Hi. My name is Adam. I’m a child of the Cocaine 80’s in America - 1984, to be more specific. I remember Kindergarten somewhat fondly. Being in school was generally a lot better than being at home. We learned about Ronnie R. Regent being the president and were required to regularly recite the Pledge of Allegiance. A group of kids being made to pledge allegiance to a country - 5 year olds, can you believe it?! What can a 5 year old do for their country during the war on drugs or the years leading up to Operation Desert Storm? Gordon H. W. Bosh ordered that mission. Anyway, I was a child. Pledging my allegiance isn’t even reasonable at that age. It’s not like there was anything I could have done if a war broke out, which eventually did happen, because they made me swear fealty to an inanimate object that represented my country.

I grew up in a bad neighborhood. Three major street factions ran it and I mean I was completely surrounded by hardened criminals and primarily violent crime. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for me to stumble upon dead bodies when I took the trash out to the alley, or find drug addicts and alcoholics conked out in our backyard, find actual rats [not mice or squirrels, rats] darting across our basement floor, find birds and bats in our basement, or have to chase down cockroaches I found in my cereal box. I’d like to say I could afford to throw it away but that would be a lie. Gross! I know. But I was poor, what do you want me to say?

So, the gangs and mafias were all around me. [Yeah, I know that was abrupt.] Okay, the mafia was on the west side of the major avenue I lived near. I lived on the other side with the gang I grew up in. And a few blocks to the east, at another major avenue, was the rival gang. I saw a lot of fights, I saw some stabbings, I saw some shootings, and I saw some horrible car accidents. That was a normal day in my neighborhood. But I witnessed my first murder in year four of grade school. I was standing at the pencil sharpener and the teacher had stepped out of class for a few minutes. There was a line and the kids behind me saw what happened even better than I did. They saw the entire meeting and I only saw the shooting itself.

I had a lot of problems but I was ultimately a good kid. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. I changed. I didn’t want to change but my environment changed me. I was a bad kid with a good heart - that’s how I should say that. I can’t honestly say that I didn’t enjoy many of the bad things I was doing while I was doing them. I wore my set’s colors proudly every day, I stacked my signs, and I did my dance when that old gangster rap came on the radio. I carried knives and guns, I jumped rivals, I sold drugs, and I stole. I LOVED getting high and smoking. Oh yeah! I popped pills, sipped cough syrup, drank various types of alcoholic beverages, and regularly smoked cigars and cigarettes. I got into the substance abuse when I was just 12, and that’s the year when everything started to change.

It was 1996. I was helping out a friend of the family in early summer. Okay, I’ll be totally honest here. I was babysitting. I always had a soft spot for babies. The world sucks but I’m not going to punish the kids for it. So, I was a babysitting gang banger - and I’m proud of that fact. Sue me. I was babysitting one summer night. It was mostly quiet in that old rundown house. The floors creaked and the mice skittered across the floor every so often, but that was about it. The baby was sound asleep in the back and I was honestly ready to go home. Though I was instructed not to go to the window after sunset, guess what I did though. Of course, I went to the window after dark. BANG! The lights went out and I woke up in a pool of my own blood.

Me: Jesus CHRIST!!! Where did all this blood come from?!

I looked around frantically. There were drops of blood on the hardwood floors coming from the window. I started to vaguely remember going there before I woke up on the floor across the room. Blood steadily ran down my arm and my inner elbow felt like hell. It seared and throbbed at the same time. There was a small hole in the window and cracks radiating out from it. It hadn’t shattered but it wasn’t in the best shape. I carefully put some tape on it to seal it up temporarily. That’s not the first window I had salvaged after a bullet went through it.

Me: [grunting] I think I got shot. No wonder people die from it, this shit hurts super bad.

I felt a draft come from my left. A little surprised, I looked over to see the porch door slightly open.

Me: That’s weird...

At this point, I should have definitely called emergency dispatch but, of course, I didn’t do that. Nope. I had to do the exact wrong thing in this situation. I stepped out on the porch just as first responders arrived on the scene. That didn’t bode well. I could seriously get this woman in trouble if they found me like this. I tried to step back inside when I noticed the squad car pulling up behind the paramedics. I wasn’t fast enough. The cops noticed me as they were preparing to exit the vehicle.

Officer 1: Hey! Did you see that?

Officer 2: Yeah, up there on the porch?

Officer 1: Yeah, was that a kid?

Me: Uh oh…

Oh, it doesn’t end there. That would have been no problem if it wasn’t even worse than this. At this point it was just an aversion to talking to police. I mean, come on - a troubled urban youth talking to police? A gang banger? Nah! That’s a recipe for disaster. I crept inside, as if they could have heard me walking normally from the sidewalk, and knelt beside the window I had taped up to listen in. I was shook. Fortunately for me, these guys all projected well over the engines of the vehicles.

