Keeping it Real

Oh my Goodness. Man, I cannot stand when people come over to my cubicle being nosey. You know how your co-workers are; they think they slick trying to look at your computer screen to see what you are working on. Ole boy here at my job constantly walking around looking to see what people are doing, that sh*t makes me sick. Moving on…… LA traffic sucks everyday. It does not matter what time you get on the highway plan to be there for a long time. I basically plan my life around traffic. It takes over an hour to drive 30 miles, so many damn people in one location is not good. I can’t wait for my job to relocate me because I just can not get into the Cali lifestyle. I am a Mid-West chick, we move slower and we are just more down to earth. For example people in LA believe you should look good at all times (it’s an unspoken rule). When I first moved here I went grocery shopping on a Saturday around 7 o’clock in the morning. Silly me, I threw on some jogging pants, a t-shirt, flip-flops and a head wrap. People were looking like WTF. No lie, everyone was dressed up in the grocery store at 7 in the morning. See where I’m from that’s not how we roll. In St. Louis we just handle our damn business and get fresh when needed. Now I do not want to misrepresent STL, because there will always be a few people that feel like they must be dressed to the nines at all times. However, I am not one of those people. I dress up Mon- Fri, on the weekend I like dressing up to be an option. In LA if you are not dressed in the latest fashions (or swap meet fakes, depending on how you roll) sales reps will pay you no attention. I went to one of my favorite stores (Sephora’s )to get a few necessary items. I had on some jeans and tank top, very casually dressed but still cute. I could not find what I was looking for, so I kept going to different sales reps and don’t you know all those heifers pretended to be busy. I was about to go straight sistah girl on them, and before I get my neck rolling, finger pointing game into action a sales rep in training came to help me. Whew, they better be happy because they were about to feel the fury of a sistah gone mad. Man, I spent way more money than I anticipated. I am like a kid in the candy store when I’m in Sephora’s. All the other sales reps were looking like whoa, we didn’t expect t-shirt and jeans to spend that much! Anyway, I thanked the sales rep in training and told her to never judge a person on how they look because you never know how much money a person is holding. Oh, I want to talk about one more issue before I end this post. My friend Ra-Ra and I were discussing the Michael Vick situation and she was pissed that he might get some jail time. I’m like who gives a damn. The man is a multi-millionaire and he is participating in dog fighting! How stupid is that, it’s not like he needs the damn money. I am from the hood and I know dog fighting is a common practice, just like shooting dice and hustling on the block. However, once you reach millionaire status you should leave hood practices in the hood. He risked his multi-million dollar contract and future earnings and endorsements on a damn dog fight! I don’t know maybe he got knocked in the head too many times and had a few lapse in judgment. Yeah I know other sport figures have beat women, been involved with drugs and most recently started brawls at strip clubs causing people to get hurt. Most of these black sport figures come from the hood and they lose their damn minds when they get a little dough. On top of that ole boy crew starting snitching on him, I guess the stop snitching campaign is losing momentum. With friends like that who needs enemies, some straight Benedict Arnolds. Hood lesson 101, never do dirt with people that will snitch on ya. In my old hood you would hear people saying things like snitches get stitches or dead men tell no tales. Then to add fuel to the fire the NAACP got in the fight. I am trying to figure out why they got involved. Vick can afford a lawyer and this is not a racial issue. Where is the NAACP when it comes to rebuilding New Orleans, resurrecting failing school districts, high rate of foreclosures, homelessness, rampant unemployment, HIV/AIDS, should I continue? The NAACP’s mission statement is: Ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination. Tell me what Vick’s case has to do with that. In the end I wish Vick the best, and hope that he gets fair and equal treatment from the justice system. In the future I hope he makes better decisions and choose his friends more carefully. However, I feel that he should face the music and deal with it.