So I guess I'm at that place in my life where I can look down at the young bucks and remember back when today's fad was yesterday's craze. I'm walking down Nostrand Ave, coming from sending Ms. Jackson a g-pack of this season of the Wire and what do I see but a woman who is maybe my age (but most likely younger) walking along with her two kids. And they're all wearing black and white leather 8-Ball jackets.
I was in high school the first time these particular pieces of cow hide caught my attention. As a relatively sheltered boy who was the last to know about anything in the street, I had absolutely no idea what the significance of an "eightball" was. All I knew was that the jackets looked like different kinds of street lights, signs, etc. with this big pool ball on the back.
It was Didi, my homeboy Paule's older sister who had the first one I'd ever seen. As I had seen her with older and somewhat thugged-out dudes on different occasions it's no surprise that she had one on (and that it had most likely either been given or lent to her by someone who better "understood" the symbolism). The bottom line is that they were far outside of my clothing budget (or at least more than I was willing to spend those early hard-earned freelance checks on).
But in the years that followed, as my hip-hop education, my street education, and the stories that I began to write once I had a better grip on both the world where I lived and the city where I was from, I figured it out just fine. And to be honest I was glad that I had never become one of those people who unwittingly endorsed a culture that they didn't understand.
Now don't get it twisted, I knew my share of runners and hustlers. Hell, getting a gig selling crack was easier than getting a gig at McDonalds back then. I would actually say that I was one of a few dudes in the neighborhood who had no parts of the drug trade at all. This decision was what made me one of the few in Fairfax Village to get out of that era unscathed as the possession with intent and murder raps seemed to flow freely by the time I went to college. As they were the cool ones, I often belittled myself for the choices I'd made as they seemed to never bear the same sweet fruit that those cats were constantly devouring: girls, gear, that look of respect when they walked into that house party around the way etc. But that time came and went, and the jackets, just like it, vanished for nearly 20 years.
So during the three seconds I spent watching this woman and her kids walk by in their matching jackets, I had to wonder if she truly understood the significance. If she did, that was one thing. But why tag your little kids with the same marker? Why help them to embrace a symbol and a lifestyle that at the end of the day could give them a warped view of what their options?
The answer, of course, is that ignorance is always bliss. And either way to her and hers it's just a jacket, no different than those who wore their pants off their asses not knowing that it was style that began in prison for "bitches". It turned out to be a blessing that while I was allowed to go baggy in my parent's houses, nobody ever saw my drawers (unless she was taking them off).
Even as I write these words there's a part of me that laughs at being this mature, as back in the day I would have scowled at such an analysis, even though I was a nerd
who mostly tended to do the write thing. Now I'm this grownup chronically dealing with problems and tendencies that were floating around in my blood before I ever took my first breath. I don't know why I was in such a hurry to grow up. But I do know why I felt like I had so much to prove. The truth is that I became who I am thinking that I was the source of someone else's problems, when in truth I was one of their only salvations. Time sure can change everything. Out.
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