Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

The Man Child

I am the judge. He is the man child, just past the watershed
     seventeenth birthday. Before three other judges he is an
     adult, charged with adult misdemeanors. In my court he is
     a child charged with murder because nine months ago he
     followed the home boys.
He followed the home boys and drank beer.
He followed the home boys and drank gin.
He followed the home boys and took Valium.
He followed the home boys and smoked weed.
There was a pecker wood, a white man who presumed to invade
     the sanctum of the Hood.
The wood was a loser.
The wood was an old man at 38.
The wood was HIV positive.
The wood was drunk.
The wood was contentious.
The wood was in the wrong place.
The wood singled out the lady sitting on a car and demanded a
     light.
The wood and the lady argued.
The lady was friendly.
The lady had been friendly with the old home boy.
The lady had been friendly with the young home boys.
The lady had been friendly with the man child.
The old home boy socked the wood for the name of the lady and
     the Hood.
The wood lay on the pavement.
 The young home boys hit the wood with quart beer bottles.
The young home boys hit the wood with gallon gin bottles.
The man child hit the wood and he hit him and he hit him.
The heat came. Everybody left. The wood lay dying on the
     pavement.
I am the judge of the man child.
I am not the judge of the man child's mother who let him grow
     up a wild child and would not come to get him when called.

I am not the judge of the man child's father who disappeared
     after the genesis and does not know the man child. It is said
     the man child's father now lives with the man child's step
     sister as her man.
I am not the judge of the man child's step father whose leaving
     prompted the man child to transform from a good student to
     a Crip home boy in two brief years.
I cannot judge the juvenile system that kept slapping his hand
     and sending him home to mama, when she would take him,
     and to his aunts and grandmother when mama would not
     take him.
I am the judge of the man child. God help me, I am the judge of
     the man child.

Barbara Rollins presides over misdemeanors, small civil cases, juveniles, and probate as a Texas court judge. Before taking up the practice of law, she obtained her B. S. from McMurry University and taught Spanish and English. After obtaining her M.A. from Scarritt College she became a Christian Educator in a Fort Worth church, set type for a publishing company, and worked as a legal secretary. She received her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. While she waits for lawyers to get ready to try their cases, she writes. Her four book children's series Forensic Crime Solvers will be published by Capstone Press in 2004. She's now doing research on pioneer women judges of Texas for a book tentatively titled, She Who Must Be Obeyed.