Friday, January 12, 2007
Bling
In this urban working class neighborhood of old, generally well-maintained frame houses, the two adjacent to my building are in poor shape & stick out. Either one would be torn down if sold. Both are rentals. One is occupied by a couple of New York cabbies & their families. The other is a real mess; dirt front yard, beat up couch on the porch. I'm not exactly sure who lives in it except there are several adults, several children; & a drug dealer in residence on & off. He's a short, sullen young man, with dreadlocks. I've never seen him smile, much less banter with his acquaintances. I'm sure he's a sociopath. He doesn't deal his dope openly on this corner - presumably he heads up a street crew somewhere else in the area. One night he apparently had some unsold product & when I was coming home from 7-11 he was standing in front of the house & whispered "Crack? Boo?" to me as I walked by. I wanted to ask, "Hey man, are you in lower management yet or still just a sales associate?"
First, his clothing & accessories improved, evidence he could afford to buy them at the mall rather than downtown. Then he rode up on a racy red Japanese motorcycle of the type preferred by up-&-coming gang-affiliated entrepreneurs. Soon after, a large black gas guzzler SUV with tinted windows - late model not brand new - was parked next to the house. An older woman, perhaps his mom or grandmom, always drives it. On Christmas Eve I saw him leaving the house followed by a small, rail thin young woman wearing skin tight gold lame pants. She was talking at him - not nagging but chattering nonstop in a high-pitched cartoonish voice, like he had taken the place of her cell phone. He said nothing. They walked down the street, probably to some party, she stayed a few steps behind him, yappying away. I watched them for an entire block; she never stopped talking, he never looked back at her. I thought, "You got yourself the clothes, the jewelry, the bike, the SUV, & now you've gone & bought yourself a ho. Too bad she's also a person. Enjoy your bling."
First, his clothing & accessories improved, evidence he could afford to buy them at the mall rather than downtown. Then he rode up on a racy red Japanese motorcycle of the type preferred by up-&-coming gang-affiliated entrepreneurs. Soon after, a large black gas guzzler SUV with tinted windows - late model not brand new - was parked next to the house. An older woman, perhaps his mom or grandmom, always drives it. On Christmas Eve I saw him leaving the house followed by a small, rail thin young woman wearing skin tight gold lame pants. She was talking at him - not nagging but chattering nonstop in a high-pitched cartoonish voice, like he had taken the place of her cell phone. He said nothing. They walked down the street, probably to some party, she stayed a few steps behind him, yappying away. I watched them for an entire block; she never stopped talking, he never looked back at her. I thought, "You got yourself the clothes, the jewelry, the bike, the SUV, & now you've gone & bought yourself a ho. Too bad she's also a person. Enjoy your bling."
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
This sounds like the students I work with. I try not to think about what some of the "professions" of the parents must be. Nearly all of them qualify for student lunch, yet all of them are dressed beautifully, with brand names and received gifts like Play Stations and ipods for Christmas. You do the math.
I used to get families like that when I worked in the Food Stamp office. The circumstantial evidence pointed to substantial undeclared income, but there was nothing to be done about it.
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