Jodi Story Read Love Story

Love Story These was good kids once, I thought to myself. I'd watched them growing up for years. Here I am, rocking in my chair on the porch listening to them brag about running drunk through the streets. Don't know why they come here. Maybe because I just listen and don't let on how this old grandpa sees all the growing up they still need.

Their stories prove my point. Skipping school, staying high, fighting, rampaging through the neighborhood earning themselves the name "gangsta". Nothing I didn't do when I was their age, but the years had changed me.

Something in their tone scared me that day, though. If they think hunting down some punks who'd done something stupid could right the wrongs... I knew I had to say something, stop them, before they did something you can't undo – and so I spoke.

Children, check it out, I'm going to lay some truth on you. This one time, me and my boys was in the car headed to bust some skulls. Bohemian Rhapsody was on the radio, our 'peacemakers' in our laps. We was dumb, man, thinking we was bullet-proof because we was young.

We'd gone to do what we thought the Cops couldn't. Those Punks was thinking they'd get away with taking a life from our family, but our vengeance and fury had spawned vigilante justice.

Now see, we heard The Dudes was going to be there to protect the hood. They'd just gotten out of prison for roughing someone up too hard. The Dudes had it bad, man. Wrong end of the stick, I guess. God, the Devil, or the Fates, whatever you believe in, just wouldn't let them catch a break. They was poor, sure, but everything was bad for them. Things got worse no matter what they did, shifting from survival to misfortune all through the day, every day.

You dig?

Now, we was on the other end of things. Just a car full of dumb, getting in trouble with The Law, driving around causing a ruckus and 'disturbing the peace'. We took The Peace to mean that conformity was winning in the war against creativity, so my opinion was that Cops needed to be made into a public spectacle of foolishness. Those 'peacemakers' couldn't do nothing, anyway.

Boy, did we raise hell! Even the preachers would be like, 'Damn kids!' People thought we was hopeless. Lost causes. Not like we cared, we didn't have dads or moms. Our lives was wrapped up in chains and struggle, gagged or at least muffled inside ourselves without expression, not able to speak or be heard because of the lack of opportunity called 'growing up in the projects'.

You feel me?

Love Story The world we knew was consuming, assuming, abusing, defusing our dreams, deflating our egos. It was a stream of radio stations and half-closed eyelids, advertisements and TV shows, run by blind men too ignorant to see the immorality in manipulating the very hearts of men. Couldn't stop the denial and avoidance, so we'd lost all hope and faith in the world. Like an old silver chain, people get tarnished and lose sight of who they are. The product of our environment was men that we thought could never change. Like The Dudes.

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