Yesterday evening, after posting my first blog in who knows how long, probably due to having eaten a family-sized bag of Zapps Voodoo flavor pretzel twists for lunch, I was craving some fries. (Whatever a person feeds the microbiome is what it will want more of — I gave myself a bunch of salt, I wanted more salt. But we’ll leave the science to my guy Huberman. I digress…)
I typed “fries” into my GPS, instructing it to find some near me.
As horrible as my eating habits have been my entire life, fast food has never been it for me.
Yeah, I’ll eat some junk, you gotta give me the good stuff though. I want the street food from the folks cooking on an actual paved roadway who can’t speak English and might set my bootyhole on fire if I order the wrong sauce. I want the heavy greens where the lady, whose elbows have all but disappeared, decided she may as well use her leftover bacon grease from yesterday morning to sautée her seasoning today.
Now I don’t do it everyday, ‘cause helloooooo, non-Hispanic Black adults lead the nation in obesity, and this ain’t no fat-phobic thing, it’s a life or death thing — obesity is linked to premature death and life-threatening diseases; I’ve seen it, with my own eyes, in my own bloodline. Anyway, if I’m go’on do it, baby, i’ma do iiiiiiit! McDonald’s? Ew. Wendy’s? Absolutely not. OUT!
JJ’s Fish and Chicken. Yeaaaah, now that sounds like something.
I click JJ’s Fish and Chicken, read the reviews, all positive (regarding the food), and it was decided. Within seconds, I put on my hiking shoes and began the navigation.
I walk into the deli-counter-style restaurant and some seat cushions of booths are secured with tape. YES! I’m in the right place.
Now, I only left out the house for fries (and to get some steps), but when I looked up at the poster menu spanning from wall-to-wall above the register space and saw how cheap the fried food combos were, I said, “well…”.
I wasn’t even hungry, just big-eyed.
“You don’t have a kids’ meal combo of some sort? The smallest boneless wings order I see is a 10-piece and I don’t want that much,” I said to the Middle Eastern man waiting patiently to take my order. “No, it’s fine, I give you 10-piece,” he responded.
When I opened the food container and saw those little bitty, barely-bigger-than-a-silver-dollar nuggets, I thought to myself, “no wonder why he said it’s fine.” This runs no risk of over-filling my stomach. I’m not complaining; I don’t want no big hunks of meat no way. I really eat wings for the batter in which they’re fried and the sauce in which they’re tossed.
The cheap, fatty food is fire, but the folks top it.
“Maaaaaan, you already know what I’m hea’ fo’,” a scruffy senior gentleman walks in telling the man behind the checkstand. He fiddles with dollars and quarters in his palm upon pulling his hand from his pocket, placing them on the counter as he counts.
“You take all my money, man,” he says to the Middle Eastern guy at the register before turning to repeat it to those of us sitting in the dining area, “he takes all my money,” letting us know that he’s here often.
“Everyday, you love it,” the guy taking his money engages in a little playful banter. Two Spanish-speaking cooks in view through the kitchen wall cut-out smile and giggle in watching what seems to be a familiar interaction.
I prop up my phone on a bar-height counter along the wall to my right to take a 1-second video clip for a never-ending compilation and here comes another older Black man. We all begin sharing a brief moment of giggles and smiles, “whatchu doin,” “nah, whatchu doin,” “man, hunh.” Y’all silly.
We silly.
We’re welcoming. We’re warm. We’re home, even to those that haven’t a single resemblance in their upbringing to our homes.
There’s good in the hood. It’s not threatening. It’s not dangerous… not intentionally.
People in lower income neighborhoods aren’t there to harm anyone. They hold open arms and extend help to both their neighbors and strangers. Impoverished peoples of the global majority (BIPOC) are naturally more community-driven and caring for others than they are all-for-self, as seen in centuries of populations from people of European descent.
I can walk in any hood no iron no rep.
The comfortability in spaces that are typically discouraged doesn’t come from me being so big and bad and tough and rough, or not being afraid of anyone. I’m comfortable knowing there’s nothing of which to be afraid. These folks mean well. They ain’t tryna do me nothin’.
Now, does a high crime area become considered as such from having no crime? Well, no. Shit happens, sure. However, it stems from a fight for survival. All crimes in low-income neighborhoods comes from somebody trying to stay alive. Zhee others, them other folks in different tax brackets and neighborhoods?! Baby their big dirty crimes comes from greed, comes for total lack of consideration for the next human being on their treacherous effort to succeed. It’s not life or death. It’s not “if I don’t rob this liquor store my baby mama and kids won’t eat.” It’s simply wanting so much more than what they have to the point to where they’ll cross their own mama for some commas.
Maybe I’m a creep, but the latter scares me.
In the hood, folks are trying to survive — that does NOT make them bad people.
What would you do if your child was at home, crying all alone, on the bathroom floor, ‘cause he’s hungry, and the only way to feed him…
Does bad stuff sometimes happen to good people? Yes. Life isn’t fair. A comedian sharing light-hearted laughs and meaningful messages to the public shouldn’t have been shot on a trip to Walmart in New Orleans’ East. Parents to a Xavier University student shouldn’t have had to bury their child at the cause of being caught in the “wrong” part of town.
A girl driving on a state highway between her nice family home and her college campus, also, shouldn’t have been hit by an 18-wheeler that swerved into the oncoming traffic’s lane. Was she in the hood? Not a chance!
(I don’t think sweet little Brianne had ever stepped foot in an actual ghetto; this is a girl that graduated from my high school some years before me with my big brother. When I was a preteen, I remember staring at her thinking, “my goodness she’s gorgeous.” Her baby brother Thaddeus & I were in the same grade and became besties when we ended up going off to the same University and living in the same off-campus apartment community. He started seeing me as his sister, and when he said it, I was honored; he definitely felt like a brother to me, but I’d’ve never said it first out of fear of stirring up something emotionally — “sister” when your actual sister died… too sensitive for me to initiate. A bulk of my belongings are still in Brianne & Thaddeus’ parents’ attic; I was close to that family, such good people. Mr. & Mrs. Gros were/are wonderful parents, they did everything right, from what li could see. They lived on the affluent side of our geographical region in South Louisiana; I was 13 or 14 the first time I hung out at their house and surely thought, “oh, they’re rich.” They’re good people and raised good children, yet bad things still happened.)
It’s unfortunate. Life is a series of unfortunate events.
There’s no statistic that shows more people are even harmed in the hood than are killed in car accidents. Yet, I don’t see y’all ‘round here calling cars killers and dangerous and somewhere to stay away from. The likeliness of getting hurt in a high crime area is significantly lower than being in a motor vehicle. The next time a person thinks “oh it’s not safe over here,” she should be talking about in her car, in general, not about another person’s neighborhood.
Cars are not safe.
The hood is a safe place.
We’re going to end this here because this blog post has be in my drafts half-written since September and baby, it’s December. [inserts blank face emoji] And, this public library computer has alerted me that my session will close in 10 minutes; I’d like to press publish before it does.
That day, those months ago, in JJ’s Fish and Chicken on the “bad” side of town, I felt lovely. I smiled as I watched community members interact with one another. The man counting his coins, clowning with the cashier at the register. The woman giggling when I said, “girl I ain’t even got a hundred dollars,” in response to another woman having asked if anyone could break the big bill she was holding. Cutting ‘cross the parking lot, heads nodding in respect and greeting. A guy borrowing a lighter from another at the bus stop.
Folks don’t mean no harm in the hood. It’s all good.