Kimberly Gomes

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            Considering I am only seven and am currently still an amateur at blowing bubbles I feel as though I should be cut some slack. Yet, today there was no slack, only a malicious glare that dampened my innocent intentions. It evokes an unexpected clench in your stomach as if someone had just thrown a punch to the gut as you’re enjoying eating ice cream. You look up startled, confused but mostly hurt by the other’s insensitivity to your affectionate moment with the cone of cookie dough. That’s how I felt today.

            Mama and I were driving around town, replicating a typical Monday of errands. Throughout days like these I hold down the back seat where I imaginatively turn the maroon Dodge van into my own personal limo, observing the trailing world that passes by me. I often sit here pretending I have a broken hand, stiffly posing my arm in a right angle hoping to convince the onlookers in neighboring cars. The pose lasts for blocks, cars pass with a disappointingly low amount of stares and my naïve mind forgets the nonexistent cast clearly gives away my able-bodiness.

            However, today my tool of entertainment was Big League Chew, meaning I have a whole heaping pack of watermelon gum to chomp, chew and blow until I perfect my bubble blowing skills. The gum makes its way around my mouth as I sit in a harmless daze, viewing the Bay Area streets of suburbia as Mama passes the usual shopping strip of Lunardi’s with the ice cream shop next door. As we pause at the stoplight of El Camino Real and Broadway I attempt to tackle the task of blowing a jumbo bubble. As I stare out the window of my newly transformed Dodge van limo, I subconsciously gaze onto a silver coup alongside us waiting for the red light to flash green. Just as my bubble attempt fails with a POP the young teenage woman, far older than me, turns her attention to my window conveniently at the moment when my tongue stands outstretched covered in a pink glove of bubble gum. Instead of receiving a wave or a smile as I have grown accustomed to expecting, she continues to stare far past the comfortable time span for a stranger and protrudes her tongue back at me, squinting the corners of eyes and cheeks together beneath her black-framed sunglasses. She looked so malicious, so mean. My gut begins to clench and the pigment of my face flusters to a rosy pink. Seconds later my mother intuitively exchanges a glance with the neighboring driver. Of course she smiles at my mother.

“Is everything okay, Kimberly?” she questions, finding my face in the rearview mirror.

I lie as if I am afraid of tattling on this stranger- like she can read lips or minds or will somehow discover what I’ve said about her.

“Yes.”

I felt so unliked, so hurt. I sit quietly for the remainder of the ride without blowing a single bubble in fear another stranger will hate me for my misinterpreted nonverbal tongue gestures.

            Once we reach home I feel my guilty conscience invade my mind like a tremor. As we walk up the stairs, holding onto the broken wooden railing I cave in.

“Mom, that girl stuck her tongue out at me.”

My face flushes as if I have just revealed another episode of inappropriate peer chat like the time I asked Tracy Timko for a Ho-Ho because my family ‘didn’t even have a penny.’ I felt that this incident was somehow my fault. Maybe if I had waited to blow the bubble after the red went green or wasn’t staring off so blindly we could have avoided this awkward and disappointing scenario. To me this moment is pivotal. Now that I am in the safe quarters of my home and have had time to ponder on this experience I understand Mama would be furious if I had done something similar to a stranger. Knowing this, I expect there to be some kind of retaliation. I imagine my mother and I plotting a trip back to El Camino and Broadway to search for the woman with the intrusive tongue. I mean she can’t just get away with this can she? Oh she can. And she did.

            Over a decade has passed form this day and I still experience similar moments all consisting of strangers shrugging off courtesy as if it’s fallen out of style. I remember being a new driver to the world of the roads and honking at car for cutting me off, yet as he held up a peace sign in response I smiled and laughed at my then apparent ridiculous overreaction. It seems the busy hustle of daily life sweeps us off our feet in all the wrong ways, helping us forget the significance of kindness and implications of impersonal rudeness. As the shock diminishes, the frustration may not. It lingers amongst my limbs and settles in my chest after customers throw their money at me, watching me scamper across the countertop, as their face stands stern and cold. It festers when someone is walking no more than 3 feet in front of you, clearly seeing your reflection in the mirror doors as you are about to enter, but lets it close in your face as you are carrying trays of food to their table.

            Yet sometimes these cold, possibly oblivious moments evolve into blatant cruelty. Seconds after a customer repeatedly snaps at you for attention or directly tells you “you’re nothing but a servant who cannot bring food out on time” one can’t help but stop and wonder if young working students like myself somehow are not aware of our transparent faces that make it easier for strangers to justify a demeaning act.

            Tracing along a timeline of social discovery I note the moments where life pinched my arm and awoke me from the naïve fairytale where blowing bubbles of failure was fun. However regardless of the prevalence of cold social transactions occurring throughout our daily lives, is it the moments when innocence and genuine kindness prevail in a random stranger who makes you smile during the worst part of your day. It is moments like these that remind us of blowing bubbles in back seats of self- created Dodge limo vans. These moments, these smiles, these breaths of tranquil reflection replenish a hope in humankind. Just when you thought the whole world was crumbling at the feet of assholes, in walks the woman whose gleaming ear to ear who cheers that everyday is a good day as long as she wakes up alive. Unlike the young girl squinting behind her shades at a seven year old, this woman reminds me what is behind the clouds and beneath the rays of sunshine. When you can grasp that feeling there’s no need to shove your tongue at the innocence of bubble gum. Instead you smile and laugh as the red light goes green.