when things are not quite what they seem

I came across a clip from the 7/30 episode of 106 & Park on YBF.com where they were addressing body image.  They asked viewers to vote on which of the three women of varying body types (including the wee host) standing there was most likely to have suffered from an emotional eating disorder.  Turned out it was the woman no one had voted for: the wee host.  She went on to tell her story and wrapped it up by saying she never believed she could be anorexic because she always thought it was a “white person’s” disease.

In the late 90’s, I was freshly sprung from an emotionally/verbally abusive relationship.  I moved from a rural area to a flashy urban area and planned on enjoying the single life and all that went with it.  I moved into a 3-bedroom apartment with my best friend from undergrad; our third roommate was his ex.  Who just happened to be certifiably mentally…wrong.  A schizophrenic bi-polar computer geek who refused to take his meds.  Things quickly went downhill, I shall spare you the gory details; suffice to say that he began to lock himself away in his room when I came home because he knew I was almost certainly going to break him in half if I saw him.  He’d communicate through vicious little notes instead which only made things worse.  So I started spending most of my free time outside of the apartment, coming home only to sleep.  I’d always grab fast food for breakfast and lunch during the workday, but after work, not so much.  Maybe some crackers and cheese and a much needed cocktail while I was fooling around online deep in the wee hours of the night.

The last straw with the evil geek finally came when he installed a keystroke tracking program on the computer that both my best friend and I used and hacked into my AOhell account.  Which wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t changed my profile and spent the day sending out naked pics of himself and chatting up other local gay guys and inviting total strangers over to our apartment for sex.  As soon as I logged on, I was bombarded with IMs from guys with screen names like ‘HotHungBear69′ asking why I hadn’t answered the door when they came over?  I called my friend who was still at work and told him through clenched teeth that if he didn’t rid our space of this atrocity than I would and it wouldn’t be pretty.  He entirely agreed and that night I waited, pacing in my room like a caged wild feline.  I told him that if I heard one single solitary untoward peep that sounded like he was in physical danger, I was crossing that line with no trouble at all, otherwise I’d stay out of it and let him handle it.  The greater part of me almost wanted 3d roomie to do something stupid just so I could vent my anger, but he was apparently smarter than that and within a couple of weeks, he had vacated the premises as agreed.

But the damage had already been done.  At some point, I noticed that I was shrinking.  I was delighted because I’d put on a lot of weight being unhappy in the aforementioned relationship and I was quite pleased to see it coming off.  I wasn’t doing anything but not eating and being stressed out of my mind.  I was eating one meal daily; lunch during the week (fast food) and brunch on Sundays after my church gig.  Lots of water during the day and cocktails at the bar at night.  If I was going out on a dinner date, I’d eat nothing during the day and pick at the food whilst turning up the charm so my dates wouldn’t notice…and neither did I, really.  I was too busy being fabulous.  Looking fabulous.  I lost at least 8 inches off my waistline in a month simply by putting food down.  I thought it was awesome.  Even my smallest jeans were too big.  My cinnamon rolls (what I called my waist fat) were gonne, daddy, gone!  In my mind, I had never looked so good.

I was obsessed.  The office where I worked had a medical scale and I had gotten to the point where I could manipulate my weight to the pound when I so chose.   Which I did.  A lot.  If I wanted to weigh 5 lbs less for some weekend debauchery, I could pull it off in 3 days.  I’m a 5′6 ex-jock with a frame to match and a propensity to build muscle very quickly when I’m working out.  My muscle was wasting away but I didn’t see it that way, I just saw that I was getting smaller than I’d ever been and loved it.  My mother even noticed that my butt was shrinking and that should have tipped me off right there.  But it didn’t.  My doctor even asked me “are you blue?” because she just couldn’t figure it out at my annual physical and I certainly wasn’t ‘fessing up.

What saved me was meeting the man I eventually married.  I tried to eat like a normal person on our first date and spent the night in his bathroom in utter and abject agony because my digestive system just couldn’t handle a real meal.  We were long distance and he really got a clue when I was at least 2 sizes smaller between visits, a span of 2 months.  He enlisted the help of my roommates to ensure that I was eating properly or at least at all.  I still refused to admit that I had a problem, but grudgingly went along with what I felt was forced feeding.

I never said the word out loud in reference to myself for quite some time.

