I REMEMBER…..

I remember when life was complicated but so simple. Growing up in an arduous environment that didn’t offer much hope. Hanging out with my girlfriends, walking the streets with no particular place to go. We were just chillin’, listening to music as it was food, solace, and healin’. We had no care in the world and all we could think about was our next hair style, latest attire, boy crush, and the mean girls. We’d meet up the next day after school and it was the same rinse and repeat agenda. Oh yeah, I remember when we first heard the Sugar Hill Gang, Rapper’s Delight and six years later, Run-DMC’s Peter Piper was on the Top 100 list. It was hip-hop without the bitches, hoes, and violence. We lost our minds listening to the beat of those cowbells. I remember those good ole days, of hop-scotch, red light-green light, hide-n-seek, that’s my car, dodgeball, and writing with chalk on the sidewalks, “he loves me, he loves me not.” Miss Mary Mack all dressed in black, and pumping our fist to the 18-wheelers to honk their horns. Running behind the ice-cream truck to buy the red, white, and blue ice cream bomb. Man, I remember when the roller-skating rink was our escape. We’d say, meet me at Goliad at such and such time and don’t be late. We thought we were fine and young, skating backwards and forwards, with lollipops in our mouths sticking out our red, blue, and purple tongues. Yeah, we were young and innocent in a complicated world. I remember….