(ThyBlackMan.com) Believe it or not, it gets cold in North Carolina. I remember when Sir Gil used to sing to me about Winter in America, so I guess that’s not anything new, but I can tell you that right now, it’s certainly cold in North Carolina.
Late Friday night, about two months ago, my crown vic’ sliced through the hawk. I held one hand on the steering wheel, and my right arm draped over the passenger seat, taking my date home. The problem was that my date didn’t look like Nyomi Banxx, Halle Berry, or Kim Kardashian. My date that night was a pillow, and pillow case — soaked with my son’s blood— and the box cutter he hacked away at his flesh with, hours earlier.
My son is the latest in a long line of men who have suffered depression in my family. Some of us conceal, or suppress it better than others. My father, my elder brother, and I have fought Beowulf-fashioned battles with depression over the years. The card tricks that our complex minds turn, combines with external forces sometimes, and has us constantly hoping that we “know the ledge”.
When I was nine, I discovered that the smell of wooden shelves, and books in a South Bronx branch of the New York City public library provided me with aromatherapy. The smell lured me into the leaflets, and no matter how far I may have strayed from them, or how many substitutes I’ve 
experimented with over the years, the books would always welcome me with open chapters, once I returned home to them. They didn’t turn me into a hermit or a social isolationist, but they helped enhance my ability to stand alone, comfortably. They helped me to stand aside, and watch other people fall into ranks, and files, without a single clue as to why they fell into those ranks, and files. They’ve protected me from that sort of thing. For years, I’ve looked at people with pity, knowing that if they’d only commit to a little more research, there’s no way in hell they’d find themselves standing in some of those lines.
“Ma’am, do you know why you’re wearing, what your wearing?”
“Uh, sir, do you know why you’re worshipping, what you’re worshipping?”
“Family, do you know why you’re smoking, what you’re smoking?”
So with that protective mechanism, I was able to function normally, on athletic fields, in classrooms, in the U.S. military, in the operating room, and sometimes, in the streets. I could, and can visit any arena, because I know that I will always be able to operate, comfortably, under my own devices. There can be no Jonestown for me. I’m actually—free.
I remember when my parents divorced, and my mother, and siblings found ourselves living in some awful circumstances. It was the 1980’s, which meant that the man with three six-letter names provided a wonderful diversion for a great deal of Negroes, who chose to be shiftless. He’s the one a lot of parents pointed to, when their kids ran into the house in tears, after hearing:
“I got some ice cream. You can’t afford it. ‘Cause you on the welllllllllllllllllfare.”
It was always Ronald Reagan’s fault. What was amazing to me, was that the miracle-worker that they gave their money to on Sunday’s, couldn’t do anything to stop him. None of us threw that damned cheese back in Ron’s face either.
My older brother, actually, my big brother, as I called him back then, didn’t fare too well under the pressure. A naturally brilliant child, having been skipped twice by the time he reach the fifth grade, and gifted athlete (World Class Track and Field), didn’t appreciate the reception he got from his Junior high school mates, when he showed up for classes wearing a pair of my mother’s shoes. He was brow-beaten, so badly, for his lack of new clothes, that he decided to capture the flame, and throw it back at them. He decided to play the role of a clown. He cut one his pairs of pants, so that the bottom of the legs were essentially tasseled. It worked for a little while. He got some laughs. His trousers were known around the school as the jing-a-ling pants. The laughter was short-lived, though. One day, he came home from football practice, in tears. His team mates had pushed him, and shoved him face-down into some rocks, and told him to “take his poor ass back to New York.”
My grandparents, who we lived with, shared that sentiment. I suppose I would too, if I’d retired and suddenly my daughter shows up with her six kids, and decides to set up shop in my place of rest. It was a bad time. I kept my face in books. I mean, yeah, I played ball, and I played in the band a little, but reading was how I kept my sanity. My brother turned to a life of petty crime. He never got any help. I got help from my mother’s sister, and her husband. They would take me in for long summers, and treat me like royalty. And while with them, I would play ball, hang out with my cousin, and his friends, and read books.
