I woke up and after waiting for the maintenance guy in my apartment to fix an issue, I headed out to run errands. I used to people watch more when I was younger than I do now. There are times that I observe people, but then there are times when I'm so focused on getting things done that I just don't care what everybody else is doing. On my way from the bank to a CTA stop to put money on my Chicago card, a guy strolled by me, said "Hello," I said "Hi" and kept it moving. He goes, "Eh, cah ask you a question?" and immediately my eyes rolled. I don't know what he was getting ready to ask and anybody who can't find anything better to do than hang by an el stop on a weekday isn't somebody I feel I'm going to get some beneficial information from. Maybe it was beneficial, but it just looked like he had a lot of free time on his hands. I just kept walking. I really didn't want to hear it. (My instincts were right. A police car rolled by and he disappeared faster than Casper!) A few days back I was on my cell and this guy screams out, "Eh 'scuse me, 'scuse me, oooh she bad! Don't you think she bad?" I'm sure it was meant to be a compliment, but it just made me cringe. First of all, the guy was my father's age, and I know some women like older men, but I can't stand it when folks who could've been my father walk up to talk to me like we're on the same level. You should be trying to teach me something not trying to undress me. Gross!
However, there are times when I will stop and listen to people speak about a bunch of nothing. There's a special place in my heart for the elderly.
When I was in Atlanta, my godfather showed me how to load, unload and shoot a gun. Before I went into the shooting range, I was excited to do it. My mother, on the other hand, was ready to leave as soon as we pulled into the parking lot and looked terrified the entire time we were there. She's definitely the "lover, not a fighter" type although I'll never underestimate her strong woman radar. But anyway, my godfather (who is a veteran) was patiently teaching me about aim and what not to do. After I left the shooting range, I looked at my target and all the holes in it (specifically the one in the neck) and completely lost interest in guns and shooting ranges. Was it a skill worth learning? Absolutely. Does it make me want to go out and start collecting guns? Nah. Do I own one? You already know it's illegal to own a handgun in Chicago. There are some folks who are really in an uproar about the recent news in Wisconsin that made it legal to carry a concealed weapon. Personally I'm not jealous.
For the life of me, I just can't understand why somebody would complain about how bad their own neighborhood is and then move into another neighborhood to screw that one up, too. If you like being in the hood, stay there! (Yeah, somebody's going to be mad I said that, but I bypassed caring last month when my mail was stolen. I'm still mad about that.) It's aggravating to watch a neighborhood being ruined from folks who could care less while others who do care either have to move or watch their block go straight down the drain. One thing that I've loved the most about living in the neighborhood I've been in for over seven years was the decrease in ridiculous approaches I got. By approaches, I mean guys walking up to you spitting game that doesn't work on anybody but rats. Yeah, that might sound harsh, but it's the truth. Within this past year, there's been a significant change during my train ride (folks are selling candy to make-believe organizations, opening train doors jumping from car to car, putting their legs up on seats, blasting music without using headphones) and now I'm seeing folks hang out by my nearby el stops and just walk around randomly loitering. One perk of my own building was this beautiful set of flowers and freshly mowed grass. There's no porch. There's no stoop. So it's strictly for show and nobody hangs out. I came home one day to see two teenagers flopped down on the ground in front of the door. Extra tacky! Why would you need to hang out by the door when there's a lakefront and a beach a few minutes away? Although I preferred peaceful, quiet rides on the el station once it passed the downtown area, and I liked walking down the street with folks getting off of work, walking their dogs and working on their lawns, the neighborhood is changing. And to be honest, I don't care for it. One of the things that I really loved about living on the north side is the diversity and the peace. My mother has joked a few times about how she thinks I'll never move. I told her I genuinely liked the area. I like being able to take a walk without worrying about what neighborhood I'm going through. I like being able to jog at night. I like being able to go to a beach not overcrowded with litter and not being concerned about somebody shooting somebody else on the basketball court.
Earlier this year I got into a huge argument with a guy who tried to rationalize stealing. His logic was that if his family is in need, they're hungry and the lights are out, he should do everything he can to make sure they're taken care of. No doubt about it. I agreed with him, but stealing isn't the answer and he was trying to justify that illegal tactics are quicker and necessary for certain circumstances. He said as the man of the house, he has to do what he has to do. I told him, "That's not a man. That's a dumbass." You do more harm than good when involving yourself (and, by default, your family too) in illegal activities. Although he claimed to be past that stage in his life, the fact that he was defending what he'd done told me one thing--you'd do it again if times got hard and you're not altogether convinced it was wrong. That to me is simply unacceptable.
When I was in preschool, my mother and I were walking home and two guys tried to snatch her purse. My mother is a very even-tempered woman but she went stone cold crazy over these two guys trying to take what's hers. You never know what a person will do in a situation like that, and logic should've told her, "Let the purse go." Instead she let her fists go flying. Whoever told you a woman can't fight a man surely lied because I'm still astounded that she was defending herself so quickly.
Now I don't know what those two freeloaders were going through to make them feel like it was OK to rob someone of her possessions, but from then on, every time I hear about an incident like this, it rubs me a little harder than it might for someone else. It's personal to me. When my parents moved into their first house, I was the one to come home to see their place trashed and things stolen . . . twice. You know what they did? They refused to move. Place got robbed again. They stayed. My mother, once again, flipped out. She got an alarm, a gate and a dog. We didn't have any problems after that, but she's always been the type to feel like there's nobody on Earth who's going to run her out of any place. She was who I thought of today.
The May 2011 issue of Ebony magazine made me remember my elementary school days. There were two girls I talked to all the time when I was little, one of which was a friend of mine and the other was a pretty good associate. I can't remember the "friend's" name nowadays, and I don't want to murder the spelling of the other girl, but my point is that both of them were biracial. Friend was Mexican and black, but I remember mentioning her being biracial, and she immediately checked me on that and said she was black. I asked her, "Why don't you want to be Mexican, too?" and she got a little huffy. Apparently her Mexican father wasn't around much, and she felt like since her mother (a black woman) was, that's who she would identify herself as. However, she looked nothing like her mother and it was clear that she was of Latino descent.
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