for the Subte (Subway), I watched as they began ripping the paper, chewing the small pieces in their mouths, stuffing the wet paper into the straws, spitting.

You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. I glanced at my friend Alexis who seemed just as irritated as I was. We both held bottled soft drinks in our hands and avoided eye contact as they began to speak to us.

They were speaking quickly in Castellano and my mind was racing. Don’t fall for this, I thought again. We’d been told over and over to keep our mouths shut in the subway—in order to avoid people knowing we were foreigners. “Foreigners have money, and therefore are better targets to rob.” And so it was; we shut up and ignored the kids.

“Coca?” The oldest boy asked. He was pointing to our drinks. I didn’t even look his direction. Alexis looked at me. We scoffed. “Coca, por favor?” He said again.

He wasn’t thirsty, he just wanted our money. That’s what they told us.

The subway arrived and Alexis and I quickly scooted our way through the heaps of people.  “Hold your bags,” I told her. We clutched our things and shoved our way into the middle.

 “Don’t stand by the doors,” they told us. “People are more likely to rob you if you’re by the doors.”

We stood in the middle. Our feet hurt. We wanted off the subway. We’d had a long day at the market, where we had shopped for hours and spoke bad Spanish to the friendly locals. The kids with the spitballs were shooting them in our direction.

 “They will do whatever they can to distract you,” they told us, “they just want your money.”

The kids kicked their legs against the underbellies of their plastic subway seats. They laughed, laughed, spit spitwads, laughed some more. I gripped my things harder as I remembered all the the things they told me.

Two stops before ours, the three kids hopped from their seats and exited the subway, without bothering anyone.


                                     ~          ~          ~

The truth? I am embarrassed to post this. I am embarrassed to publicize my lack of compassion and my general inhumanity that is glaringly obvious and present in this story. I am embarrassed that my selfishness and fear of losing my stuff took over my sense of love and helpfulness. He was just a kid. Just a kid. I could easily make excuses and blame it on the city, the dangers, the theft rates, but no matter: they were still just kids.

Gandhi once said, “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant. But it is very important that you do it.”

This has never been truer for me since I have been in a city as big and intimidating as Buenos Aires.  How insignificant I feel in a panderia (bakery) where I don’t understand the ordering system and can’t understand the directions in Spanish, so I leave. How insignificant I feel in an elevator when I am wishing with all of my might that I could muster up the strength to start a conversation with a local, but fear gets the best of me. How insignificant I feel when a little boy comes up to me, asking for my soda, and I ignore him out of selfishness.

My most recent goal in Buenos Aires? Start working on the second part of Gahndi’s phrase: “it is very important that you do it.”

Even if it means something as simple as giving the thirsty kids your $2 soda.

Because it is.

And I didn’t.

And, most importantly, to you—little, beautiful, thirsty boy: I am sorry.

B