my private ramblings

We were on the subway coming home last night when this guy walks onto our car and announces that he wants to perform some of his poetry. Cool, huh? Unfortunately I couldn’t hear much of it over my iPod. At the end, he asked us to donate: pennies, quarters, nickels, dimes. A couple of teenage girls in the back started snickering. He turned to them and said: “You wouldn’t laugh if you’d known what I’ve been through. I went to prison for ten years, and now I’ve got to spread the word of love.” All of which I took to mean: “Laugh again and I’ll cut your shit up.”

I sometimes wonder what would happen to me if I went to prison. Becoming somebody’s bitch as quickly as possible is certainly the best course of action, but that only fills up my nights. What would I do during the day? I’d like to think I’d spend my time collecting tattoos and muscles until I was queen of the playground. But more likely than not, I’d be scurrying around, trying to avoid getting my head bashed in; all the while, spending my time in the library writing sad letter after sad letter, asserting my innocence:

Dear Senator Obama McCain Clinton McCain:

I just know that you’re going to win the presidential campaign, and I was wondering when you do, would you mind taking 30 seconds of your time to pardon me?

But of course, I know what you’re thinking, how could a sweet little girl like myself end up in prison? My answer: gang-related activities. You see I live in Harlem, and well I’m like the only white person. Google map the area– I’m the white spot at 125th and Lexington. Day one, I ran around my house booby trapping it like some deranged McCauley Culkin. The best I could come up with in the way of a booby trap was: guy crawls in window, guy trips over flower pot and gets eaten by cat; but of course, the damn cat wouldn’t cooperate. Day two, I realized that the only real protection I could get would with a “street family.” So after Googling “how to identify gang members”, I went in search of some. Unfortunately, neither the crips or the bloods wanted me. I was really disappointed as the tattoos did not come off easy.

So I started my own gang: “the Vanillas”. In order to have any street cred, I recognized that I would need to come up with some gang initiation tasks (obstacles? missions?). The popular one these days seems to be “putting a cap in someone’s ass” so I thought that would be a good place to start. That little exercise cost me 16 Coca-Cola points and didn’t seem to intimidate anyone. My second initiation was I tried selling drugs to minors. I didn’t have anything on hand, so I ground up some Advil, Tylenol, and calcium tablets. Boy did the kids love ‘em. Unfortunately, someone started a nasty rumor about my quality control (or lack thereof), and soon all of the kids’ parents told them to stay away from me. “The Vanillas” street cred was, at that point, severely lacking.

My final attempt came courtesy of the movie “21″ and the recognition that smart white kids are good at gambling. I thought I’d challenge a couple of the guys to some cards. I quickly learned valuable life lesson 357: when someone has the physical capacity to rip your arms off, let them win. Oh well, until another day: “the Vanillas!”