I have a coworker who is obsessed with the homicide blog that the LA Times runs. She reads it everyday. Everyday she comments and generalizes the deceased victims names that appear on the blog. I never really speak on it. Thankfully I never really know anyone on the blog. Since I don't know them I keep my comments to myself out of respect. I'm not gonna lie tho, I have a few friends that make me nervous when I don't hear from them for a few weeks. When she reads the names I pray that by the end of the report I know none of the victims and none of the murderers. I'm honest and will call, a spade a fuckin spade. If one of my affiliated friends ended up on this list I wouldn't even say shit if she offered her two cents. In society no one ever deserves to have their lives cut short at the hands of another man, but my affiliated friends live by a different set of rules. They wake up knowing that something as simple as walking on the wrong street will cost them their life and in their minds it makes sense. While I don't agree with their lifestyle these are my friends. If they die in the game I would be sad at my personal loss but that's the rules, they played the game, they lost.
Today my coworker was reading the blog. Now I have known that my friend has been gone since May 13 but I was taken a back when his name showed up on this blog all the same. I guess I still can't believe he's gone. I like to think that is a big ass joke and that I can text him and expect a response in minutes. Her reading his name out loud just did something to me today. She started talking about how the people on the blog were living recklessly. I don't why but I had to check her.
She felt shittier then shit when I told her I knew one of the people she named. That I talked to him 3 hours before he was fatally shot. She looked silly as hell when I told her that he had been on his own since he was 18 years old. How he was putting himself through school and always held a job down. How I never heard him complain or use any excuse even though nobody ever game him shit. How he wouldn't even be allowed in a gang if he wanted to because of his open sexual preference. I even had to ask her how she would feel if her son, who is affiliated, was on this blog (Lord forbid) and somewhere some judgemental person was making assumptions about his whole life based on a faulty ass line? That someone, somewhere was judging the child that she made because he had an ethnic name and was shot in a place that wasn't known for being affluent, but he called home. She didn't have a damn thing to say. Really, what could she have said? I scraped the egg off her face and scrambled that shit.
All of this to say I think we all, myself included, need to check ourselves before we make such brazen assumptions. Especially when it comes to the deceased. I know that I can be judgemental and think I know everything about a person. It is a terrible flaw and one that I am really trying to correct. I really want to be a better person and being an ass and assuming shit will really stunt my growth. When I feel like assuming I will flip the script and take the time to learn and understand. Thanks Money Mike. You teach me lessons, even in the afterlife.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/homicidereport/2009/05/the.html
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That's messed up. I've had something like that happen to me before where people were talking shit about my brother and didn't know I was related to him. People really do need to watch what they say..talking reckless always gets you in bad situations.
ReplyDeletesorry for you loss.
ReplyDeletein reality it is perfectly normal for you to make assumptions and have preconceived notions about people, where the problems lie is if you decide that those assumptions are right without checking them, that is where people go wrong.
and even if what you assumed is correct, it is still an opinion, and even though you are entitled to it, you are not entitled to let the world know what you think, esp in situations like this
(when i say you, i dont mean YOU, i mean people)