D. Jones & Pierre

I attended one of the nations best historically black colleges, Morehouse College. Whether the choice to attend that institution was the best decision for me will undoubtedly come up in one of my future blogs. During my time in college, I had the opportunity to experience a lot of things and meet some great people. Of those great people were two people that I considered good friends and fraternity brothers. One of them was D. Jones and the other was Pierre.

In addition to being my friend and frat brother, D. Jones was also my roommate in college. One of the experiences that he had lingers in my mind and has formulated what I call daymares for me. D. Jones has always been a very focused and intelligent student. After spending extra time in the lab one day, he got in his car and headed home from our college. He was driving a few blocks away from our school with his window down. When he stopped at a stop sign, a guy approached his car with a gun and got into his car along with two of his friends who got into the back seat. D. Jones said that the strangers smelled like marijuana. They stripped him of his clothes and shoes as they drove around the streets of Atlanta. They drove to an ATM and got money out of his account and he said he feared for his life. Luckily when they stopped at a gas station, he was afforded an opportunity to jump out of the car and run until he ran into police officers.

That experience has made me a more paranoid driver. When he told me the story, I couldn’t believe that something like that could happen to someone so close to me. Heck that could have been me driving to work for my overnight shift at the gas station. The fact that he was driving home from school and that his car was an older, basic necessity looking car was what threw me for a loop even more. At times, I’ve thought to myself that I feel safe from robbery because I don’t have anything worth taking. This disproved my theory. That incident often runs through my mind while I’m driving. When I’m driving around my own neighborhood and see people, I’m reminded to lock my doors. If I were a white person, I would surely be labeled racist. It seems like I have a frequent daymare of that situation happening to me. The scene in Menace to Society where Cain’s cousin gets his brains blown out and Cain gets shot in the process of them being robbed, doesn’t help much either. I guess D. Jones’ experience helped me to realize that movies aren’t always just movies.

Pierre was also a good friend. He came to visit me several times while I was living in New York with no friends or family. He would try to convince me to move to D.C. and become a teacher out there like he was. I’ll never forget the things that were said about him at his funeral. If you ever had the opportunity to meet Pierre, you would know that every word being spoken was accurate and true to his character. If you never had an opportunity to meet him, you would question the validity of the things being said and think to yourself, ‘Do people like this still exist?’ I’m still not certain what the cause of his death was or exactly how old he was when he passed. I know that he was only a few grades ahead of me and I was 23 at the time. I also know that his passing was related to a disease/illness.

Pierre’s passing at such an early stage of life makes me more appreciative of each day. I feel somewhat guilty about not writing about my family’s tragic experiences, but in time I’m sure those stories will be revealed as well. When I attended another funeral, the pastor at the funeral spoke of the sad song that people sing, “Nobody knows, the troubles I’ve seen.” He asked that people recall the story of Job in the bible while singing this song. He also asked people to recall the story of the father of the murdered 22 year old male the funeral was being held for. The father had recently lost his wife to a disease, almost lost his daughter to violence and lost his son within a 3 month time period. During a time of financial struggles and the struggle to survive such as the one we are all faced with in today’s society, I personally count my blessings. I would ask people to reflect on the words from one of my top 10 movies (Vanilla Sky) and ask themselves, “What is happiness to me?” With all that money can buy, happiness is not one of them.

An Email I Received

A Holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, 'Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like.'

The Lord led the holy man to two doors.

He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in.

In the middle of the room was a large round table.

In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the holy man's mouth water.

The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly.

They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful.

But because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.

The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering.

The Lord said, 'You have seen Hell.. They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one.

There was the large round table with the large pot of stew which made the holy man's mouth water.

The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.

The holy man said, 'I don't understand.

'It is simple,' said the Lord. 'It requires but one skill.

You see, they have learned to feed each other.

The greedy think only of themselves.'

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I thought this was an excellent email. When I'm talking to my friends we often talk about how corrupt and unbalanced this American society is. If this email has any validity, then there really is a hell on earth and it's referred to as the United States of America.

This email brought to mind all of the people I have reached out to for information about employment, not a handout or a hookup. It shocks me how often people (specifically "my people") will withhold information about opportunities that will not negatively affect them, only positively affect others. I have way too many stories of that exact situation. However, I do have great examples of people not being so greedy or selfish that they're willing to help others even with something as small as time and information. Unfortunately, none of these examples involve "my people".

Happy Recession!

I decided about a year ago after going through yet another unrewarding year of doing my best and being scrutinized and devalued that I would no longer pursue a teaching career. Over the course of the last year, I was put into several positions of leadership and yet I was one of the first teachers my school decided to let go. I describe the whole event to friends by describing a situation where you want to break up with someone in a relationship but they beat you to the punch. There goes the 'we need black male teachers in our urban schools' theory. With the new school year approaching, I'm still happy about my decision not to put myself through anymore torture. However, I find myself wondering what's next for me.

Luckily as a teacher, you continue to get paid through the summer. Unfortunately, I assumed that you benefits continued through that summer as well. Luckily, I was able to cancel my dentist appointment after this discovery. Unfortunately, I had two doctors visits that I'll be paying for out of pocket. One of them was worth it because I received antibiotics for my developing pneumonia. I'm sure that the 5 minute doctor visit bill will come soon and that it will be something close to $500. The other doctors visit is very upsetting. I went to the doctor and the doctor looked at my finger and told me that I would need to get a very expensive MRI that he wasn't sure was covered by my insurance. That was the doctors visit! $200! That was the day I decided that I'm not going to the doctor anymore. That lessen the blow from the fact that I no longer have health insurance.

In my thoughts about new employment, I considered becoming a doctor. When I told my sister she was excited and told me that I could see my family and provide them with medical services for free. I quickly corrected her and let her know that I wouldn't be that type of doctor. I would be the doctor that you paid to tell you which doctor you need to go see. I figured that medical school would be a little faster. After all, I'm pretty good at figuring out what's wrong with people after they tell me what's wrong with them. So, you have bumps on your skin...hmm, I'm going to refer you to the dermatologist. If a patient comes to me with complaints about something physical, I'd try to convince them that they are just fine and then recommend them to a plastic surgeon. My fee would be that of the average doctor, $100/min (and you thought mechanics were bad).

They say that what goes up must come down. Unfortunately, what goes down doesn't necessarily come back up and shit rolls downhill.