Grown Up

When a person is young and growing up, he/she witnesses a lot of events and situations that will help him/her grow up. Things that one sees everyday will help a person to grow, but one may not notice that one is maturing until a situation appears. Situations that occur in a person’s life help the person mature and, hopefully, one day, that person will not want to make the same mistakes, that he/she seen others make.

When I was younger, I witnessed a female being physically abused by her boyfriend. It was the summer of 1991; I was five years old. My mother and I were going to Baskin Robbins on Branch Avenue for some ice cream. I picked out my favorite ice cream- a banana split with strawberry topping. As I came out of Baskin Robbins, I saw a lady running in the field between the roads with a guy chasing behind her. As soon as he caught her, he grabbed her really hard, and she started to yell, “Help, somebody please help me!” However, she received no help. We unfortunately had parked right beside the couple’s car. When they got close to the cars, the boyfriend said, “B*#&h! Stop all that crying and yelling before I hit your ass again!” I remember what my mother said to me when we heard that. She said, “If you ever raise or put your hands on a female, I will break your damn hands.”

The next day, I realized that a situation such as that did not seem right at all. When you are young, you look at a situation as if the two were play-fighting. Serious things like that just do not happen when you are young. It took me a while to realize that there are a lot of consequences that one may have to face when one hits a woman. A man can go to jail for a good amount of time, to help him learn his lesson. It will make a man think that if the tables were turned, and it was his mother or other female relatives in that situation, somebody was beating on them like that, he would not like it. A person would be highly upset and would want to take his anger out on that person who assaulted them. So, when a man hits his girlfriend or any female,