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Showing posts with the label growing up

It Started with a Christmas Album

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  used with permission ( link 1 ) ( link 2 ) I ain’t e’em WANT to sell my house…      Four weeks before this was all in motion, we took the girls to the Tanglewood Festival of Lights.   If you don’t know, going there usually means you will be in your car for 3-5 hours, and this time was more on the five side of things.   With children in the car, my phone was not to be the one that sourced the music for the ride.   Instead, we listened to a Christmas album. I HATE Christmas albums, but this one was jazzy and the singer had--… this VOICE.   I asked the wife person “who is this?” at least 621 times.   She explained who and then how she knew/knew of her each time I asked, since we were in traffic with the car in park.   The jazzy sounds and buttery voice had me hooked.      In November, my last previous neighbors had moved and after prepping the house, the company that owned it opted to SELL instead of seeking a new tenant.   To the surprise of ALL involved parties, the house snared

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  July 14, 1997… I walked into an NC DMV and got my no-longer-a-kid license.   The one with facial hair, a stamp that didn’t peg me for being under 18 and reflecting a height that reflected my last adolescent growth spurt. I also registered to vote.      In the interceding 23 years, I have not missed one single opportunity to inform myself and vote in every single election.   I have avoided being arrested for or convicted of anything that would jeopardize my right to vote.   I avoided being less than informed on issues that would drive who I should vote for, even in a land before ubiquitous internetting and unsolicited (or solicited!) text messaging.   Every first Tuesday after the first Monday of every November, I got my ass up and went and participated.   When Early Voting became a thing in my mid-to-late 20s, I chose a favorite polling location – one alternative one now – and have not missed an opportunity to vote early since.      I have seen election seasons come and go.  

Life Comes at You

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     People from where I am from aren’t supposed to do the shit I am   doing right now. … stick with me here.      A child of a single mother, we grew up in the hood.   Beyond the normal shit of football in the street and ding dong ditch at 2am, time was spent running from racist-ass cops before they became emboldened enough to shoot people that looked like us in the back.   We always had what we needed , but had to learn to grind hard for wants that often never quite panned out for even that, as we all had to grow up fast.   Extra money from cutting yards and handiwork was often remitted back into the household and became food and necessities.      Rarely did we have the luxury of travel.   I had never left North Carolina until right around my 12 th birthday and that trip was to Atlanta to visit an uncle who had been living there my entire life already.   Any and all travel in my childhood involved visiting family and never included a hotel unless my grandfather was aroun

Playing Outside

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I used to think that the border lines on the map were actually PHYSICALLY out there in the world.  I was confused as fuck when we would travel and I DIDN’T see them. In the summers while mom was at work, we would walk to another neighborhood in the city with a few friends from ours and meet them to play against them in football, or basketball, or baseball…  Or all THREE.  Sometimes we would do it as close to the nearest city park available, so as to score free lunch at the same time. Also in the summers, when mom was home – and usually already gone off to bed – we’d have these EPIC games of hide and seek wherein the whole ass neighborhood was available as a running surface.  It was nothing for a single round to last an hour and see someone running all the way from Douglas Park to MLK, through people’s yard and jumping fences and shit.  We had this garage with storage space upstairs, we’d hide in the rafters and jump out the windows, on top of the neighbor’s garage and roofs