Dear Friends,
I rarely talk about my childhood. To me, my childhood was
short and sweet. My childhood ended in 1986. It ended the day that I saw the
world as it was not how it is suppose to be. I was eight years old and I saw a
world of broken promises and bullshit. My childhood was not for the faint of
heart. I was blessed with not seeing people getting shot or getting shot at. I
was blessed with no one kidnapping me. However, I did see kids around me joining
gangs, getting arrested, and also doing grown things. Unlike how it is today,
during the 1980’s and 1990’s, kids in Detroit
were shown things that they were not ready for. I am about to share some
incidents before I turned 13. These are incidents made me who I am now.
When I was 12, I was in school when I had my first and only
fight with anyone. I have never fought anyone and I learned later that I never
would fight again. I was in my science class. I was trying to listen to my
teach talk about cells and he had to walk out the class for something. While
the teacher was gone, the class was unruly. I was reading my book about greek
mythology when this kid in my class decided to bother me. He goes into this tirade
about my clothes and my family. I ignored him at first. Then he speaks about my
next door neighbors being mutts and the girl that had a crush on me was a
whore. I put my book down and I KO this kid that was bigger than me. However,
as this kid goes down, his friend slaps the shit out of me. So one kid is KOed and
I got slapped. The teacher comes in as we both sat down. That slapped woke me
up and I decided not to fight again. What’s tragic and sad was that those kids
were killed two weeks later in a gang fight. Both those kids were in a gang and
they could have got their gang to beat my ass but I earned their respect. I
wept for them but I knew that those kids wanted me to move on.
I saw my first dead and only dead body when I was 10. If you
ever saw the movie, Menace II Society, you would remember what I speak of. I
was coming home from school when some friends told me about this guy that was
shot in an abandon building. I didn’t want to go but I was curious. As we
walked to the house, we saw the cops circling the block. I knew the cops were
in the area because of this dead body. I kept my cool while my friends were
acting scared. When we go to the house, we saw that the house was empty. My
friends go through the front door and I go to the back. The body was in the
garage. As I looked at the body, I smelled shit and piss. There were maggots
coming out of his mouth and his skin was loosing color. When my friends came to
the garage, they puked. I wanted to puke but I just cried. I tell my friends
that we need to leave. As we leave, we see the cops. We walk away separately.
Seeing death made me want to live life.
I will only share those stories because some of the others
were too graphic or stuff I don’t want to remember again. I live with a lot of
shit in my past. Some things are so bad that I will take the grave. When I
turned 13, my life changed. From the ages of 8 to 12, I had experience things
that I wish I could forget. With that said, I am not perfect or normal. I have
flaws. And those flaws make me who I am today. Thank you for reading and
understanding.
Eugene Chandler III
No comments:
Post a Comment