I can’t, with authority, say that kids didn’t get structured help back then. I do remember there were two categories of kids when I grew up. Actually, there were three. There were good kids, bad kids, and the kids who sat on the school bus, shaking their heads, like they were auditioning for The Exorcist. That’s all I remember. I don’t think I heard the word “depression”, until I was grown. By then, it was too late for me to acknowledge the word’s power. I saw it as a defect, and spent years, and years pretending that I was immune. It’s like—I don’t know—there was always somebody, some coach or somebody telling you to “get up!” or “quit cryin’!” When that didn’t work, they would just pick up a belt or a shoe or something, and beat the shit out of us. That was therapy back then; they would just whup yo’ ass. They could give a damn what was bothering you, just so long as you “Set yo’ ass down!”, as they tore into those green-and white envelopes, and counted their food stamps. But I had my books. Therefore, I struggled, but I didn’t suffer. You know who ultimately suffered? My children.
I’ve fathered them, in the best manner I could. However, what I’ve given them has been incomplete. I’ve only offered them the facts of life, but not the magic of love. I’ve spent hours with them at the YMCA, explaining the importance of a healthy body. I’ve spent hours with them at bookstores, and libraries. I’ve explained to them, that intelligence is the way to survive in this world. But the hugs, and kisses have not been there. I don’t feel it. It’s just not in me. I haven’t forced myself into it, because I always thought it would appear transparent to my kids, since they know that it’s not really being me.
But there’s more. My son has been a victim of bullying since he entered Kintergarden. He is a high-schooler now, and his signature, to his peers, has always been the unique shape of his skull. It’s elongated. He has been called everything from peanut-head to hammer-head. Since his father is Cobra Caine, he’s gotten the same answers that bullied children got from years past: “They are only doing it to get a reaction from you. If you don’t pay them any mind, they’ll stop.”
Well, that advice never worked. After a while, it got physical. The only time any faculty or staff member, at any of his schools, granted any attention to my son’s situation, was when he would finally breakdown, and retaliate. That’s why I was amazed to read in, Come On People!, by Dr.’s Cosby and Poussaint, how disgusted they are when parents call in a “parasitic lawyer” on a school’s staff, when there are behavioral issues. They really should have taken the opinions of folks, other than the sued schools. There are persons in our educational system that could care less about a bullied child. I mean, they are quicker to label the bullied child as a problem, than the sea of “normal kids”, who are committing the daily offenses. I once lit up the entire Charlotte/Mecklenburg school system over their neglect.
I would drill my son often, placing pictures in his head, of how those same people will be standing at a bus stop one day, when he rides past them in his ‘Benz, once he completes his education. Just ignore them. That was the focal point for me, when I dealt with bullies. The differences in time in space reared their heads again. By ninth grade, I was a six-foot-weight-lifting athlete. Therefore, my status as a Shakespeare –reading nerd, didn’t get me the same type of harsh treatment that other kids with less expensive sneakers got. I was big enough (and willing) to whup someone’s ass, so it never got as bad for me, as it did for my son.
Somewhere between standing up to pee, and eating with a fork, I learned to embrace solitude. Walking alone is natural for me, but it’s not for my son. I have not done a good job of seeing the world from his eyes. What I want for him, is the same thing I want for all my people. That is to quit whining, and man-up. But he wants friends, and I don’t have the skills to help him with that. This Cobra doesn’t travel in a pack.
My son is paying an awful price for my emotional incompetence. He has not chosen to cut up a pair of pants. He has chosen to cut his wrists, and his neck, with a box cutter. That night, after dropping his mother off, and seeing his blood all over the carpet, bathroom sink, and his bedroom, I drove home with his blood soaked pillow, and pillow case. I’ve touched blood in a lot of places. I’ve touched blood on the gridiron. I’ve touched it in the streets. I’ve touched it in the operating room. I’m numb to it. It’s no different than ink to me. So when I got home that night, I sat with my son’s pillow case, and I sniffed his still-moist blood. I drew in deep, trying to get him into my system like a blunt. I didn’t feel anything. I haven’t felt anything for a long time. The blood is dry now, and my son is on a ward: locked down. The Gideon’s Bible in his pillow-case, that his mom placed there months ago, is still there. I haven’t checked it to see if there’s any blood on the New Testament yet.
