Choose wisely again and again

Choose Wisely: Again and Again

When I was fourteen, the street ran me.

Not school, not church, not a family dinner table—just asphalt rules and whispered codes. I remember beating a sixteen-year-old senseless with a piece of a small tree. Thought it was survival. Thought it made me strong. Then I learned his two older brothers were wanted for murder. Neither yet twenty. My initiation into bloodlines and bullet math.

Saturday came with a bang. Their rivals set them up. A Backyard Boogie turned ambush. They thought they were Frank and Jesse James, climbing fences with pistols drawn, only to meet a firing squad. Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre in somebody’s mama’s yard. Sixteen bullets each, bodies riddled, legend ended before it began.

Me? I was supposed to be their next practice target. Instead, I went to their viewing uninvited. Walked past whispers, ignored stares. Opened their closed caskets, pulled back the lids to see the faces of my intended killers. Dimpled with bullets, waxy masks of boys who thought they were gods. Why take them out? They were the wages of their own sins, collected right on time.

That was my fork in the road. My warning shot from God. I chose wisely: this street life was not for me.

But not everyone heard the same call. A young homie of mine, restless and reckless, popped shots in the air to prove he existed. A cop put one in his chest to prove he didn’t. Another mother wept. Another block went silent. Accountability? Was it the officer who squeezed the trigger, the boy who invited it, or the parents who cast blind eyes at red flags screaming louder than gunfire?

Choose wisely. That’s the refrain that kept me breathing. Every street corner was a question. Every sunrise was a test. And if you don’t answer with wisdom, you don’t get to answer at all.