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.