You did what?? You called WHO??

Basically, I was in second grade and, because of my advanced intelligence (what an ego), what I would do in class was do the class work (which took all of 5 minutes) and either go to the 5th grade classes to learn with them, or if they were busy or testing, go to the computer lab and playing Oregon Trail or whatever games they had. And I loved Oregon Trail. Anyway, one day, we had to do some all-day project for our mothers or something, I don’t remember, all I know is that I really wanted to play Oregon Trail and I knew that I couldn’t if I was stuck all day cutting and pasting cards and shit for my mom (who gave birth to me and I love, but I dunno, Oregon Trail was there for me like no one else).

So I told my teacher that I didn’t want to do the project because I was mad at my mom. My nosy teacher, another inflicted with Enmaifukinbiz Syndrome, asked me why I was angry. I told her that my mom sent to bed with nothing to eat and I went to sleep hungry. At this point, I will take a pause and address something. I know that people are like “What?” and, believe me, this reaction is commonplace amongst people when my grandmother, who loves this story, tells it. You see, people look at me now and can’t believe it, but they don’t realize/remember that I was a skinny little kid. So you have to think of it in that vein.

Back to the story, technically, my mom didn’t send me to bed with nothing to eat, I CHOSE not to eat. You see, we had ordered pizza for dinner because my mom was too tired to cook. Now this was 1989, so we didn’t eat delivered pizza more than 3 times a year, like it was a rarity, this shit was a big deal. Anyway, while waiting for the pizza to come, I broke something/said something/hit someone/talked back/something, I did something to get in trouble and my mom told me that I would get no pizza and that if I wanted something to eat to go and eat cereal.

(Side story: I had begged and begged my mom for this cereal that I had wanted that came from the Chef off Sesame Street, it looked so cool on the commercial, however, when I tasted it, it tasted more like cardboard with cinnamon sprinkled on; it was fucking terrible. It sat in the cupboard forever and I refused to eat it and my mother refused to throw it away because she was cheap and it stood as a testament that I shouldn’t beg her for shit I don’t need/want, as a matter of fact, she kept bringing up that cereal for years afterwards.) I refused to eat that cereal and went to bed hungry.

So I relayed this story to my teacher and had this horrified look on her face, but didn’t say anything she let me go about my way and play Oregon Trail. So I’m upstairs playing, giving Mr. and Mrs. Butt diphtheria or all my teachers catching cholera, you know how the game works and an office worker comes to me and gets me out of the computer lab and I go to the office. Now anyone knows that getting called to the office is like going to the doctor because you felt a lump. Anyway, the Vice-Principal, who apparently put the PAL in Vice-Principal if you didn’t know that, called me into his office and he had a Happy Meal and some toys. I looked at him quizzically and he told me they were for me. It was like I hit the lottery. Anyway, after I played and ate, a Black lady came in and interviewed me. She asked me about the incident, as she called it, and asked me if that ever happened before. Then she asked me if I had ever gotten a spanking, yes she said spanking. I told her no, but I had received a whupping. See, I assume that everybody, who wasn’t White, got their ass beat like me. You see, I was smart, but I wasn’t smart. She asked me what did I mean and I explained that in my house we don’t get spankings, we get whuppin’s.

Spankings are two to three lights pats on the butt, a whuppin’ is much much more. That’s what I told her because in my mind, a whuppin’ works up a sweat and takes several minutes and usually involves a thirty-second rest period for my mom. So she took notes and everything and I just played and played til I rode the bus home. I didn’t think anything of it. So my mom comes home and she just has this look like “Ima fuck you up”, but nothing happens. I do my homework and she cooks dinner and shit like everything is normal. Then someone knocks at the door, and it’s the case lady. She comes to the house and interviews my mom right in front of me and I can just see my mom’s brain throbbing as she is questioned on her child-rearing ways, her intrinsic motherhood being interrogated by some stranger was just killing her. So she starts in about the “whoopings”, as she called them, and my mother gets the bright idea to show her how she whups me. So she goes and gets a belt, has me bend over the couch and proceeds to whip me. Mind you I said whip me, not whup me. It was probably a 4.5 on the Mrs. Caldwell Official Scale of Ass-Whuppings. It still hurt. The lady was apparently satisfied or fucking scared of this crazy woman who was not scared of CPS at all. She left and my mother said, and I’ll never forget this, this was like some Terminator shit, she said, “This shit ain't over.”

And it wasn’t. I was taken to my room and beaten/whupped/whatever. Well it was the worst beating I ever got. Have you seen Glory? And the beating that Denzel got? That wasn’t shit. She made me strip buck naked and place my hands on my desk. Then I got beat with an extension cord from the pancake griddle and then had to suffer through pancakes the next morning, on some psychological warfare shit.

