When I was quite young, I had this obsession with butts -- from all the different shapes and sizes and textures to what came out of them. I'm not sure from where this obsession stemmed, but it consumed most of my childhood. I even got my family in on it. My mom and I tried cheats to lift and round out our genetically flat buttocks'. My sister and I squeezed with all of our might to produce the loudest, proudest farts we could. My entire family shared poop stories with each other shamelessly.
You might call me an ass girl, but probably not in the way you would think.
When I was quite young, it never occurred to me that this intriguing behind -- all skin and fat and muscle, through which toxic wastes pass -- had a sexual role, too. To young me, it wasn’t weird or worrisome when my uncle or my first cousin-once-removed slapped the bum. It was playful. It was fun. It was meaningless to the young mind.
How was a 7-year-old to know the corruption that conquers the post-pubescent male mind?
No one had to tell me. Instead, I learned from the look on a stranger’s face -- a middle-aged, nonchalant face performing her young motherly duties.
Unloading a stroller from her Honda Odyssey, she wasn’t expecting to see a 30-year-old with an unscrupulous smile slapping a young girl’s butt as he dropped her off. Making my way from my uncle’s jalopy of a Corolla into the Palisades Mall, I wasn’t expecting to see a stranger stop in her tracks to stare shockingly at my uncle and me. What was the reason behind the concern in her eyes?
It puzzled me and I struggled for the next couple of months trying to solve the puzzle. Although I didn’t realize it immediately, that moment -- filled with care from a stranger’s eyes -- evidently stayed tenaciously in my subconscious. I didn’t know why, but I started to shy away from the grown man’s hand. If contact from such a hand evoked a horrified reaction from someone I’ve never seen (and who’s never seen me) before, then perhaps it wasn’t right.
I’m still an ass girl and you'll still see me obsessing over butts.
However, I still hesitate to walk up stairs in front of someone for fear that my vulnerable, sensitive cheeks will be poked. It’s not an actual fear that haunts me, but it’s reminiscent of the fact that older, more experienced people -- family, friends, males and females alike -- can play along with a child’s meaningless game and twist it to meet their own perverted desires, masked in innocence. It became symbolic to me of another way in which adults take advantage of the naivety of children, brushing it off with, “It’s okay, they’re young, they don’t understand and they won't remember.”
Never underestimate the capacity of young minds. They can learn languages, accents, words, colors, actions more effectively than any able, mature adult with tenfold the experience. Do a kid wrong and she might not know why it’s wrong yet, but it will reside with her forever until she figures it out.
And never overestimate the maturity and morality of older people. They can go through puberty, find a job and a partner, have all these experiences and still not grow into the mental potential of adulthood. Just because he’s older, does that make him wiser? Contrary to the popular saying, mother doesn't always know best.
I’m not saying every action comes with a perverse innuendo. But it happens.
