Don't Run

Yesterday I wrote about running, today I want to talk about standing your ground: Don't do it. When I was little my mother was obsessed with making sure I didn't grow up to be a punk. I don't know what it is with single Black mothers, but they're determined to make sure their sons don't grow up to be no punks.

When I was seven we moved into a new apartment complex and my mother made me go outside to make friends. This place was maybe a step and a half up from the projects. You could tell because projects are often named something grandiose like "____ Terrace/Manor/Gardens/Farms." This place was named the George Washington Carver Apartments. Being named after GW Carver made it ghetto, but "Apartments" made it kinda nice.

Anyway, like most ghetto places, there were a million kids in the neighborhood playing outside at all hours so I had plenty to choose as "friends." I met these three kids, Nate, Ramen (yes, like the noodles) and Po-Po (real name Napoleon). They taught me to play football and we got along great for about a week. One day we were playing ball and it was time for me and my mother to leave so I had to take my ball back. My mother was in the car and heard me say, "Hey I gotta go, lemme get my ball." Nate responded, "say please." I said "please" and he gave me the ball.

When I got in the car, my mother had a fit. "You let that little boy punk you like that. You don't say please, that's your damn ball. Next time you just take your ball." She was outraged at what she witnessed and I had to hear about it all the way to the store and all the way home. So the next day, same thing, only this time my mother was in the house and I had to go in to eat.

"Lemme get my ball."
"Say please."
(Inner voice: Remember what your mother said) "Man, I'm not saying please, give me my ball."
(Fist comes flying and hits me in the right eye)

I took off running. I ran home, all the kids laughed and I went home crying. I run in the bathroom to see my face because I'd never been punched before. My omnipotent and omnipresent mother says, "Did Nate hit you?"
"No."
"Don't lie to me. Did Nate hit you?"
"Yes."
"You take your ass right back out there and beat his ass. Don't let nobody hit you and you just run away."

Now in my mind I'm thinking, "How in the hell did you know and if you saw it happen why the hell did you just spectate?" Out of my mouth I said, "Okay."

Nate was about two years older than me and for a nine year old I swear he trained with Maximus in Gladiator. I sat my ass on the steps in the hall and didn't even bother going back outside. A few days passed and by the time I ran into Nate again it was as if nothing happened, although I still felt like a punk for running. So the next time someone stepped to me, I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to be a punk...

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow...

We Run.

I can't write a serious post about the Arizona shootings without implanting a little bit of humor. Watch the video and then scroll down for my own story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNA-jgdXBL0

This is so true. I remember testing this theory like a day after I saw The Original Kings of Comedy. I was walking down the street with three of my friends and for no reason I shouted "Oh shit" and just took off running. Two out of three of my friends hauled ass too. After I stopped they asked, "What happened?" LOL

It reminds me of a time that I was in a now-defunct store called Drug Emporium. My mother used to let me hang out by the children's books section while she shopped. On this particular day I was reading an Alvin and the Chipmunks book when I saw maybe twenty grown adults run pass me and towards the back of the store. I was about seven and I remember the feeling of having several +150 lb people push me out of the way and onto the ground as they stampeded by me.

Too young to know the rule of "run too, stupid" I got up, walked towards the front looking for my mother and the place was deserted. I walked around that entire store and couldn't find a soul. I headed towards the back to see where everyone else had gone and out of nowhere someone grabbed me from behind, put their hand over my mouth and carried me back into the warehouse area. I kicked, screamed and bit their hand but they wouldn't let go until we got back by the emergency exit.

It turned out to be my mother and apparently some guy with a gun chased his girlfriend into the store. Being a 'hood store, the emergency exit was chained shut so we had to just wait it out. The guy eventually left after firing a few shots. What always stands out about that day is how it was every man for himself. I learned that day...when someone else is running, you run too.

Gotta Love Me

Since we last spoke, the baby has grown drastically. Little mama now has two bottom teeth breaking through the surface, she can army crawl around the floor and she is working on standing up on her own.