Anyway, I don’t want people to think that my mom was an abuser or anything, she wasn’t. I deserved each and every whuppin I got. I was a bad kid, terrible, I refuse to listen, I got kicked out of like 4 schools in elementary alone, I was just a troublemaker. If I wasn’t so smart, any sane person would have abandoned me by the side of the freeway, I was just that bad. Words and threats, didn’t work, but ass-whuppins did. Eventually, I got the point and shaped up, well I wasn’t/am not a model student/person, but it’s a lot better than it was.

Slapped into Bolivian

My favorite moment involving my mother happened at church. You see, I had/have a habit of falling asleep in church. I used to get away with it sometimes because I would sit away from my mom, but she caught on and made me sit by her. Anyway, during one long boring sermon, I kept nodding off. It was funny because my mom would slap me back awake. So like every 10 minutes I would fall asleep...SLAP awake...fall asleep...SLAP awake. This went on for quite sometime until I fell asleep one last time and my mother didn't slap me awake. All I know is that I woke up in a white room with bright lights. As it turns out, it was a hospital.
My first thought was that my mother had slapped me unconscious and CPS had taken me away and was gonna put me with a nice wealthy White family. I wasn't that lucky. A bunch of doctors and nurses surrounded me and started poking me with needles and no one would tell me what the hell was going on. All I knew was my head and my stomach hurt. They told me I needed surgery because I had appendicitis and it was about to burst. Apparently, I wasn't tired, I was passing out from the pain. I asked about my head, but my mother told me to hurry up and go to surgery. I woke up from surgery and the doctor was over me telling me everything was alright. My head STILL hurt and I asked my mom what happened. Did I fall after passing out and hit my head on the pew? She said no, apparently after I passed out she slapped me on the back of my head to wake me up. It didn't work so she slapped me again, and again, and again, well, you get the picture. After about 10 slaps, she realized that something was wrong, so she gathered up her stuff and took me to the hospital, not before slapping me again for being a pain in the ass and making her miss the rest of service.

This close to being Stevie Wonder

I was like 13 or 14, a young buck, feeling myself a little bit too hard, you know how we are. Anyway, I came home and my mom was cooking dinner or something and all I can remember was that I said the word Damn. I can't remember the context or anything, but I said it and she heard it. She told me God doesn't like cursing (this ironic because my mom dropped bombs like GWB) and told me to stop. I told her it was in the Bible and if it's good enough for God, it's good enough for me.

It ended at that and I was watching TV in my room and I said it again, but loudly, she came into my room and told me that a good Christian doesn't curse, again I told her that it was in the Bible. She said that God had something for me and that she could show me better than she could tell me. She left and went to the kitchen and came back with a glass bottle of water in it. She opened the bottle and threw it in my face and said that she bet that I would stop cursing now. I fell to my feet and cried out, "Mom, I can feel it, the Holy Water is cleansing my soul, I can feel it burning away the sin in my eyes and mouth!" I thought I would see Jesus, I was truly sorry for my transgressions. My mother looked at me with a weird look on her face and said, "Holy Water?!? Nigga that's bleach, I bet you won't fucking curse in my house again."

Ye Olde Time Religion

My mother is a very religious person, not TOO religious, but just enough. However, she has weird habits. For instance, she drives extremely fast. I mean NASCAR fast. Which in itself is not bad, but we grew up in Houston, which is filled with uninsured drivers. The bad part about this is that while she drove so fast, we were still always late. Late for everything. Anyway, one day, as a child, I asked my mother why she drives so fast. After she slapped me for having the audacity to ask her that question, she answered it. She told me that she drove fast because she wanted to. So I asked her if she was afraid of getting into an accident, she stated she wasn't. She told me she had a secret. You see, while my mother was speeding, she would play gospel music on the radio. Apparently the sounds of Mahalia Jackson create a protective aura around her car. Here I was, thinking that she loved gospel music because of the warm feeling it gave her inside, but in reality, she just wanted an "instant blessing". So I kept this thought in the back of my mind. Well, one day I got in trouble at school, as I was want to do, and I got home before my mom and knew the beating was coming. But I had an idea, so when she came home and was about to whip me, I turned on the radio and Shirley Ceaser came on, you know the song "Hold my mule", anyway, it worked, I avoided the beating. However, this was only momentary as the radio station went to commercial and the effect wore off and she beat my ass.

