Who Raised You?

As I was trolling the internet last week, I came across a blog post that I'm too lazy to find and link but I believe it was at  http://www.abelleinbrooklyn.com/. The post was about Jada Pinkett and her snap back session she gave on facebook about the criticism she and Will Smith have been receiving about their daughter Willow's Hair and image. If you aren't familiar about this situation, the gist is basically the Blacks as I call them have going in and letting have on Jada and Will about Willow and her behavior. This criticism went to level 10 when Willow shaved her head last year or earlier this year, I can't remember when she did it. People were going in on them because Willow shaved her head and her parents allowed this to happen. Jada's defense was basically that its just hair and her daughter's beauty isn't determined by the length of her hair and that people have to stop holding onto this European idea of what is beauty. The post basically cosigned what Jada said and I do to about what people's image of beauty is or isn't.

I mean when Willow shaved her head, the blacks went on attack. The outrage was pretty damn bad, the comments ranged from why, to she looked like an alien, to she was on her way to getting a starring role on The L-word ten years from now, Will and Jada were horrible parents and everything else in between. Now really didn't see what the big deal was when she shaved her head and how her doing that made Will and Jada worst parents than Casey Anthony and Joe Jackson. I shaved my head when I was her age, not by choice. I fought tooth and nail about shaving my hair but I was in boarding school in Nigeria and we had to shave our hair. In fact that's a common thing for young girls over there, why? It's easier to maintain and it is/was. I would put some Pink Oil Moisturizer (this was before I found out that shit was like putting WD-40 in your head) and brush it and go about my day. I learned at an early age hair is just hair, when I was crying in that chair as my hair fell to the floor; my dad told me it was just hair and it would grow back and I was still beautiful with or without it. But at the time I wasn't trying to hear that shit, all I could think about was the hair falling to the ground from my head. I get it now..... it's just hair and it did grow back. So I totally understand where Jada is coming from, she's practicing what India Arie was preaching in I am not my hair, as she should and we all should.

However, I think some of the critics of Will and Jada's parenting skills isn't coming from what this post or I just said about hair determining what's beautiful. Now I'm playing devil's advocate here, I think some of the criticism Will and Jada get is coming from Willow at times just being the most or what some deem not age appropriate. We are talking about a 12 year old girl here and some are saying the things she's doing aren't what 6th graders should be doing. I'm inclined to agree with this to a certain point. Now I'm nobody's parent but if my 12 y/o child told me she wanted to shaved her head, I would let her. Where I would give her that bitch please face is if she wanted to dye her hair every color under the rainbow, why? Because she's 12 not 18. I while back Willow took a picture with what I believe was a fake tongue ring. Real or fake if I did that at 12 I won't have tongue  to put a ring in because my mama would've promptly snatched my tongue with the ring in out of my mouth. I would probably do the same thing if my 12 y/o did some shit like that. When I was that age my mom didn't let me do certain things, like get piercings, wear a face full of makeup, clothing that a 12y/o shouldn't wear eg. booty shorts. Now I wanted to some of those things because that's what others were doing  and I thought my mama was being a hater. I see now she's wasn't a hater, she was a parent. A 12 y/o can't do the same shit a 18 y/o can do and this is what I think some people have a beef with Will and Jada is about.

I'm not in their household and how they choose to raise their kids is nobody's business but their own. People shouldn't model how they choose to raise their kids based on others. Nevertheless, I don't think people's gripe with Will, Jada, and Willow is about whipping hair back and forth hair, tongue rings, being a free spirit or Willow giving us her best  Annie Hall impression . It's not so cut and dry. I see no problem with let your child express themselves in a way they feel comfortable but at the same time they're kids and they just can't do whatever they want because that's what they want to do. In looking back on my childhood my parents didn't let me do certain things because they weren't age appropriate. The way some people raise their kids are different from other. My parents logic in not letting me do the shit I wanted to do was that wearing makeup and certain clothing  made look too old for my age at that time. Those types of things bring along with it a certain type of attention...... Being 12 and dressing like you're 18-19 brings the attention a 18-19 girl gets and at 12 that type of attention isn't needed. At 12 I didn't need to concern myself with those types of things. So I guess my mom was trying to prevent me from ending up on 16 and pregnant. I see some of these kids today, and I'm not talking about just Willow or any celeb kids now. Some of these kids are just out of fucking control, they are some of the some disrespectful, mannish, and ill-mannered creatures on this Earth and I can't deal. If I ever had a child and she/he behaved like some of these kids I see in street.... well get a jail cell ready for me because I'm going to beat the living shit out of that kid. It just makes you think you the fucked raised you?? There's a fine line between being a parent and being your kid's friend, a lot of today's parents have friends they can claim on their taxes.