Hi.  I’m Terioso.  And I was an anorexic.  And if I’m not careful, I could be again.

on the outside still

I have a fairly large extended family, mostly on my father’s side.  His parents never married, so I have two distinct branches on that side, situated in the South and Wisconsin.  The Wisconsin branch I didn’t even know existed until I was in my teens due to estrangement.  My mother was an only child and contact with her mother’s people was sporadic at best and I know nothing of her father’s people.

The point is that none of these people were really a part of my life outside of church doings (dad’s mom’s folks).  I had cousins around my age, but never connected with them since I never saw them outside of church as we lived across town from them.  No effort was made on my parent’s part to foster a connection, most likely because I believe that my mother never really cared for them.  Either side, really.  Once we stayed with one of my father’s half-sister’s family (WI side)  for a couple of days on what was probably our last family vacation and fell instantly in family love with her son who was about my age.  He was like the brother I always wished I had.  (I do have a brother, but that is another story altogether)  Years went by and I spent Thanksgiving with the WI branch and talked to him on the phone.  It was like we’d never been apart.  The sad thing is, I can’t remember his name to look him up on Facebook or anything.

Which brings me to the inspiration for this entry.  I was surfing friends’ photos on the ‘book and came across an active link to a cousin on the SC side.  I perused his friends and found that he’s friends with all of my cousins.  All of a sudden, I felt like I had when I was plopped down in the 1st grade in public school outside of the military.  Who were these people and why wouldn’t they talk to me?  I’d never seen self-segregated social groups, so when I went to the white people who were afraid of me, the black people sneered when I tried to turn to them.  All of these cousins of mine by blood didn’t know what to make of me either and I suppose that their parents’ attitudes towards my mother and family as a whole colored their perception as well.  I even went to school with the one that I found first and we never clicked.  I came across one female cousin who also was a performer; in fact her mother seemed to want to foster competition between us even though we had very different voice types.  So on a midnight whim, I dropped her a note.  She answered, offering condolences on my mother’s recent passing and called me “cuz”.  So I sent a friend request to see what would happen next.

*crickets chirping*

Yeah.  I thought so.  Back to the Island of Me.

Long ago and not so far away

I first entered the workforce as a full time grunt at the tender age of 26 or so.   I worked for a cellular service company that still exists in some form or another as a “customer care” representative.  We were mostly responsible for outbound calls to new customers, renewing current customers and attempting to save disconnecting customers.  This was back when call centers were still stateside for the most part which always surprised people…and also made us targets for angry customers.  Those of us that gave good phone often ended up with customers who would only talk to/deal with their favorite CCR.  Nice at first, but sometimes it became a real PITA, especially when we were slammed at the end of a billing cycle (“WHY IS MY BILL AFU????”) and all someone needed was the smallest tweak that any doofus could do.  And even that would be the least of our problems sometimes.  Like when a particularly interested customer found out that we were situated locally.  One gentleman was insistent upon meeting me, he was that entranced with my voice.  I promised him that whatever he was envisioning was most definitely not reality.  He asked every question trying to put together what I looked like in his minds’ eye except for…yep, you guessed it.  My ethnicity.  He was so certain that I was a pink person that it never even dawned on him to consider that I wasn’t.  So, fine.  It never dawned on me that the possiblilty might exist that it wouldn’t be an issue, but unfortunately for me, my assumptions were correct.  I was even all dolled up for a photo op for the local newspaper reporting on a symphony-in-the-park event I was going to take part in the upcoming weekend.  He showed up towards the end of my shift and I strode toward the side door, seeing him waiting expectantly.  I think he assumed I was someone else until I opened my yap and said “Hi, Whatever his name was”.  His jaw dropped and was still hanging in unpleasant shock when I let him off the hook.  Never heard from him again.

I transferred to a different position and geographical locale within the company about a year later.  I was officially an admin assistant on paper, but I was actually performing the duties of an office manager including all HR functions, payroll, sales support, helping to build new retail stores, etc., etc.  When we participated in local events as a sponsor, it was up to me to handle the particulars once my boss had made initial contact.  I think-no, I know-that he got off on saying “Good, call my assistant; she’ll set everything up.”  And that really did mean everything from procuring the appropriate amount and types of collateral (aka corporate logo swag) from the corporate office to cutting the check and delivering it to getting the logo tent where it needed to be on site.  For one event, I dealt with a delightful and charming lady via phone for months prior to the event.  She’d gush that she just couldn’t wait to meet me (apply honey-laden Southern belle accent here).   The event was an old, stinky family money affair, a horse race of all things; a mini-Kentucky derby with all the trimmings from ostentatious hats to mint juleps.

