Monthly Archives: July 2009

These are the days of my life…

It’s been a 21 days since my last post. Within those three weeks, Michael Jackson passed away and the media frenzy began dissecting his life every minute of every hour of the day. Was he crazy? A pedophile? A good father? Did he overdose? Who’s going to inherit his money? Steve “Air” McNair was shot and killed by his mistress and the only thing folks cared about was the mistress. How long has he been cheating? Was he a bad father? Where did he travel to with his mistress? Did she kill him then herself? Here in DC, two Metro rail cars collided, killing nine, I started bartending, got into a bar fight with a Neo-Nazi inbred, and Marion Barry was set up again. It seems I cannot stop questioning the sanity and sheer madness of other people and I may have to go to therapy in order to cope with other people’s choices.

Life is about perception and for those that disagree, try to count how many times you pass judgement before you have all the details. I can remember when my mother would comb my hair to the sides and comb out a part in my head so I’d look like my parents took good care of me. Nevermind the patches in my jeans to hide the grass stains from when I played football at school everyday at recess. Don’t worry about the scuffed up Kangaroos or British Knights whose shoe strings looked like my rottweiler chewed on them all night while I slept. As long as I had that part, my mother’s reputation was intact. I was taught not to put my elbows on the table, hold the door for ladies and say “thank you” and “excuse me” when necessary. But since I said hi to 30 (Jay-Z) the world has begun to look very strange to me as if no one else was raised the same.

Those that know me personally know I’m extremely inquisitive. Even if you don’t know me personally, if you have and inkling of some sort of intelligence you can read in my posts how weird I can be. But I don’t think I’m all that strange.

Today I noticed a woman from across the pool deck that I attended elementary school with and tried to make eye contact with her. It seemed as if she’d seen me too because she kept looking – what seemed to be – in my direction. But I soon noticed the fear in her eyes and the imperative movement in her steps towards the pool were not attempts to greet me. Once she jumped into the pool fully clothed I knew something wasn’t right. A child, someone close to her, the son of a friend, laid motionless, face down in the pool. I ran to assist her in helping him as she rolled him over, unconscious, not breathing at all and lungs and stomach obviously full of water. Pandemonium set into the entire scene and it seemed to be the first encounter of the sort to everyone there but me, including the lifeguard. CPR was administered and after 1 or 2 minutes, the child opened his eyes, spat out a lot of water and began breathing. Sadly, what shocked me most was that there were several other adults within arms reach of him who noticed nor did a thing, even after the woman jumped in and screamed for someone to dial 911. As I knelt down to give chest compressions, I heard one of the adults say, “Oh my God, is he dead?” while steadily eating her french fries. Where’s the sympathy? Why was it so easy for her to be so crude and insensitive to the mother of the child who’s fearing death is upon her son?

After the paramedics took the child out on a stretcher as a precautionary method, other parents began pointing the blame and responsibility on the lifeguard. True, he should have been sitting a little closer but my disgust was towards the mother of the child. This kid drowned in 3 feet of water so it’s safe to say that he could not swim at all. So knowing this, as a mother, why allow your child to enter a pool and not have him in your sights? I touched her son before she did and came from behind the bar where I was preparing a drink for a patron.

The night before I decided to meet a friend of mine for drinks in Bethesda. He had a hookup where we were going and I’m all for that in my life. So, we’re chilling, drinking our first drink of what we planned to double before we left and out of nowhere, “You ghetto niggers! What gives you the right to come into my bar?” At that point it was eye for an eye, insult for an insult. My friend replied, “We didn’t know we walked into the Poor White Trash bar, cracker.” The dude literally spit in my face after that and he then accidentally head butted himself with a Bud Light bottle he’d previously sat on the bar before he insulted us and spat in my face. A fight breaks out between my friend and I and his friends and we fled once we heard, “I’m calling the police!” Well, we ran but we almost ran right to the police as they sat on their squad car at the corner. We did a 180 and began to retreat. They followed, and followed and followed us as if we were the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I felt like a runaway slave hiding from the police as I took off my baby blue Polo shirt as if the hounds would catch my scent if I’d kept it on. Once we lost them we went back to our cars and went home. Well, I did at least. My friend had glass in his hand from the bottle and he went to the hospital to get stitched up.

There are three other strange things that have happened to me over the past three weeks that raised a brow and left me baffled. Due to my extensive readership I’ll keep those stories private in fear of sure backlash if I disclosed details. Still, ’til this day I have no idea what the hell she was thinking, nor her stupid friends for encouraging such behavior, but they all thought they were justified in their childish ways. I suffered a few days of punishment afterwards but had no idea what I was responsible for. I also have no idea why another acquaintance of mine feels I need to apologize to her when I’ve done nothing wrong but point out to her that she’d done something wrong. At this point I beginning to feel that my problem is that I don’t have a problem.

Will I continue living life looking at other people’s actions and asking why? Do you all live peaceful lives where nothing and no one affects your day? If so, how do you do it? I hear people say they don’t care what people think and often use rap lyrics and slang terminology like “brush them haters off” or “I’m just keepin’ it real” to support their decisions to be ignorant. I feel that that thinking is exactly why I have so many issues. No one cares that they are rude, obnoxious and just plain ol’ dumb anymore. No one cares that they will be perceived as someone whose mother never taught them right from wrong or how to respect others.


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