I've Got A City Love

Some of you may or may not know that within the last year I moved from Atlanta,GA to Chicago, IL. Well in my journey to the Mid-west I did at one point in time actually live in the City of Chicago.... then things fell apart (it's a long and shitty story) and I had to moved outside of the city limits to the suburbs. Next week marks a year of  living in this suburban town and I fucking hate it!!! Oh suburban life isn't for me at all. Some of you are now questioning well if you hate why don't you just move back to the city? Well the city is expensive and while I do have a job (which is 10 minutes from where I live). I've learned from the school of Hard Knocks, that living above your means is not the business and if I moved the city right now I'll be eating tuna out of a can every night for dinner. So in a way I'm trapped and not in a damn closet. I'm not sure if y'all have ever seen the show Suburgatory, its a cute little show. I honestly don't even know how or when I started to watch it but man can I relate to this girl's pain. The show is basically about a high school girl named Tessa, she and her father move to the suburbs from Manhattan and she fucking hates her life there. Well me and Tessa are one in the same. There are so many reasons why I'm not about this suburb life but I'll only touch on a few.

1) The distance- When I tell you I live far away from Chicago, I live far away. There's the boonies and then there's a place further than the boonies, called the back woods and that's where I live the back woods of Illinois. It's the worst.... when people ask me where I live and I tell them. Nobody knows where the hell I stay at. That's how you know you live out there, folks have never heard for your town. People at times name neighboring towns and I say well I live like 20 or 30 minutes pass there. I swear people look at me like I live in the middle of the wilderness. That drive from where I live to the city is no joke, and don't even get me started if there's traffic. Which there always is... tag on another hour to my time and as we all know gas prices are sky high.

2) Wildlife- When living in the backwoods you are bound to run into creatures of the forest. These creatures I'm referring to are deer. Listen if anybody who knows me in real life knows if there's one animal I'm scared shitless of its a deer. Why? Well for one they're wild animals and you never know what they're capable of. They also like to stand on the side of the road waiting to jump, like they're waiting to jump in like in double-dutch and if you've ever hit a deer with your car (which I have been in the car when someone else did) they well straight up tear your car up. Recently I went running in a park behind my sub-division at 6:30am and as I was jogging along there it was the biggest damn deer I've ever seen in my life in the bushes; literally 1.45 feet away from me. I saw it and it definitely saw me and what did I do? I turned around and ran like the damn wind, I hadn't ran so hard since field day and I was running the 100m sprint in 6th grade. So yeah I ran away from a deer, I know if the deer really wanted to out run me it could have but that was my first reaction, to run as fast as I could. Listen that wasn't Bambi I ran into in that park, it was wild dangerous animal. For a week I didn't have air in my house because a rabbit, chipmunk, or some kind of damn rodent ate through one of the wires outside for the ac unit... yeah these are suburban problems.

3) Nothing to do and nothing to see- Other than my family and my one coworker I like I know not a single soul out here in No Man's Land. There are only two kind of people here 1) families and 2) retirees and that's all folks. There are really no people my age here, just people going to PTA meetings and the other half going to AARP meetings (if they have them). Everything closes at like 10pm, even on the weekends. Shit half the time I'm still getting ready to go out at 10pm, I'm a night owl and now I'm being forced to be a day one and it fucking sucks.

Living in the suburbs has made be really realize that I'm a city girl. I like the noise, in fact I crave it.... I can't stand when things are too quite. It makes me feel like I'm in the beginning of a horror movie or something. To me if things are too quite, that eerie quite some shit is about to go down. I need the police sirens, trains going by, people on the street talking, loud music. Hell I even miss the city smells... you know that sweet smell of the sewer, piss, and come kind of street meat mixed together. I miss all the things the city has to offer that the suburbs don't. I'm not the three bedroom house, with a garage, and white picked  fence girl. I know the city has its downside the crime, how everything is more expensive, blah, blah... but for me that's part of city life. I'm in love with the city (not just the City of Chicago) and according my mom it's been a love affair on going since I was 3. She told me story  once about before my family move to Atlanta and was still living in Chicago, we were on our way downtown one night and she said my little eyes lit up, they were dazzled by the city lights. She said she knew right then she had to get my ass down south but that's neither here nor there. But point is that this love affair is still in a continuum and I don't see that changing anytime soon.  

