The Demon wearing Her Sunday Best

I sometimes reflect on my youth.  There was this one particular day when I was about 17 years-old and still in high school.  I used to catch two county transit buses in order to leave school and get to my job at a fast food joint.  Work usually lasted from about 5 or 6 until about 8:30 or 9:00 p.m.  After work, I would leave enough time to allow me to get to the bus terminal across the street at the mall. Back then, it took about two buses for me to get close to home.  I use the term home very loosely in this case.  For at this time, I was a ward of the state and temporarily resided in a foster home. 

I am still a little surprised that DCF allowed me to keep my job.  It’s because DCF (or HRS as it was called back then) had some problems with children running away from foster homes and shelters when they had the opportunity.  Maybe they figured that they could keep tabs on me better if I didn’t have a job.  My social worker/ counselor tried to push me to quit my job but I was pretty stubborn and refused. After a few months he stopped trying to persuade me. He was a nice fellow and probably saw that it would benefit me to keep the job.

Like I said, it took two buses for me to reach my foster home in the evenings.  I’d get off that second bus at a stop along a major highway and walk about 7 or 8 blocks to get to the foster home.  This home wasn’t in the greatest of neighborhoods, either.  There was obviously crime and drug-related activities going down in the area.  Sometimes, grown men would attempt to entice and cat-call me but I ignored them. 

Thankfully, no one ever attacked me or anything like that.  I think God was protecting me, because anything could have happened to me.  I did however, have some problems with a few stray, bad ass dogs that would roam the area at night.  One of them came very close to running up on me and biting me a few times.  So, I had to find an alternate route to avoid the bad dogs.

I thought that I had found the perfect short cut one day.  It was a church parking lot and it would help me get home much faster without facing those bad dogs.  The first few times that I used the parking lot, there was a woman standing in the parking lot like a sentinel.  I am assuming that she was a member of the church posted there to keep people from trespassing or causing problems. She and I would speak to each other and I just kept going.

I think on maybe my fifth or fourth time using the church parking lot as a short cut things changed.  The woman was there again but she refused to allow me to pass.  I told her that I was trying to avoid some bad dogs on the next block over.  It didn’t make a difference to her and she still wouldn’t let me pass. 

The reason being:  I was wearing short pants.  No, I wasn’t wearing Daisy Dukes or coochie cutters.  I was wearing shorts that stopped just above my knees.  She said, “You’re not coming through here wearing those shorts!”  I told her that the shorts were part of my work attire.  Which should have been fairly obvious to her because of the company cap and T-shirt I wore.  She didn’t care.

I tried to go around her but every time I tried going around her, she just moved in front of me with her arms extended to block me.  And, she called some big guy over to stop me.  At that point I knew that could have gotten into trouble for trespassing.  I had no choice but to turn around and leave.

It was a complete mind-fuck for me that someone who was supposedly Christian would pass judgment on me due to my modest attire.  The first few times that I used the church parking lot, I was wearing long black pants.  But, it still doesn’t justify the way that she treated me.  Did she think I was a whore because I was wearing shorts?  I don’t know.  And sometimes, older women have a way of getting jealous of younger women. Regardless, she was stuck on some old-fashioned superficial shit. The bible even says, ‘Judge not lest, ye be judged”.  

Now you know the reason behind the metaphor used in the title. That woman was wearing a long skirt and blouse. It wasn’t not even Sunday when this happened.  I still liken her to a demon wearing her Sunday best.  I was a virgin and was probably more virtuous than her. She looked dapper outwardly, but I can tell she is an ugly bitch in her spirit.  But, some people take their religion to a whole other level with their lunacy, minutiae and idiosyncrasies.  I never want to be that kind of Christian pedant.