Live In The Ghetto? Here's How To Tell
By Ms. Tricky
I thought it was important to live in the city so my family would be surrounded by diversity. It's an urban, somewhat artsy district, where diversity includes everything from race, ethnicity, religion and age, to income, education and sexual orientation.
My neighborhood has it all…. including the thin, fast-walkin’ crack head, the inappropriately-clad for Sunday morning prostitute (on her way home from work) and a small pack of juvenile bad-asses on bikes.
I purchased a new-construction home, built on a vacant lot, in the midst of century-old homes, tall, mature trees and very few garages. On the left, an older African-American couple with four adopted girls and a small cleaning business. On the right, a rental consisting of 4 to 5 White college guys. Both sides have nice people who have lived there as long as I have. We all respect each other’s property and generally have a good neighborly relationship.
That's why I was so surprised this summer when I started to have problems with some of the kids in the neighborhood. They ride over my lawn, pick my flowers, and race behind my SUV while I am backing out of the driveway.
But now that I think about it, there have been some things that have happened over the years that may indicate that I live in “the ghetto.”
Perhaps these top five things should have been red flags:
5) Waking up to police sirens multiple times a year to find about 10 squad cars parked hap-hazardly in front of your home, discussing the individual pinned down to the ground on your lawn (that’s after the chase and the tasering). Everyone from age 3 to 70 is standing outside in the snow watching.
4)Your sixty-year old neighbor engages in a screaming match (laced with expletives I've never heard strung together in a sentence) from her porch arguing with the teenager across the street (who we all know has herpes). The sixty-year old concludes her argument by pulling her pants down and mooning the teen.
3) You're in bed quietly reading one warm summer night and suddenly who hear a child ram his bike into your garage door. Although you find the child still in the driveway - slightly bewildered and sitting on a bicycle intended for someone twice his age - the kid’s parent wants proof that it was her angelic son who did $400 dollars worth of damage (‘Cause yah know, she wasn’t watchin’ him!)
2) You regularly get a knock on the door from either the toothless lawn-cutting brotha who needs a dollar to take the bus at midnight, or the cross-dresser offering to sell you a Tahari suit for five bucks.
1) The postman apparently delivers your Mary Kay catalogue to another address by mistake. By the time you get it, the free sample of lotion has been ripped out.