Shirt of the day. 8/11/11

Love Nail Tree - Bullies Always Win Tee

We will change the world with the stories we tell.

Rocks pelt the mighty cinder blocks that hold my father’s convenience store together. Dust drifts faintly into the air as child-sized stones fall back to the earth. I am running for my life, always keeping my sister in front of me to protect her from the other school-kids. We are hurdling mounds of garbage and starving dogs. They are lifeless to our plight. My sister is screaming and I am yelling at her to keep quiet. I tell her that it only slows her down. We move around the cinder and finally scurry through glass doorways into my father’s arms. The kids are still throwing rocks and are hitting the windows with steel rods. I can hear them cracking the glass. In a different world my father would hurry outside and frighten our perpetrators away, leaving them thinking twice before chasing us again. But this is our world—with watchful eyes to their terrorizing boys stand approving fathers. They are grown-up versions of their sons, and my father has his rocks and rods to run from too. He must run with my mother and my brothers and sisters ahead of him, protecting us from bullets and swerving cars.

Bullies are broods that carry the weight and mission of unproven forefathers: they exist just to have something to prove. Today, bullies always win, but tomorrow the meek and humble will inherit the earth.

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