Make your Body Shut Up

The slaves talked with their bodies and licked the daylights out of  the power of their masters. They spoke with the wink of the eye, the shrug of the shoulder, the drumming of their fingers and the sounds from their throats that cannot be expressed in writing.
 Caribbean people speak volumes with our bodies; we probable say more with our body movements than we speak with out lips. In the Caribbean, no part of the female body speaks louder than her eyes. A Caribbean woman can give someone a cut-eye that could sear a human spirit, and a good, deliberate winding of a Caribbean woman's backside can pierce un-repairable holes in the psyche of her detractor.
 Although the body movements of many Caribbean people (Caribbean women in particular) are often impactful substitutes for swear words, that same body-talk can derail our dreams if we don't learn to shut it up at times. A young male or female who is just trying to enter the world of work and enters the office for an interview, is going there after having years and years of automatic deployment of his or her body expressiveness to blast off piercing messages and warnings. That young boy or girl now must learn to keep those scud missiles under wraps. They have to learn to control those eyes, manage those shoulders and put a seal on those chemically-gaseous lips. They have had long and well practiced usage at school and college against those "bitches" who were jealous of your swag and classiness, but you are entering a different world now, so the defensive shields must come down and truce flags must now go up.
 Not all interviewers are nice people. Some will test you. They may want to see how you react when you are provoked, and they may very well provoke you into thoughts of firing off one of those well used and always ready missiles, either from those piercing eyes or those slightly parted lips. Don't let anyone give you the idea that you are going to be interviewed by angels.There are some devils in authority, and one of them might just try to rub you the wrong way. Be prepared for it. This does not only go for the interview, it also applies after you've got the job.
 Body-weaponry usage is widely practiced in the Caribbean since nearly everything else is illegal. These weapons came on the ships across the Atlantic with our grandmothers and grandfathers, and they passed these down through the generations, especially to our Caribbean females.
 Every woman in the Caribbean walks with an arsenal of these, and they bring them into the office where you have just been taken on to work if you passed the test of the interview. Make your body shut up and refuse to fire back. It is not easy, but in these difficult times..... it is necessary.