So we’re at the event and all dolled up when I spy the woman.  She’s had a few and is just…sparkling.  I know it’s her as I made her voice ringing out clarion style across the grassy knoll on which we’d set up.  She’s looked past/through me as if I weren’t there enough times that I knew what was coming should we be introduced.  Turns out she’s been looking for me and she nabbed my boss and demanded that she be introduced to “that wonderful girl of yours!”  He brings her over, smiling all big and says “Laney, this is Terioso!”  She still hadn’t adjusted her vision to include melanin-tinged people and was brought up completely short.  Stunned, she stammered a hello, ignored my proffered hand and hightailed it down the hill.  My boss just stood there, jaw-hanging at her rudeness.  I shrugged and moved on.

A year later, I moved to the big city, grateful to leave that madness behind.

I think of this now, as I am working to find gainful employement and having initial contact via phone or email only.  We shall see.

Going where the old songs take me

This entry courtesy iTunes surfing.

It’s old school night in the house.  I am apparently now old enough for the music I devoured during my formative years to be deemed “old school”.

Vinyl.  When a 12 inch remix was merely an extra minute or two added on.  Shalamar’s 12-inch of “A Night to Remember” clocks in at 5:02 of delightful joy.  Jody Watley, Howard Hewett and that other guy whose name we never knew.  It’s one of the many tunes that takes me back to Soul Night at the local roller rink.  Yeah, I did the skate roll bounce with a vengeance.  I used to go on Saturday afternoons with kids from children’s choir practice.  That’s when they’d turn on the lights and do the Hokey Pokey and the Limbo.  I don’t know how I discovered the heat of Wednesday nights…wait a minute.  Yes, I do.  I graduated to the youth choir and…well, you can imagine the rest.  Some of my most interesting outfits were born during that time.  In retrospect, I was way more ambitious with my fashion and hairstyle choices then I realized.  I’m not saying it was good (remember the asymmetrical ‘dos made popular by Salt-n-Pepa?), I’m just saying I was ambitious.

Oh.  Oh.  Terence Trent D’Arby’s first album.  “Let’s Go Forward”, first.  1987.  I was dating the boy who would eventually propose, then crash and burn.  I was alllll about it.   D’Arby’s voice had this stunning combination of throbbing, vibrating need.  As a fervent hormonal teen, that’s all I heard.  That’s all I felt. “Sign Your Name”.  So sweet, so nearly silent.  Shh.  Just listen.  It’s what I felt.

1986 saw the Loose Ends album Zagora.  The only song that causes twinges is “I Can’t Wait”.  by the time I turned on to this one, it’d been out for a few years.  So the longing of a long-distance relationship (different universities) blossomed around this song.  A quiet storm mix tape staple.

My tape and vinyl collection at the time reminds me of how much I stood apart after deciding to attend a small private nearly all pale people school in the middle of freaking nowhere coal mining Virginia.   I had a better-than marginal console system with big floor speakers that my dad had gotten for me half off from Sears where he worked part-time (employee discount, too!) that traveled with me.  When I was alone, I’d crank it.  I think it was Guy and Heavy D and The Boyz that got me into trouble the first time.  “Groove Me”.  “My Fantasy”.  “Teddy’s Jam” (1 & 2).   “D-O-G Me Out”.  “You Ain’t Heard Nuttin’ Yet”.  “More Bounce”.   Those coal mining kids had NO idea what to make of me, whatsoever.  Read an article today in the NYT about how interracial roommates can reduce the prejudice in one another.  While I identify very strongly with the ideas the article puts forth, I must say that I wasn’t very helpful in those early semesters/years.  I had no idea how bereft I’d feel.  It wasn’t that the other students were white, no.  It was the fact that a very large percentage of them had never even laid eyes on a real live black person in their entire lives.  To them, I was either a Cosby kid or a welfare mother because they didn’t see anything else on TV.

