Once it dawned on me what Toya Graham was doing, I chuckled.
Graham is the Baltimore woman seen on video smacking around her 16-year-old son after she caught him attempting to participate in the city’s riots last week.
The single mother of six has been lionized and pilloried for her brand of corporal parenting.
Where some chastise her for being abusive, others praise her for being willing to do what it takes to keep her son safe and alive. Her actions added propane to the always burning debate of corporal vs. non-corporal punishment. And, for what might be a small segment of the population, it also provided a moment to reminisce.
Dude, you’re dead, is the printable version of what I said as Michael’s mom chased him to safety, whooping and hollering at him along the way.
I’ve been on the receiving end of a mother’s furious, frightened and panicked barrage of open-handed love and that shared experience is what prompted me to laugh not in malice but out of adult-onset commiseration.
When you’re a 16-year-old boy occasionally you leave good sense and rational thinking in the unmade bed you left that morning. You believe the little white lies and facades you present to the world — especially your peers — in an effort to prove you’re different, indestructible and omniscient. You do really dumb things to prove you are really smart.
And that’s probably what Michael was doing that day. And that’s probably what Graham was reacting to in that moment. As she told the world in interview after interview, she did not want her son to be the next Freddie Gray, a black man killed while in police custody. She was going to get him home alive and in one piece even if, for Michael, it meant a stinging cheek and a bruised ego.
In my youth there were two occasions when my mother put the smack on my back (and shoulders and head) and those occasions were separated by about a decade.
In between those occasions she kept me in line with a look, a word or even a sigh, in large part because I knew what consequences I faced if I continued behaving like an imbecile.
In hindsight I recognize that there were myriad other occasions in which I probably deserved a smack upside the head. I was a stubborn kid who thought he knew it all. But to my mom’s credit she refrained because she recognized my actions did not jeopardize a life or freedom.
As we do every year at Mother’s Day, my mom and I will talk about those times and we’ll laugh and she’ll blame me for her gray hairs and worry lines.
I’m glad that I’ll be alive, able to reminisce with my mom in person and not from a jail cell. I’m sure Toya and Michael will feel equally happy.