That means that there is more suffering coming. As the Empire gets stronger, our forces will be less effective. Yesterday I held her in my arms, she reached over, grabbed my face and in a small endearing moment...grabbed my ear with her talon, pulled it into her mouth and began to chomp away with her new teeth. Now there are two teeth prints in my ear as if some deformed vampire had its way with me.

She's the baby...gotta love her.

Healing...

I love you Barack Hussein Obama, but that speech yesterday looked very political.

<Insert politically correct disclaimer>
The loss of life is tragic regardless of class, race and social status.

<End disclaimer>

Based on statistics from the past five years, an average of 45 people are murdered each day in the United States. I just want to know why is it that we only get a primetime special report from the President when the victims include a federal judge and a congresswoman. Seven people were killed in PG county last week alone, bringing their total to 11 murders since this year started.

What's more concerning, the fact that we have one nut killing nine people at once or that we have several nuts killing seven people in as many days? I'm not naive. I know how this world works. People need a spotlight to focus their attention, and whatever is in that spotlight better be relevant and relatable to all. A person being murdered at a funeral in DC  doesn't appeal to someone in Wichita, and a person being stabbed to death in Norfolk, Nebraska has no affect on my day to day affairs here. It's just disconcerting to me that the guy who represents all of us chooses to speak out...now.

The events of this weekend were tragic, but no more or less painful than the things I read about in my local newspaper everyday. We need healing too, or at least a nod of condolences in our direction Mr President.

Not miPhone

Talk about a shitty day in toontown.

I lost five grand in the market today. My nephew was born and the hospital parking garage was full so I couldn't go in to see him and, to add insult to injury, the Verizon iPhone is announced at the ridiculous price of $699.00.

I hate being right all the time.

Flashback a month and a few days ago...
The wife has been begging for a new cellphone for maybe two years. I'll admit that having a flip phone in 2010 is a bit Flintstone-ish. The agreement was that we'd wait for the iPhone to come to Verizon because we knew AT&T was the Wal-Mart of networks...25 registers cell towers and only one or two actually working.

Anyway, three years later there was still no iPhone and she was starting to lose faith. That's when my jackass friends came over with their fancy smancy Droids. They let me play Angry Birds for the first time and that was the bait that lured me off my perch. My wife convinced me to go to the store and just window shop for some phones. Ten minutes later we had matching Droid X's. Before we signed on the electronic dotted line I told her, "I bet they'll announce the iPhone the day after the 30-day return policy expires. That was December 5th. January 7th (30 and two days later) it was all over the news that Verizon was making an announcement the following week.

So here I am sulking in the reverberating "I told you so" that's playing in my head right now. To add insult to injury, I got the price of the non-discounted iPhone. Now, I was expecting something Droid-like. Hey, it's 200 with a contract and 400-500 if you get one outside of the New Every Two. Steve Jobs has lost his damn mind if he thinks I'm paying $699.00 BEFORE TAX for a telephone. It's cheaper to string some cans together and throw them to the people I want to talk to.

Let us not forget that I'm already on iPod number five. At $300 a pop, he's already in my pocket. The Macbook (which I love dearly) was 1500 and now he wants the last few pennies in my pocket. No sir!

So after running the "just be patient" course for three and a half years, I trip a month away from the finish line and the best that Steven Jobs can offer is $700 plus 6.5% sales tax, $30 bucks for a case, $30 for a screen protector, $30 for a phone charger and $8 a  month for insurance...not to mention the $30 data plan. You know what Steve-O...kiss my ass.

You got knocked the...

A video surfaced last week of a guy getting attacked on the Metro by a teenage girl. The victim says the girl was around 12 years old, but after watching the video I figure that shew as at least fourteen or fifteen. 12 or 15, it doesn't matter. My question is:

How in the hell does a 12-15 year old beat up a 40 year old man?

Now I'll admit that some of these kids are huge thanks to the hormones in our food, but I just can't conceive of a kid whooping my ass. In the video you see the guy get hit and then scream at the girl, "What was that for? What did I do to you? Stop it! I'm not playing with you, stop it!"