In order to promote class unity or some snot like that, each class year was required to take the same class together at the same time.  Four days a week we’d be in little groups taught by all of the faculty no matter what their specialty, one day we’d meet up as a class for special lectures.  Freshman year was basically western civ and by the time we worked our way up to the civil rights movement in the second semester, I was feeling pretty comfortable with things for the most part.  Until the professor, who also happened to be head of the music department began pointing himself at me.  I guess he felt more comfortable doing so since he knew me well-he assumed-out of class (tiny, tiny, tiny music department.  I was one of maybe a handful of voice students).  But the “Terioso, what do you think about /insert black folk related topic du jour here/?”  all of a sudden, I was the Voice of All Black People.  I was teen controlled by my baser urges, that was pretty much it.  So one morning after getting too little rest, I finally, sleepily snapped.  He or someone else in the class made the mistake of phrasing the question in the worst way.  “How do black/your people fell about…?”  “I don’t know”, I answered. “I can only tell you how I feel about it and right now, I don’t feel like it.”  At that point, I didn’t care about lifting it up for my race and eradicating stereotypes.  I just wanted to stop feeling like a butterfly pinned to a cork board.

I transferred after a group of drunkards thought it would be a good idea to “string that nigger bitch up” towards the end of my third semester there.  That’s a story of which I do not particulary feel like illustrating the details tonight.

huddled ’round the fire

Listening to my Fugees station on Pandora and ruminating.  I wonder how being my rambunctious brown self affects/will affect the current hunt for employment?  The hammer fell some months ago at the last SnakePit; merely a casualty of the ‘last hired, first fired’ syndrome in spite of what some of my brown colleagues may think.  Presenting the fact that my pale colleague in Boston who was hired at exactly the same time as I was also laid off seems to be of no consequence to them.  It’s gotten to the point to where I’m avoiding talking to at least one of them.  I’m  sure there’s conspiracy theories that are valid, but seriously, just leave it alone, okay?

And while I’m on the topic, a tip or two on having conversations with an unemployed acquaintance, friend or colleague.  Do not plop down next to me, turn to me and open the conversation by brightly saying “So, how’s the job hunt going?”  It’s been about three months now and believe me, if I have any successes to report, I will be the first person to trumpet it from the rooftops.  As it is, I’m usually a polite person and mutter something inconsequential.  But after a few times of this, I’m just going to stare at you.  If it comes up in conversation, I’ll certainly discuss it if I’ve anything to discuss.  But don’t act like I couldn’t possibly have anything else to talk about, mmkay?  While none of this or the effects of said unemployment are tasteful topics to me at present, you will score mad extra points for asking me how I’m doing instead.  So far no one’s said anything abysmally stupid.  Another tip: you have a crappy job.  I’m sure you’re friends know it and have even commiserated with you about it.  No matter how bad it is however, you’ve got one.  Best not to holler about it to your unemployed friends who also had crappy jobs before they were suddenly unemployed.  I had a crappy job but I complained about it as little as possible because I believe in karma.

So I did have an interview a few weeks ago.  Pre-contact went well, everyhing seemed set for a good interview and a teaching presentation.  In the past, I’ve usually been very good about what my chances of advancing to an offer are in an interview process and I was fairly certain when I left that even if they did make an offer, I’d have a hard time accepting it.  Did.  Not.  Fit in.  Small team, small town meets me.  I wasn’t introduced to anyone on the professional level of the org chart who wasn’t a pale person.  Mind you, I wouldn’t ever assume the rejection (a very nice one, I might add.  Basically distills to “you were fun!  but we want more of X and X even though we didn’t say so in the posting, kthxbai”) was based upon my ethnicity without good cause and there isn’t any here.   The fact that when I was finally sprung from the interview, I didn’t have that walking-on-air feeling that I get after good response to a presentation, be it performance or mainstream business was enough for me.  It wasn’t a bad interview.  Just not a merging of the minds synergystic intellectually flexing flight of fun like some of my other interviews that ended in offers.

Still have to be careful.  This will be the first time I’ve been interviewing with local yokels.  Don’t know what I’ll find.

To Barack Obama and family on inauguration day

Don’t get killed, don’t get killed.
That’s the main thing, don’t get killed.
Run real fast down the middle of the street
I love you honey, don’t get killed.

—Andy Breckman

When black folk die

Since my mother passed away on December 4, 2008 (her 69th birthday as fate would have it), I have had a front row seat to the inner workings of What Happens When Black Folk Die.