Chuck E. Cheese's And An Epiphany

Recently there's been an addition to my family.... I have a new nephew. Well my only nephew or niece to be exact but this post isn't about how adorable my nephew is, which he is. I was just thinking about how when people become parents, they at times become inconsiderate and down right rude to people that don't have kids. People with kids always make it seem like those without kids are just down right selfish and don't have their priorities straight....well I'm here to tell you,  a lot of the time its the other way around.

The above clip is an example of what the hell I'm talking about. In this episode of Friends, it's Ross's and Rachel/'s daughter's Emma's birthday. She's turning one and all of Ross's and Rachel's friends are at the party, expect that they all have something else to do and can't stay for the whole party but Rachel insists that everyone stays for the whole party, even though Emma is asleep for 85% of the party. WTF?? Now I've been in situations similar to this one from Friends. I was invited to a one year old's birthday party at 12:00pm on a Saturday and the parents insisted that everyone be there on time. First why are kids birthday parties always so damn early? Like this party couldn't have been at 3:00pm??? I'm just saying tho.  I know children can't be up all late and have sleep schedules and whatnot but Noon on a Saturday, really??? Y'all know what people are doing at noon on a Saturday.....sleeping, recovering from a hangover, at the gym, cleaning, studying, having sex but not going to kid's birthday party. Now this party was at none other than hell on Earth Chuck E. Cheese's... if you don't have kids and you sometimes forgot about using some type of protection while having sex. Take your ass to Check E. Cheese's on a Saturday afternoon..... you'll NEVER forget that shit again. So here I am at this kid's Birthday party, hung over and with 600 20 kids geeked up on pizza and cookies. I could have died right then and there. I get to this party and of course the kid is asleep *eyeroll*, me and one other person are the only people with no kids and we're sitting there like wtf. After all the introductions had been made, what do the parents of this kid do? Put me and the other childless person to work.... I mean wrangling kids out of moon bounces, cutting cake, take kids to the bathroom....... I started to think what the hell did this heffa just bamboozle us into being the nanny for like two hours? Like for real those parents just disappeared when we showed up..... I think they were going outside to the back and having white wine breaks or something. Honestly that day at Chuck E. Cheese's was one of the most annoying days of my life, and it just really got me to thinking.

First if a person without kids doesn't want to come to your kid's party (and this kid isn't related to them or they aren't the Godparent) and just send a gift , what's the problem with that? These parents are out here making it mandatory to come to their kid's parties. Me or any other childless person no coming to these Dora The Explore parties, doesn't make us bad people or selfish.... it means that the kid is not our son and we have better things to do. Especially if the kid is under the age of five, that boy or girl isn't gonna be fazed that your college roommate, co-worker, shampoo girl or whatever didn't show up to their 2nd Birthday party.  People that don't have kids shouldn't obliged to go to children parties just because their friends have kids. People with kids always have a way of making their childless friends feel shitty about not spending time with them or their kids. They say shit like "We never hangout anymore, is it because I have kids now?" or "______ really wants to see they're auntie/uncle". But my all time favorite one is "you would understand if you had kids". Blankstare I would understand what? Your constant need to remind me you have kids and "real responsibilities now". Well I have responsibilities too; Mr. Rent, Miss Car note ,and Madame Student loans. Having a kid doesn't make your properties anymore important than mine, they're just different now.

People with kids at times are the kings and queens guilt tripping folks about they're life choices. Damn near shaming you for not wanting to spend time with their kid and spending time doing the shit you like to do, to the point that they miss the key words THEIR KID not YOUR KID. If I don't want to come over to your house everyday to shoot the shit with you in the kitchen drinking Arbor Mist, while your kid watches Blue's Clues in the other room. Don't come at me with that you're selfish shit because the same thing can be said about you boo.Why don't you get a babysitter so you can go out and do things with your childless friends. You know that deep down inside you're not feeling Blue's Clues either but you have no choice in the matter, I on the other hand do and I choose no Blue's Clues. The moral of the story is people with kids don't make the people in your lives without kids feel like shit because they don't want to spend every waking minute with your kid. That's your child not your bff's, mom's, dad's, sister's, or gas station attendant's kid. Oh and stop demanding   inviting  us to your kid's party that last 5-8 hours without any adult beverages being severed, that's not hot on the streets.