I'm a Soul Man

This tale involves the original ass-whooper, my Granny. I was about 5 or 6 and was going to my Granny's old Baptist church, I mean ooooold. Complete with moans and groans like those old 1930's tapes that Eddie Glaude played for us in that Religion class Something out of E. Franklin Frazier. Anyway, so we have the normal service and then we go home for Sunday dinner, after which, we will return so that I can get baptized. We go home and eat and watch TV. However, there was a movie on called Soul Man, starring Rae Dawn Chong and C. Thomas Howell (how I remember this I don't know) anyway, it featured the James Brown song "Soul Man" which I instantly fell in love with. I sang it all day. My grandmother, nobody's fool, knew something was gonna happen and grabbed me by my shirt and said that if anything happened to embarass her during the baptismal, she would beat Satan out of me. Anyway, we went to church and everything was smooth. I went to the baptism pool which was above the pulpit and got dunked and the reverend said his words and I got out of the pool. 2 seconds later, I sang out "IMA SOOOOOOOOUL MAAAAAAAAAN, DUHDUHDUUUUH DUHDUH-DUHDUH." My grandmother raced to where I was and snatched my own belt off from my pants in one smooth motion, on some Matrix shit, and beat the hell out of me. I cried, like a girl, as usual. My grandmother came out and got on the mic and spoke to the audience. "In response to whipping my grandson, I just wanted his walk with Jesus to start off on the good foot." She got a standing ovation.

The Hookup

You ever have any friends that work in the fast food industry? I have a couple (old high school classmates) and me, being the fiscally sound (read: cheap) man that I am will frequently visit said friends for free items. This process, while beneficial, can also be very awkward, for example: You walk into the restaurant and see your friend, but because there are others around, you gotta keep that look on your face like "I don't know anybody in here, i'm just a normal hungry nigga like everybody else". So you walk up and all of a sudden the fucking manager comes around. Now, most fast food managers are White and, in my humble opinion, have a psychological trait that is diagnosed as Enmaifukinbiz Syndrome. This trait attacks the cerebral cortex and forces them to bother me when I don't want to be and always inquire as to my intentions. So now that the manager is around, you gotta pull the old "Stepback and gaze at the menu as if you have changed your mind" move. Of course, Herbert, the manager, comes over and ask, "Can I help you?" You answer, "No", wait till he turns around and give your friend a look like "What the fuck is going on? Can you get this fool away so you can hook me up?" Of course, you can only stall for so long before the manager comes back and asks you what you would like, he might even go so far as to make recommendations. You have to order or he will know that something is up. You order the cheapest thing on the menu and hope that your friend hooks you up. Of course, when you only order a 99 cent burger, there's only so much he can put in that small bag. And what does he hook you up with? Nothing.

Hey Kool-Aid

I was just thinking about something the other day. All these fruit juices with their Strawberry-Apple-Grape's or their Mango Madness' that are basically two fruits mixed together are out there making millions. But we been doing this shit for years, how many times did we mix red Kool-Aid with Lemon for Cherry Lemonade? Or Tropical Punch with Grape for that combo I called Purple Shit? It was good.

When it comes to Kool-Aid, White people always the follow directions. Have you read the directions to Kool-Aid? One packet, two quarts of water and one cup of sugar. Have you ever made that shit? It's fucking terrible. It looks and tastes like water. I made this once and my family hated me for a week. They refused to drink it. You don't do it. You first take TWO packets, preferrably two opposite flavors, and put it in the pitcher for that DOUBLE strenf. Add enough water to dissolve the powder. Then slowly add enough water to reach 3/4ths of the pitcher. Then add one cup of sugar. Then add half a cup. Stir. If there is no sugar on the bottom of the pitcher, there isn't enough and slowly add till you see a little sugar sediment (supersaturated for those who had Mr. Newkirk's AP CHEM II). Then add a little more water til it's about an inch from the top, then add all the ice you can. Put it in the freezer. This is key. You need to get it as cold as possible. Come back in thirty minutes later and put in the icebox (or refridgerator or fridge) until ready to drink. You can also add half Sprite/half-Water to crunk it up a little or some sliced lemons if you all fancy and shit. We used to make Kool-Aid cubes to put in Sprite, niggas was resourceful.

Anyway, I know what happened. The inventor of Fruitopia got tricked into going to one of his Black friends' houses for dinner. During the dinner of fried chicken, greens, yams, mashed and fried potatoes(cause you got to have two types of potatoes), and rolls, a delicious mash-up of Kool-Aid was served. He tasted this succulent overload of the taste buds, he promptly stole the idea and made millions. The Man ain't SHIT.

