(ThyBlackMan.com) When I was coming up, I would finish my homework as quickly as possible to join my friends, who seemingly never had homework (thanks Gifted & Talented program) outside to play football, basketball, ride our bikes or just run the streets. We would hurry home to preserve as much daylight as possible, harassing the girls in the neighborhood, just having fun, being kids. Sure, we had Nintendo and Sega game consoles, but those were reserved for rainy days or after the street lights came on, we’d rather be outside making the ice cream man stop for no reason.
I took a ride through the hood yesterday and saw nothing reminiscent of my childhood. There were no kids walking home with overstuffed bookbags, no football games, no little girls playing double dutch, and no boys chasing girls 
or girls chasing boys. I saw the hustlas, the gangbangers, the Black girls lost that chase them both and a few nine to fivers in search of Happy Hour, but the mighty sounds of joy that once filled the afternoon air were noticeably absent. When our neighborhoods permanently became hoods, all of that afterschool fun transitioned into the house, parked in front of the television watching “106th & Park”, playing video games, Facebooking or just up under their mothers and company hearing the latest gossip and picking up on bad habits.
For little girls that may be cool, but boys need to be out and about, going through their rites of passage in the streets. The fellowship on those city blocks goes a long way towards molding men. We scraped knees and elbows, fought guys from other streets, dissed girls, kissed girls, learned about and planted the seeds of manhood. I had a handful of friends who had their fathers around full-time, so most of us learned from the dudes that came before us and the second-hand knowledge we passed on to each other. It was mentoring without being. It was someone giving a damn about you because you were from the same streets they were and they saw something in you that allowed them to stop and give you a word. That word varied, it could’ve been, “Stick to your books, you’re smart” or “Keep at that basketball thing, you got game”, both said to me by guys that would be murdered years later.
Those same guys led a few of my friends into the drug trade; it’s a thin line between right and wrong in them streets, but a line nonetheless. We straddled that line delicately, curious enough to observe what was going on, but innocent enough to know we wanted better for ourselves. As I’ve gotten older I reflect on those days after-school, when I was really learning and how those lessons have shaped me into the man I am now.
I took a walk through the mall today and my mind immediately flashed back to when my friends and I reached “the mall years”. How we would pile eight into a car and get out making sure we were still fresh before perfecting our mall stroll. I look at the youngsters in skinny jeans and mohawks wondering what are they learning about being men? Their fathers aren’t home like mine or my friends either; we were raised by our mothers, grandmothers and the streets, while mimicking manhood from Heathcliff Huxtable to Michael Jordan, taking lessons on life from teachers and coaches, learning right and wrong from the preacher and hustlers, all after a game of two-hand tag. But I looked up and down block after block yesterday and saw no little boys on their way to being men; just the residue of shattered dreams and lost hope disguised as male bravado.
Staff Writer; Al-Lateef Farmer
More of his work can be found over at: The World According to Teef.
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