EPISODE 1: Where men exist, Audacity abounds!

Where men exist, audacity abounds!

I’ve always known that the existence of men was synonymous to audacity. Wherever there is any being that identifies as a man, there you can see bucket loads of audacity. And I don’t mean this disrespectfully. Ok! I do mean it disrespectfully. So, with all due disrespect, men have loads of audacity. More than they know what to do with so unfortunately, we (women) always end up on the receiving end.

I’m obviously no stranger to the exercising of this audacity. What may surprise you though is the age at which I realized such a thing existed. I was 11 years old. At 11, I was old enough to assist my mom in her shop. So, after school every day, I’d go to the shop and offer her some assistance. We both know selling in the shop could never be the main reason I enjoyed going there. Yep, ulterior motives exist. There was a TV in the shop. And I had control over what TV station we watched once I got there. And anyone who was a kid around the 2010s knows the TV shows on 4kids TV channel were addictive. There was 4kids paradise, there was carousel, and there was an unending supply of cartoons. So, there was definitely nothing that would stop me from going to the shop; except the audacity that men came with.

So, there I was one hot afternoon, waiting for my favorite cartoons to start airing when a man at least as old as my father approached me. Even at 11, I was averse to unsolicited advances. I put on my shopkeeper’s face and asked him if he needed assistance with purchasing anything. He replied in the negative. In my mind, I had more time to pay attention to my shows then. But was I not horribly wrong. The audacity of man knows no bound. So, this man puts a hand on my arm, I’m standing there looking at him like what is going on? Why are you touching me? He then bends his head and whispers “I can take care of you”. I look at him with my infamous blank face.

Lord, just rewriting this makes my blood boil.

He repeated himself. It wasn’t that I didn’t hear him the first time. On the contrary, I heard him too clearly. I wish I hadn’t. But my blank face has that impact on people. Makes them want to explain themselves. So there this man who could be my father stood, explaining himself when I didn’t even ask. He went on to say he knew my dad was rich, but he could take better care of me than my father. I kept looking at him blankly because he could possibly not be talking to me. But apparently he was actually talking to me. And he went on.

I took another pointed look at him, moved my body so his hands were no longer on my arm, frowned, and walked away. Now you may be wondering why I had such a visceral reaction to that statement. This shameless man, who I was sure had daughters older than me, just proposed that I, an 11-year-old, be intimate with him. His reasoning? He has money. Lord, when I say audacity.

Here’s a full-grown man with a wife and children, shamelessly hitting on a child in broad day light. See, if I were this shameless and had this bout of audacity, I would be changing the world. But no, this level of audaciousness is granted to a man who knows not what to do with it. Because let me walk you through the thought process. For this adult to walk from his home to our shop, he had about an hour, an entire 60 minutes, to meditate on what he was going to do and say. Not only that. This whole thought process needed to be something he meditated on heavily for a considerable amount of time. Because you cannot convince me this man just woke up one day and decided in this second, I am going to prey on a young child. Worst off, his mannerisms make me aware this was not his first time being a POS.

So, I went home that night, told my mother about it and we both laughed. We even made a joke about how I should start a prayer session that includes asking God to just make anyone who plans to touch me develops itchy patches on their skin so they are so busy scratching their itch that they wouldn’t touch me. In that moment I realized, men would remain a menace. I could do nothing to stop them. The most I could do was know who I was and protect myself from them. At 11, the burden of chasing men away from me was already thrown on my shoulders. I had to make sure I protected myself from these predators rather than grown men knowing better than to chase girls that could be their daughters. Rather than telling grown men who can think for themselves to leave young children alone, the children have to learn to protect themselves. Society failed me at that time, and continues to fail all of us…

What did I learn? In a world where men cannot take responsibility, where men cannot be held accountable, where men will continue to men, teach your daughters that not every adult is sensible. Not everyone who has lived a couple of decades on this earth is discerning. They should learn to trust themselves only.