1) Deal with the funeral home in town that your family has always dealt with, no matter how shoddy their service has become.   Of course, I wasn’t informed that they had lost their touch until it was too late and by then it was because I was starting to see it.  They did an excellent job with my dad eight years ago; not so much with my dad.  It’s a good thing that I have a great sense of humor, otherwise I probably would have come unhinged.  A cousin mentioned that she had buried her husband and had already purchased her plot with a cemetery/funeral home that once traditionally served only whites.  I still recall the hoopla from when I was child when the first black woman was buried there.  Apparently someone has realized that all money is green, no matter the source.

2) No one really knows what to do.  Another plus is that I function quite well in crisis situations.  I think that I lack the “fall apart completely” gene altogether.  Good damned thing, too, because in spite of the fact that there were all the offers of “just let me know what I can do to help”, no one really wants to step up to figure out and do The Hard Shit.  Like if I had fallen off the radar in a stupor of grief, I’m not sure my mother would have ever gotten into the ground.

3) Everybody wants something/has an opinion and now is definitely the best time to express yourself.  I have an adult brother who is developmentally disabled.  Everyone wanted to know “well, what’s gonna happen to brother?”  If you’re so concerned, why don’t YOU do something, hmm?  Or why hadn’t you tried to do something for him all of these years?  Other than humor him and assume that he was getting the help he needed when he wasn’t?  (excuse me, is my bitter showing?)  And I’m sure I’ll get around to handling the property.  Telling me that you could use that vehicle out there for whatever it is you want to use it for right now isn’t getting you anything but a mental note of disdain.

4) People you’ve never heard of or haven’t spoken to in years will come out of the woodwork.  I was introduced to a cousin of my mother’s (her mom’s sister’s daughter) whose name I knew but had never realized we were related.  I sat in a room of people who were my blood relatives (some of whom I hadn’t seen since my father died) and had more meaningful conversation with them in one morning than I had in my entire life.

5) People will cook.  Like crazy.  So much food.  One tiny 83 year old white woman who lived the next street over had her friend bring her over so she could bring us deli food which was the southern death knell for your reputation as a cook back in the day.  Which she must have realized because on the day of the funeral, she included some of the most mouth-watering homemade potato salad and peas long-simmered in fat I have seen in quite awhile.  I now know that one of my cousins can do things to a ham that should be illegal.  That same cousin pointed out that you could never be stereotypical about who cooked what as we had proof sitting in front of us.  One cake made by a black woman was sweet but rather dry and crumbly.  Next to it was a pound cake that held that blessed hint of lemony essence and was so moist a beverage was an afterthought at best, courtesy the tiny 83 year old white lady down the street.  Someone’s mac ‘n’ cheese was practically perfect.  All that was missing was a cocktail or six.

6) People will see you and lose their minds in some fashion.  I felt like I did more comforting of those who had heard than anything else.  So many would just break down sobbing while I stood there thinking “wow. good thing I’m holding it together”.

Oh, I think that’s enough for today.

one more

So everyone’s running around hootin’ and hollerin’ today (literally, I am hearing little yelps, squeals and bursts of unhinged laughter bouncing and echoing off/around the office walls) and I feel a mite giddy myself.  One thing is holding me back from discussing the results of last night’s election in the U.S. of A. in mixed company however, and when I say mixed, I mean politically mixed, not solely ethinically.  What could it be, you might ask? 

I live in the South.  Just because I live in a fairly large city doesn’t really mean much.  I work with people who came of age before the Civil Rights Movement and I don’t believe for one single solitary second (although I’d like to, truly I would) that 100% of the people I meet every day do not harbor some sort of issue with ethnicities.  Plus I’m paranoid so all I can think I hear when I come into a room is

uppity niggers, now they think they can go anywhere and do anything.  they’ll get knocked back into their place one day and when it happens it won’t be a moment too soon.

I live in a red state, proven once again by the electoral maps.  But I ain’t hatin’, just keep steppin’, no more drama and dammit, our president elect exemplifies the fact that we are here to save ourselves.  He couldn’t have picked a worse time to be president; the only lucky break he caught is that the collapse happened before he was elected, now he’s got to cop the clean-up.  Here we go, y’all.

