Narc

Copping weed in a sleepy suburb that's always been more country than city was almost impossible for me growing up, the city even harder for me because of my clean-cut good looks. I joked with my buddies at the corner store that no one even wanted to stand near me during our town St. Pat's Parade because (according to one of them), "You look like a cop!" If being a detective means I'm aware of open container laws, cognizant of my surroundings, and respectful of my neighbors even during a daytime "beer buzz" by still recycling appropriately, then I'm the Sheriff of this here town.

After being rebuffed by do-ragged bangers hanging curbside in the tough gang towns of Rockland run by drug dealers during the 80s, me and my friends turned to the city for our teenage rebellion, but I was quickly becoming a curse to them in their nefarious deeds, in an anti-anti-establishment cancel out. We'd cut class to take the city bus to buy weed near Central Park, only to be ID'ed by a beat cop who laughed at my underage library card (the only ID I had), throwing our small dime bag into the trash with the order to take the first bus back home, which we did, after debating about trying to find the little baggie in the garbage pail.

It didn't end there, either. Me and my friend who'd emigrated from Ghana as a girl tried hanging out in her family neighborhoods of Harlem and Downtown Brooklyn, but without my Hispanic home-girl outfit from back in the day (slicked-back ponytail that made my hair look darker, bright red lipstick, big hoop earrings, and tight jeans), the people in those 'hoods treated me like an outcast on my own native soil, to be shunned and feared as a girl-child not of their kind. 

The pinnacle of my brief career as a country criminal officially ended in the back of a Harlem liquor store with my girl, Donnel. She'd said she bought weed from the guy behind the plexi-glass window with a pull-out money drawer before, so it should be no problem. We laughed on the street before going in that he'd be afraid of me as a "white girl", which was the only way to explain my presence in certain parts of New York City that hoped they'd killed or frightened off the natives a long time ago. I mean, I look this way at 47; you can see from my photos how youthful I've always been.

And it's true; there's a purity and wholesomeness to me that doesn't go away with alcohol, or pot, or cigarettes, or junk food, because I don't let it. I want to live, even in the chaos of this world. And so, with one quick walk to the back of a ghetto liquor store, the nervous demeanor of your average black man livin' on my mean streets told me everything I needed to know about what my choices would be. In his wide-eyed stare, I immediately knew what side of the line that he'd drawn between us I stood on, and it was with the good guys.

"Uh uh. I ain't sellin' to huh." My friend improvised like the slick con she can be, rolling her eyes at him. "Oh, come on, man! I've bought from you before, no problem!" He wasn't buyin' it. "She a cop! You a narc?" He asked me flat out, but my friend pushed me aside. "Look at her! When was the last time you sold weed to a 15 year-old narc?!" And it was pretty incredulous, his irrational fear about a baby-faced teenage girl. But, just like that, I knew it in my heart, that this native New York girl wan't no criminal, and I never would be. As we left the store empty-handed, I could feel my less-principled friend cutting ties with me mentally, diverging in the opposite direction, because (s)he was right about me. I'm no fucking criminal. I AM THE LAW.

Joie de Vivre

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joie_de_Vivre 

Like Wadsworth's "Evangeline" and her happy Acadian family with the beautiful black eyes living in a fertile river valley, my joy at being alive is something I can't always hide, even when it is more convenient to the people around me (or more appropriate to their customs) for me to do so. In Asian cultures, a big toothy smile is often seen as the prelude to a false act, like an overly solicitous shopkeeper trying to sell you damaged goods, or the villain dressed in black from a martial arts movie with one hand behind his back, waiting to press the button down on a bomb detonator. "Oh! Haha! You die! You die, now! Hahaha!"

Let me assure you, laughter and smiling in my culture is a sign of happiness, not deeply repressed anger or hostility. If being psycho makes you happy, you need to see a reputable doctor. Like, now. At the office it was even weirder, attracting notice wherever I went, with whomever the audience, as thinly-veiled digs that were supposed to function like so many pins popping so many balloons of mine, like the child I haven't been for quite some time. I guess when you grow up without a wailing wall at your disposable, problems are much less interesting as a showpiece for attention.

We grew up with sayings like "misery loves company" and "keep a stiff upper lip", followed by my dad's favorite "the sun comes up tomorrow" as a rip-off from the popular Broadway play "Annie". It is culturally entrenched among my people to handle problems by solving them through hard work, not worrying over them like a hangnail by "pouring salt on an open wound". There is a time to grieve, and there is a time to live, and we get to savor the richness of life through our emotions and feelings. No one is excluded from it.

Most evenings, I enjoy watching the updated version of the popular game show "Family Feud", most particularly for its inclusive representation of American families, encouraged and culled as they are by the staff of the show and their host, actor/comedian Steve Harvey. It's a lot more real than so-much genteel hand-kissing and flirting, much as I loved Rich Dawson's campy turns about the stage in the 70s and 80s. For the family that makes it to the speed round at the end of the show comes a quick sucession of answers to really hard questions, like last night's repeat episode.

The question was: on a scale of one-to-ten, how happy are you at being alive? The attractive African-American woman answered "TEN!" right away, at the same time as me. After her turn, another nicely-dressed family member came out to answer the same questions, with the extra burden of answering again if she repeated the first contestant's answers. It's a telling way to hear how families have the same mindset through their similiar answers made under the gun. Same question: how happy? And again, same lightning quick response: "TEN!"

Uh uh. Try again. "NINE!" Next best thing, right? And like that <snap!>, I felt less alone in the world, as a part of an "oppressed" people supposedly so drug down through the mud that we can't get clean. Right? Wrong! Wrong answer. I felt like we was all in the same room togetha, and we could be! That's the magic of inclusiveness, and faith, and family. You can't burn your way through it. Suddenly, I knew there were other people in the world like me, and do you know how I felt? Yup. Happy. That's the "joie de vivre" that marks our particular flavor, and you're welcome to it. That's being Acadian, y'all.