P.S. Remember the Kool-Aid points they had, man I used to save those up like hotcakes and got nothing with them. Nigga had 278347 Kool-Aid points, but couldn't afford the shipping and handling for the damn prizes.

Reciept

My sister was like 12 or 13, I dunno I was like 9 OR 10, and she was at that age where the whole fucking world was her, you know, right when a girl goes from being an asexual being to a female. Anyway, she had her first dance and she was pumped up about it because some dude asked her to go with him. Whatever. She asked my mom to buy a dress for her and when you tell my mom shit, you gotta tell her at least two or three times because she is like Forgetful Jones from Sesame Street. So my mom goes to the store and buys the dress and comes home. However, she bought the wrong color dress, my sister had a fit. (This conversation is a paraphrase of the actual one.)

Sister: Mooooooooom, you got reee-ed. I said blu-ue. I have blue shoes and blue barettes, but a red dress. Ima look like an American flag.

Mom: Shut up.

Sis: Blue, blue, blue.

Mom: Shut the hell up.

Sis: BLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

Mom: *moves towards belt closet* You can take this dress or get one out your closet and wear THAT and i'll take this dress and get my money back.

Sis: I DONT WANNA OLD DRESS, I WANT A NEW ONE, EVERYONE ELSE HAS A NEW ONE, I DONT WANT AN OLD ONE, I WANT A NEW ONE, A BLUE ONE. TAKE IT BACK AND GET BLUE ONE.

Mom: No. Shut up or i'll beat the black off of you.

Sis: TAKE IT BAAAAAAAAACK.

(repeat)

Mom: Let me find my gotdamn reciept. Put your damn shoes.

Me: Oooh, you said the Lord's name in vain.

Mom: No I didn't, I said GOT, you put your gotdamn shoes on too.

Everybody got in the car. I hated our car. I hated every car we had when I was a child. We never had a new car, we always had a long ass Continental or Brougham with the ceiling fucking falling off inside and two paint colors, shit never matched. And it always stopped once a year, no matter what brand it was. It was like a family tradition, a family holiday. And as the only man, I was always the one pushing the car. And the brakes. Damn, you could hear the motherfucker coming down the street. SKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEITTTTTT. I would beg my mom not to stop at stop signs because the shit was so loud. Just roll through, please. And one tire never matched. We always had three regular tires and one that just didn't go with the car. The cars we had made me happy to fucking walk somewhere. "I'll drive you to the movies." Like hell you will, nigga, i'll walk or ride my bike. Shit. I'm sorry, I'm just having car flashbacks. Anyway, we got in the car and I fell asleep. I woke up with my sister asking my mom what store she got the dress from, my mom kept driving and driving. Finally we pulled up to a building:

Sis: Mom, this ain't the mall.

Mom: I know.

Sis: This isn't a store, this is a hospital.

Mom: I know.

Sis: You brought my dress from a hospital? What are we doing here?

Mom: I'm taking your ass back.

Sis: Huh?

Mom: That's right, I decided I'd rather exchange you than the dress. I'm sending your black ass back to the hospital you were born at, I wonder if I can get store credit. C'mon, get your jacket, let's go.

Sis: *Cries*

Me: *dying laughing*

Mom: You were born here too, nigga.

Paying back my momma...

My mother is a very literal person. What she says, she means, there's no subtext, no hidden dimensions to it, what she says goes. I remember once I got into an argument with my mother over something when I was like 14, it was trivial. Anyway, I told her that I was gonna go stay with my dad and that I didn't need her to do anything for me. Of course, I needed a ride over there, but that was besides the point, I was on a roll. My mom said she didn't care, that I was a young man and I could make my own decisions. However, she said, I couldn't leave until I had paid her back. I told her that was impossible and went to my room and slammed the door. She came later on and asked me if I still wanted to go to my dad's, I said yes. She then held out her hand as if I was supposed to pay her cash. I told her I didn't have any money and I was too young for a job. She said she'd find another way for me to pay her back. Ten minutes later, she came in with a big cantaloupe and some baby oil. "If you can't pay me back for supporting you for 14 years, you can pay me back for the pain I felt during your birth." At that point, I got the message she was sending. I retorted "My head wasn't that big." "Yes it was," she responded. "And wasn't I born by C-section too?" I asked. "Sure," she said. "That's what this knife is for." And she pulled a knife out of her pocket. I died laughing.

Bernie Mac....is gone

RIP Man. You will be missed.

I sit here in shock that my comedy idol has died. I found out about his death in haze of hangover while watching the news on my trip. I couldn't believe that it was true, but it was. I don't even know how to put into words how I feel, but I'm sure I will later. I'll just let the man speak for himself.