I decided to write this blog to see if I can find a part of me that isn’t Cobra Caine. I haven’t yet. Mark may very well be gone. It’s a shame. He was a good kid. But “everything around me” rejects good kids. “Who says monsters don’t prosper?” But Cobra or not, I’ve got to find some way into my son’s skull, before he does. And now I have to face that it’s going to take more than just intelligence: more than just books. But it’s all I have. I don’t love playstations. I don’t love Souljaboy Tell’em. I don’t love anything, but rhetoric. So the heat is on me right now, but it sure as hell is cold in North Carolina.
Addendum:
You know, I did not prepare this blog for public consumption. I’d written it to deal with some internal mess I was going through. But today, I saw this bizarre blog by Boyce Watkins, the self-proclaimed people’s scholar, and once again, what I found, was ranting from an individual, hell-bent on becoming relevant within the Black community, by consistently patronizing Black folks, instead of having the fortitude to just tell the truth.
Today, Boyce has managed to connect Black kids bullying each other to President Barack Obama. Clearly, Boyce needs to be a professor at Hogwarts, if he can pull this kind of sorcery off.
http://ht.ly/4e0Hs (The Loop 21.com)
First of all, how on earth does he manage to view adolescent bullying as a racial issue? This whole concept of “all kids get bullied, but we should feel especially sorry for bullied Black kids.” Is annoying, if not all together insane. I guess next week, he’ll find a way to tie it in to the whole e-bonics discussion, so he and his henchmen can put together a proposal, that congress pass a bill decrying that school-aged Black children are inferior for several reasons. Reason 1) they are genetically predisposed to speaking improper English. Reason 2) They get bullied by other Black kids. They can wrap it up with a couple of bullets about slavery, and crack cocaine sentencing, and before you know it, the whole world will know that the Diaspora’s most well-off children, are essentially helpless freaks, who simply cannot figure things out.
Here’s a killer line from that blog;
“While it’s certainly an honor to see a Black man with access to the White House, I’m not sure if that honor is worth the senseless beatdowns and deaths of our Black Children.”
Now this is coming from a man who I once saw, on you-tube, state this about Snoop Dogg: “I used to follow that Negro like a super hero!”
What are they putting in that man’s doughnut icing? You’re telling me that, celebrating the completion of an epic, centuries-long struggle for the Oval Office, is running parallel to an increase in violent crime amongst Black youth? And in the midst of that, Snoop Dogg is a hero?
You know, I’m glad he had the sense to state, in the blog, that “…the problem existed way before Obama…” Seeing as how he’s spent so much time bobbing his head up, and down to Black genocide music, I’m glad he’s able to put that together.
The one thing I did right, during my son’s turbulent academic experience, was told him that I cannot control other people’s kids. I’d like for someone from the White House to send Boyce Watkins a memo, informing him that the President of the United States can’t either.
Boyce, in his blog, indicates that bullying has only gotten the attention from Washington, because it is affecting White children now, but still “disproportionately affects Black folks”. Here we are full circle aren’t we? Another cry to the govt., to help us raise our kids. For Boyce to take that stance is saying a lot about the current state of Black “leadership”.
They cried out to the govt. to save us before. They once petitioned the government for harsh sentences for narcotics violations. Research the activities of the Congressional Black Caucus, you’ll see. Then, when it was time to patronize Black Americans for votes, they declared the laws that they asked, for to be racist against Blacks. Sorcerers and wizards, trust me.
So is this where we’re headed again? Are we crying for the government to step in, and police our children now? Once for drugs, now for bullying. Well, if their wish comes to fruition, and we see special task forces, breaking up kids for gathering in groups, arresting kids for affiliations, and other hand-holding activities to keep our kids from devouring one another, are we going to turn around next year, and claim that our children have been placed into a police state? Let’s head that off at the pass.
As the first brown-skinned human to occupy the White House, President Obama has a lot of responsibility towards all Americans, and yes, some specifically to Black ones. However, raising our kids is not part of his job. If bullying is a problem, especially bad in the Black community, then the cry for help should go out to US—not the U.S.
Keep it movin’, Boyce.
Staff Writer; Cobra Caine
You can connect with this brother by visiting the following site; The Charming Mr. Caine.