The Future

First off, I would like to thank those who offered their suggestions to me on and offline. I really appreciate the support. I'll let you know how things turn out. I feel that I may be making some moves pretty soon.

On to the thoughts for today..........

It's amazing how seeing something so simple as a word can evoke emotions that you didn't know that existed.

This morning on my way to dropping off my nephew, I saw something that disturbed me. At the entrance of a housing subdivision, the sign that once hung there had been removed, (or hell it could've been torn down for all I know) and someone had very crudely written in its place Shady Park and some other miscellaneous junk that was either misspelled to the point where I couldn't even understand it or it was just so full of expletives that even I, (yes, I, the original cuss box) didn't even want to remember it.

Shocking? Not really, because by now I've seen worse stuff than that written on walls (bathroon walls are by far the worse. I don't give a damn about you giving good head especially when it's written in the women's bathroom. How in the hell, is that helping me?) and buildings. Anyway, the point of the matter is that today's youth is heading down a path that is filled with dispair, apathy, and hate. I shudder everytime I think about the fact that when I'm old, these are the people that will be taking care of me. The part that really scares me, is that at the rate some of the kids are going, most of them won't be around to take care of the older generation. I'm not that much older than some of these kids, but I look at the way things have changed since the time I was their age ten years ago. Things weren't much different, but I think it's the attitudes that have grown more and more dangerous since that time. Kids didn't go around blowing folks up because you got talked about. While it may have psychologically damamging to your ego, you sucked it up and dealt with it and became successful so that you could brag about your six houses at the ten year class reunion. Also, the music wasn't as virulent back in the day. I mean yes, Ice Cube, NWA, and Luke (don't stop, get it, get it!) were far from being benign, but we knew the difference between living like Luke, Ice Cube, and NWA, we didn't go off and kill the police and go work at strip clubs, well, at my high school, we did have a couple of girls that worked (can you even call it working?) at Club Nikki, but that's a different story because the ones that worked there were over 21 (that's another post though).

Long story short, seeing this grafitti of sorts, gave me an epiphany: I should do something. I know y'all are saying "Wow, she's smart!", but what I really mean is that I should become more involved in helping to help these kids instead of shaking my head and calling them out all kinds of names. As a parent myself, I see the urgent need to take a stand and do something. These kids didn't make this world, we did and it's time that we do something to change the tide. A lot of the kids today, especially Black kids, see the world as being against them and unfortunately, it is. Society today is set up to see Black people fail and unfortunately, at lot of us are. We're wasting our money on stuff that isn't even valuable. In a lot of cases, most of us don't own anything except the shirt on our back. We don't know how to prosper; we don't know how to teach our kids how to make it in life, because we're too busy still trying to figure it out ourselves; we're a people of lost dreams and lost identities. Our kids are growing up thinking the only things you need in life is: if you're a boy, a nine and a bitch; and if you're a girl, a nigga and some baguettes.

Damn, MTV and BET.

I know not all of the children today think that way, but that's the message they're bombarded with day after day via the t.v. and the radio. I don't even listen to the radio anymore because the stuff they play isn't music, it's some stuff that makes me cringe.

As far as what I'm going to do to help these kids, I can't say for sure, I just know that I need to do something. First of all, I'm going to continue to raise my child to the best of my abilities and pray that whatever it is that I plan to do to help other children, will truly make an impact, even if it's in just one child's life.