Long story short, we ended up having an hour long conversation in front of my house. A great one at that. A "I'm going to hire you" conversation. But the meat of the conversation was not in me setting up a future job oppurtunity but when we talked about growing up.
Eventually it got to the conversation about how we both grew up poor and didn't know and while we were having this discussion, I thought about my best white friends when I was growing up.
Your're thinking "what was said in that conversation that made you think about that?" And my response is growing up poor. Allow me to make the correlation through a short story.
You see, before I was a poor black kid who ain't have shit, I was just a kid. Teasing girls, eating boogers, you know, that whole shabang. And as luck would have it, it would be my white friends who led me to the discovery of my epic poor... ness.
Two of my best white friends from elementary school Nick (an EYE-talian) and Joe (the Jew) showed me what it was like to not have shit. They did this by having more shit than I had ever seen in my life. And it wasn't on purpose. My white friends always shared with me what they had and it was awesome.
Lunchables (the Pizza ones, not just the ham and cheese), GoGurt, Chex Mix, Fluff. Yes, all of these things that my parental units didn't even know existed let alone deny me of.
Do you remember what it was like to not have a home computer, because I do. I remember because when I went to Joey's house for a playdate in 5th grade, it was the first time I had seen a computer outside of that Mac that only had Oregon trail and that Carmen San Diego game in the special ed. classroom.
**If you don't know what a play date is, you didn't grow up with white people, I can tell**
**If you never played Oregon trail, who ARE you?"
And at this particular play date, the first time I went over to his house, I learned that I was poor. This may be a familiar incident to some of you, the first time you learned you ain't have shit.
My friend Joe had all the latest video game systems (N64 was the latest at the tine) while I was still on the first Play Station, that I didn't get that until it was 2 years old. I was a back logged system kid. I got the PS2 right before the PS3 came out. When everyone was getting Game Cube, I was burning games to play on my Sega DeramCast. (Oh, y'all ain't know you could copy and burn games for that huh, I knew in 6th grade.)
Only FOUR steps? And it's forever? Well, in that case I'll take TWO!
**Back to the ignorance**
So now I know I'm poor, and I know I'm black. So basically what I'm trying to say is I'm poor AND black.
Is that Good?
Well...
Basically...
...
Yes.
Now, I bet you thought I was going to say NO.
NOPE. Not doing it.
You see, it's great to know your poor because one of those things you can change. And being black is the business. Yall know that. Sheeeeit, EVERYBODY wants to be black (but don't nobody wanna BE black ya' know?). The point is, when I saw that I was poor and later black (but that dope fiends is another story), I knew I wanted more than being poor. And the black thing was cool. I mean, even back then, I knew that the white women wanted us.
And as long as white women wanted ME, I was cool.
But seriously, learning what I did not have was just as much fun as learning what I did. So we couldn't have pets in our apartment, that's cool. The roaches and mice probably wouldn't like it anyway. And So what if I couldn't get the newest systems, that just gave me the opportunity to wax nostalgic at an early age. Besides, I ain't know. And so what I didn't have a backyard...well, actually, there was no benefit to not having a backyard that I can think about.
I'm just happy through all of that, I was able to grow up into the incredible human being I am today.
Amen.
But then I graduated from college...
And I was right back to being poor again.
And I ain't got shit... Mannnn...
Fuck being poor.
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