Today began like any other day... I let the alarm snooze for twenty minutes, bitterly showered and left for my morning class. As I descended the staircase to the basketball courts, I was met by the smiling face of the barber. He was folding his freshly-washed towels, when I noticed that his gaze had drifted to a spot away from my face. At first, I thought he was staring at the teddy bear that I had in my hands, which would make sense because today is the first day that I used the teddy bear as a teaching prop. But no. As I attempted to move outside of his reach, he beckoned me over for a morning handshake (just what I wanted to avoid) with a more-excited-than-usual air about him. He then grabbed my hand in way that suggested a handshake, but acted as a restraint and firmly planted his other hand on my - ahem. Oh, and he didn't even miss a little bit. It's like he had been finely-tuning his aim for this moment or something. Stunned, I gave a pathetic, little chuckle and shuffled off to class.
Apparently I'm not the first victim of his groping, as I learned that this had happened to last year's male volunteer as well. To be clear, it wasn't a grab, but was more of a pat, like he meant to tell me that he sees me through my pants or something. I don't really know why he decided to do this, but if his goal was to make me feel self-conscious right before getting up in front of sixty-five fourteen year olds, then bravo.
Cullen
