Golden Gabby: A Letter To The Shallow End

Posted On: August 3, 2012
Posted By: odeisel
Comments: 0

By shelz.

I think I have a decent understanding of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and its application off-shoots. I appreciate how life experience or lack thereof shapes the limited thinking of some people. These concepts help me negotiate peripheral relationships with folks that don’t expect much from others or themsevles. It has been years since this type of behavior irritated me, and sometimes life in the shallow end simply isn’t that person’s fault. We deal with obstacles every day and some are insurmountable. But damn at this whole Gabrielle Douglas hair thing? Damn.

Just as Miss Douglas, a young beautiful black teenager, is across the pond representing the United States in the summer Olympics, breaking down barriers, bringing home the gold and just being crazy amazing, a few of her homebound sistas have tapped into the most trivial of their spirits.

The gold medals have taken a back seat to Gabby’s hair. I guess it’s not fried, dyed and laid to the side appropriately and the claws are coming out. Way to dig into this great story and pull out the most important piece. Awesome job ladies.

Nights of ice baths, days of hobbling, pushing through pain that would sideline almost everyone else. Sun up to sun down physical agony just to achieve one more inch, one more twist or turn. Complete and total commitment. This is the life of a championship athlete. Putting something on the light bill to get the sew-in weave instead of the glue-in is probably foreign to her. Most parents of kids operating on this level would go a year without electricity to pay for instruction. You don’t understand that world. I don’t either, but we should all respect it.

It’s not a common life, a road most traveled. 99.9 percent of us don’t have that type of dedication to anything and she is displaying this type of perseverance as a child. Awe-inspiring does this young woman no justice.

This is Gabby’s shining moment; the event she has been working towards her entire life. This is the time when all of the determination and sacrifice has finally paid off and illuminated a path to even more greatness for her. She is one of our own; our communitys daughter and she has made beyond good. What do some of us do? We wear our shallowness on our foreheads and prove that yes, many of us can’t overcome the obstacle that binds us to simplicity and low expectation.

Am I irritated? Yes. Will you be at Ray Ray’s bump and curl next week still bitching about Gabbys kitchen with half of your child support payment in your hand? Indubitably. But I do understand. You’re basic, and that, for you is insurmountable.

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