Edited to add the following:

I just this moment had a conversation with someone else at my firm who’s non-client facing about the election results.  He’s black and gay.  He asked me if anyone had come up to me and talked about the election and I told him not exactly.  Basically everyone’s afraid of annoying people in power who probably DIDN’T vote for Obama.  Excuse me.  President-elect Obama.  For example, I told him, I went to a professional association luncheon event today at a swanky locale where the lawyers and senators hang out downtown.  I met up with a colleague from another firm in the building that I hooked up with when I first touched down here and three of her co-workers came with: 2 middle-aged white women, one young-ish Indian woman (who I already knew had worked the polls for Obama) and 2 black women.  My friend pulls me back and we discuss things quietly.  I do it because you basically don’t discuss politics in a mixed crowd of professionals, know your audience.  You never know when you’re going to put your foot in your mouth and then come face to face with someone in an interview later who remembers.  I wasn’t going to say anything to my colleague until I was certain, didn’t matter the color.  She did the quiet whispering thing because she works for a conservative firm that donated heavily to McCain.  

So it’s been like that all day.  Furtive whispers.  Random yips, hollers and yelps echoing through the hallway.  But no real overt celebration.  My co-worker who asked the question was even whispering when he asked me the question.  I told him that if we did a scientific survey, I’d wager that the number of support/administrative effluvia folks who voted for Obama would far outpace the number of those partner/shareholder/associate type folks who did the same.  In other words, the peons who would like tax breaks most likely voted for Obama.  The holders of any kind of wealth, mmm, I’m guessing not so much.  I’m just sayin’.

Ain’t that America.

Thoughts as I listen…

This is the song that pretty much ended it all for me, or rather signifies the time in my life that speaks that way to me.  My childhood and the accompanying innocence, all gone, poof.  But this song came along at the beginning, so it still gets mad play in my book. I suppose what it began isn’t anywhere near as easily explained…the simplest thing to identify would be the beginning of my obsessive love of spinning vinyl and how the ensuing noise affected people.  Call it my first experiment involving the effects of music.

Mixed feelings…

I have slowly discovered that there seems to be a pervading attitude regarding employment issues and ethnic status from black folk who work on the  ’support side’ in professional services firms regarding.

I had lunch with a colleague from a law firm some months ago and was relating the details of what I’d gathered regarding the person who had preceded me at my current gig.  Let us say that this individual somehow managed to fly under senior management’s radar for an amazingly long time, consistently being granted/working out deals for some seriously unreal shit that no one on our level would ever assume we were entitled to and for good reason: for others, it’s integral to the work that they do; for us, it’s more like insane perks because we do. Not.  Need.  This.  Shit.   I didn’t need an Addict-a-Berry at my old job.  But lord, it was sweet to have it.  But something that would have definitely come in handy-like a laptop-was totally and completely out of my reach.   See?  But since I’m so far down the food chain and away from The Big Picture, I can’t judge for certain because I have no idea what the justification might be.

Anyway, she pauses from chewing for a moment, cocks her head, squints a little and gestures with her fork at me.  “He was white guy?”  I replied in the affirmative without even seeing what her apparently obvious-to-everyone-else-but-me rejoinder coming: “Yuh-huh.  Figures.  That’s what we run into all the time.”  She went on to say that a firm would let a white person-especially a guy-have chance after chance after insane chance before they finally-if ever-did anything that might be considered punishment.  She’s a few years older than I, probably in her forties.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the guys from the mailroom to whom I talk with frequently (usually about music) stopped by my desk to relate that a mailroom assistant/clerk in another physical location of the firm had been terminated.  I inferred that he was black and that this fellow had warned him repeatedly that his performance was shoddy and that since he wasn’t “one of them” that he should really watch his step.  Brother didn’t listen and there you go.  He seemed to be telling me this as a cautionary tale, not because I was slacking, but because it was something that I need to know about where I work.  He is in his late twenties.

What am I to make of this?  Have I up until this point been a part of some insular community, an Atlantis of diversity initiatives and zero-tolerance harassment and EOE workplaces?  Or have I discovered an equally insular community: the leftovers(?) of the old boys’ network?  Is this a warning of which I should take heed, reminiscent of our generation’s parental warning of ‘whatever you do, where you go, you’ll always have to do it better than white folks’?  Or should I just back away from the crazy and not change the way I mind my step because it’s done alright by me thus far?