EMT 1: Officer!

The first cop was focused hard on the top porch. He was kind of in a trance. I guess he was trying to calculate the likelihood of me knowing anything about what had just taken place only minutes ago.

Officer 1: Huh? What do we got here?

EMT 1: Yeah, this guy’s dead.

Officer 1: You sure?

EMT 2: Yup! Stick a fork in him.

Officer 2: I’ll call the coroner.

I didn’t even see the body. I thought they were coming for me. Another memory fragment shot through my mind. I went to the window to check for our family friend. I saw two men standing off to the right of the house, at the mouth of the nextdoor driveway. I didn’t suspect anything because it looked like they were just having a regular conversation. I heard one of them yell, “Fuck you looking at,” there was a brief flash, then a bang. But that’s all I could remember, and I wasn’t even sure how reliable that was at first. I looked around the room and saw the hole in the ceiling. It was unmistakable; that bullet was meant for me. I was lucky to be alive but I needed to find a way out of this situation.

Me: [whispering] That explains why there’s a hole in my arm. Bastard shot me on purpose.

Officer 1: You got an apparent cause of death? The coroner might be a while and I need something to go off of before I start knocking on doors.

EMT 2: Someone really tall cracked his nut, apparently.

Officer 1: Apparently… Wait, this guy’s, like, 6 feet tall. Who would be tall enough to…

He turned rapidly, looking up at the porch again. This time he scanned the windows. I think he was looking for signs of movement. I ducked down before he could see my head in the corner of the window. I accidentally knocked something loose and heard something dense hit the floor.

Me: [shocked] SHIT! It’s her pistol! Why is this…?!

I was actually a pretty smart kid, so it didn’t take long for me to make sense of the whole situation. I was the shooter. Here’s the thing: I have rage. Back then, I had problems with blacking out. Nowadays, not so much. When I got hit, I must have panicked and searched for her gun. Clearly I didn’t put it back where it belonged. I don’t know how the baby slept through all of that but I’m sure happy he had. It was time to go. Immediately.

I scrambled to soak up the blood with a bath towel, then I hurried to the back and tucked the pistol under her mattress. She never mentioned it, so I guess she hadn’t changed where she hid it before that night. I carried the stroller down the basement stairs in the dark, which was a huge challenge to do. And I stubbed my toe repeatedly as I hurried back upstairs to get the baby, who was still asleep. This little guy slept like a straight up rock. I had to check his breathing. He was fine.

Very carefully, I slid down the stairs. I didn’t want to even think about what would happen to me if I had fallen down the stairs or dropped him. I only had one arm I could use because of my injuries. It hurt like hell during the process, but I had fashioned the towel into a sling while I was getting prepared to shake the spot. It was a good idea because I was about to need it when I got to the bottom. I had to hold the baby with my injured arm in order to get the door open and the stroller outside. The police were beating on the front door. The noise was good cover. I locked the doorknob and quietly pulled the door closed. Conveniently, little guy hadn’t stirred even briefly. I loaded him into the stroller and headed for the alley. In this neighborhood, the weed infested alley was actually the safest after dark.

Slowly I crept down the alley, careful not to attract any dogs in the yards or any potentially dangerous strays. I wouldn’t have been able to protect us if we were attacked. I had nothing on me that I could use to fend off any kind of attacker(s). It wasn’t safe to move out to the street until we had made it a few blocks away. That’s when I didn’t have to worry about being approached by anyone and the walk became so much easier.

The baby didn’t wake up until I was only two blocks from home, where my mother was waiting. My grandmother noticed the motion sensor light come on when I cut through her yard. I thought she’d be asleep by that time. So, she was watching to see who came out of her yard. When she saw me, she must have called my mom immediately and told her I was behaving strangely. I guess she wasn’t sure if I was holding the baby or if he was still in the stroller, and didn’t want to spook me. She had no reason to assume I was injured.

Unaware that my mom was awake, I tried to enter the house quietly, which was a trial, to say the least. I had to pull the stroller up the stairs without tipping it, so it was a very slow process. Then I had to wrestle with bringing it into a tight space and figure out how to fold it up. So, I took a few breaths and held the baby with my injured arm again. It was excruciating. But I was able to more easily fold up the stroller and stash it behind the door, and lock up behind myself. My mother met me at the door as soon as she heard me fiddling with my keys.

Mom: [deeply worried] What the hell happened to you two, baby? What’s wrong with your arm?!

Me: [stunned] I’m still not exactly sure...

(To Be Continued...)