Now, let's review what went wrong here. I'll give a play by play and then tell you what should have happened.

*Punched in the face for seemingly no reason*

The guy: "What was that for?"
Me: (While cracking three of the bones in her face with my fist) "BITCH! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

The guy: (As she keeps hitting him) "Stop it!"
Me: (If the little girl is still standing, then I'm giving body shots) "Don't nobody put there hands on me."
Me: (If the little girl is not standing, then I'm using my body weight to hold her down while I call 911) "Hey, I just knocked a little girl out for punching me on the subway. Look, I need yall to get her fast and record this conversation because I don't want it coming back on me that I hit a little kid for no reason. The bitch walked up and stole me in my face so I clocked her two good times. Yall need to send an ambulance for her and her little friend that's now walking up on me like he's gonna do something too."

The guy: (While the little girl is still hitting him and now taunting him) "I'm not playing with you"
Me: (If the girl is still standing and swinging) "It's all fun and games until somebody gets thrown on the third rail." (Then I proceed lift her chunky ass up and shot put her over onto the third rail)
Me: (If the girl is not standing and her little friends tried to intervene) "Yall think it's all fun and games until somebody gets thrown on the third rail" (Then I proceed to rush those little bastards onto the tracks one by one)

"You Win--Fatality"

Memory Lane: Ghetto Pizzas

As the new year rings in, I find myself thinking back over my life and the thought occurred to me...I've lived in some shitty places in my life.

I live in a pretty decent area now, but it was a long walk to this side of town. There are some things that you just "accept" in your life growing up in the hood and when you get to a nicer part of town you just feel that something is missing.

You know you really live in a jacked up place when one of two things happens:

A) You call Domino's and they tell you point blank, "We don't deliver to that neighborhood." See, it wasn't that the neighborhood was too far away. The damn store was a block down the street. They don't deliver to this complex cuz they keep getting robbed. The messed up part about it is that they didn't even ask me for my address. They had some kind of caller ID that picked up the prefix of my number and automatically raised a red flag. That makes me think, how often are yall getting robbed that you had to take precautions to buy a system that could do that. Someone somewhere had to sit and map out the neighborhood, tally up the number of times they'd been robbed in each part and then say, "We aren't going over there anymore." Damn.

B) Domino's comes to your area but they don't send someone alone. I lived in one spot where they used the buddy system. Two people rode together and get this...they still wouldn't get out the car. They would call from the car and say, "We're outside, please come to the vehicle and pick up your pizza." I have no doubt that while I was paying the guy through the car window that he probably had a sawed off pointed at me from the other side of the door.

To this day it still feels weird going into a liquor store that only sells liquor. The one down the street from me sells wines and spirits. I'd never heard of a liquor store that didn't have potato chips, popsicles, ice cream sandwiches, now and laters, lottery tickets, hats, DVDs, cigarettes, Redskins scarves, passport photos and honey buns. And get this: They let you get your own stuff. You know how it goes in hood liquor stores. You walk in the door, stand in line and talk to the person behind the bulletproof glass. You tell them what you want and they go get it from behind the glass. They have aisles and aisles of stuff but your broke ass aint walking to get it. I even went to a beauty supply store like that. "Yo let me get a wave cap. The one over there. No, the other one. Down on the bottom. Yeah that one."

I always wondered who was the pioneer of the bulletproof glass carousel. You know, that spinning cylinder that they put your stuff in and then spin it around to you. The updated stores had the bulletproof box that has two doors but only one can open at a time, so when they are putting your food/wigs/whatever into it, you can't open it and let off a few shots. Who makes those things? Let's say I want to open a store tomorrow, who would I call and what exactly do I ask for or do they recommend these to you when you go get your small business loan from the bank? "You're opening the store where? Oh, we suggest you go with the platinum ghettotized security system. It comes with a metal gate to pull down outside the store, bulletproof everything and life size cardboard cut outs of the Schlitz Malt Liquor bull."

It's just weird how different things are.