Teens Talk - Double Dutch

The Grand Rapids Times
11-14-2008
By Marcel Gamble

Jump in little girl; jump in;
The rope will not stop turning.
1964, your family hosed down to the floor;
Two decades away, a man is beaten to death for being gay.
The drinking fountains are rusty;
The bathrooms for you to use are dusty.
Innocent heroes are beaten for pleasure and ridiculous reasons.
Slave owners fornicate with heroes that they love to hate;
You are a prime example of what rape use to create.
Stop, do not celebrate; your heart should be filled with hate.
Jump in, little girl, jump in and gaze to see
two married heroes hanging from a tree
Jump, little girl, with me; and familiarize yourself
on how life used to be.
See how the past resembles now and how now resembles the past.
Make room for all heroes that are placed in one class.
Do not stop jumping; keep your heart pumping.
Jump into hurricane Katrina see thousands living in trailers provided by FEMA.
Jump into 9/11 and bless the souls on their way to heaven.
Jump, little girl, jump.
Jump right into Iraq and see millions of soldiers
lying flat on their backs;
Jump into Rwanda but bring a tissue for your eyes –
See limbs removed from bodies, become a witness to genocide.
Jump into a neighborhood where gangsters battle for a throne;
See thugs dying for a corner that they will never own;
Take a crack rock as a souvenir and photos of the block to tell others you have been here.
Jump into a society that’s controlled by men in million dollar tuxedos.
Don’t jump too far, little girl, because they tell heroes where to go and who to know.
Jump but avoid becoming a puppet in a puppet show
Now, jump and do tricks; do some twists and turns;
Make sure you give the other children a turn.
Everyone must become educated, so they must learn.
Jump, little boy, jump.
No! I don’t feel like jumping today;
Let’s play another game; its time for a change.
No more jumping, no more reason for my heart to be pumping,
My feet stand firm because my time for jumping is over.
Stop turning the rope; the little girl’s legs are tired.
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched for us to get higher.
Langston Hughes spoke of a dream differed, but we will never expire.
Madam C.J. Walker created the perm so that we can be flyer.
Spike lee said, “Do the right thing.”
So stop turning because she is tired.
Ghandi fought in peace, and Chavez hit the streets.
Little girl, these people jumped so we wouldn’t have to jump anymore.
Now you can hang the rope up;
we don’t have to Double Dutch no more.

Double Dutch

The way some people live is similar to the way that scratched CDs play in CD players. They never get past a certain part in a song.
Some people get scratched in life and never heal appropriately; this hinders them from truly experiencing the rest of life.
Everyone experiences depressing times that may damper their spirits and cause them to lose motivation.
During this period of time, many of us begin to Double Dutch.
We begin to Double Dutch to the past to find excuses to why we aren’t succeeding in the present.
Some of us jump to the past not to lift ourselves up today but to find excuses not to succeed tomorrow.
It doesn’t matter what race you are, your descendents did not put their lives on the line for you to Double Dutch.
They didn’t fight so that you can jump and come up with thousands of reasons to why you can’t go to work.
You should be thankful that you have the job you have.
Heroes before you did not boycott just so you would have the opportunity to stand your butt on a street corner.
Too many of us are choosing to Double Dutch.
Individuals before would have died to have the opportunities that we have, to be accurate they did die.
Why are we so quick to jump rope and so slow to pick up on our responsibilities?
Why would we want to share the same characteristics as a scratched CD and be stuck on something that prevents us from moving on in life.
When we jump rope, we are only hurting ourselves we fail because we speak failure and place failure into our lives.
Rosa Parks didn’t overcome her fears to sit in the front of the bus for us to give up now.
All of the greats before our time paved the way for us to become successful beings.
I call them heroes because they said that there would be change and indeed in the year of 2008 there is change.
My generation and generations under me we can be thankful for this change or we can act ignorant and throw away an opportunity that many of us have waited many years for.
It is all up to us to change or to Double Dutch.
Email me at marcelgamble@sbcglobal.net and tell me how you plan to put down the rope.
I’m going to leave you all with this; the future is yours; don’t fall short of utilizing it by Double Dutching.