I Remember.....

Today i sat back and thought about all i have accomplished in life. I grew up watching a person physically and mentally abuse a person in whom i took great pleasure in wanting to be around. The amount of grief, stress and sense of helplessness allowed me, when i got older, to admire a person's faults. i look into eyes with a deeper interpretation of what they are telling me, and i watch hand movement...which allows me to check posture. I remember when i was 8, i never had that play in the sun feeling that every other kids supposed to have had. Instead, i had that "is something gonna happen today" type of childhood.

I remember when i turned 10 years old, i lived in 5th ward and i had to become a smarter thinker. My mom was single with 4 kids at the time and the only options we had were section 8 and welfare. I remember my mom used to get the food stamps in a booklet. You had to rip them out and use them like paper dollars. I had seen food stamps so much until i didnt know what actual green money was. I remember i went to a comer store right next to our apartments, at the age of 10, i became "smarter thinker" that day.

I remember me walking into the dirt filled store and hearing the "bing" from the entrance of a person go off. Nervously, i walked around the store looking at chocolate bars, chips and soda's before i worked up the courage to approach the clerk. The clerk was indian and had this ghetto swag about him that made it easy to communicate with the "urban" crowd. Even at 10 years of age, i knew that he had been robbed lots of time, shot at and even beaten up on numerous occasions but he stayed there and did his job day after day.

So, as i worked up the gusts to make a deal with the clerk....i started to somehow change. My demeanor changed, my facial expression changed, my "swag" changed and even my walk changed. In that moment, i became more confident in what i was about to do. I grabbed a pack of 2 for a dollar cookies, and made my way to the counter. The guy looked at me and said, "63 cents". I looked back at him and said, "how would you like to make some money"? I was a kid and i think he felt what ever came out of my mouth was a win, win for him. He grinned a bit and said, "how"? I said, "i have 10 dollars in food stamps, let me buy 10 lotto scratchers and whateva i win in dollars, u get half". It looked like he wasnt trying to fall for what i was trying to do so i told him, "you aint spending no money at all, this is all profit for you". To much of my surprise, he went for it.

I made this a everyday thing, and what i would do with the money is take it to my mother so that she can get whatever she needed for the house. It wasnt alot of money, but it helped.

I think that is the very moment when i became "smarter".

Things in life, gives you an avenue...but you give yourself an outlet.

"Grind Mode Music Vol.1" Tha Mixtape Comin Feb 2010