Thedewsperspective

Aye yo, you want to join the service together when we graduate? I vividly remember asking a gentleman who’d become one of my dearest friends over the years that question as freshmen in high school. And his response was astonishing to my 14-year-old mind and train of thought at the time. He answered, “HELL NO.” It sounded like he said it in ALL CAPS. I was baffled, so I inquired more. Well what’s your plans? My main man said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know I ain’t never working for nobody.” I thought that was the most outlandish shit that I had ever heard. I was dumbfounded to believe that at fourteen or mid-teens a child could have concluded that concept so young. Now remember, this was in 1987, waaaaay before everyone got the idea of being an entrepreneur. Hell, like most young people at the time, I’d never even heard of the word entrepreneur. GOD forbid if I was asked to properly spell it and my life depended on it. If so, you wouldn’t be reading this story right now. Needless to say, that was damn near forty years ago, and guess what? 

I went to one of the biggest high schools in the country. It was truly documented as such. The campus was massive. Our freshman class had about 50 homerooms with twenty plus students in each class. At the time our school had a reputation that didn’t necessarily glorify the gifted and talented. Instead our school was more known for violence. It wasn’t Fair Eastside High, but we had our own fair share of challenges and obstacles to navigate. 

I ain’t gangster by far, but I had made up my mind that I was gonna fit right in. Years later my main man told me, “boy I thought you had just come home from training school.” That’s because I’d sit in class with my mug broke down, arms crossed, slouched in my chair, as if I had just come home from training school. I did that for days until someone who actually knew me from elementary school turned around, noticed me and said, “Lemon, is that you”? My cover was blown. The young man said, “why you sitting like that”? I told him, “they told me that they were crazy up here, so I’m playing crazy.” In all actuality, I’m really just a cool nerd. So I got myself together quickly. I set up straight, fixed my face and begin to conduct myself as my parents would expect me to. Like I had some sense.

Unbeknownst to me, my main man who’d become one of my dearest friends was watching and observing the whole time. We’d begin to talk and discovered that we shared common interest. We both like sneakers and shooting dice. We’d shoot dice every day in school. We’d shoot dice in class, in the gymnasium, in the locker room, wherever. Who got me faded? You wouldn’t think that kids would have enough money to have legitimate crap games in school, but I told you, this wasn’t your regular high school and we weren’t just regular high school kids. Now my man was already a bonafide hustler selling all types of candy in school since middle school. He had a real store in his backpack. His business was booming. Shid in hindsight I guess I should’ve realized that he didn’t have any intentions of ever being an employee. My money was being earned by flipping a few four finger ounces purchased with my saved up lunch money my parents gave me.

Ninety and I didn’t spend all four years together in the same homeroom class, however, we’d always see each other in passing or at lunch. And during our junior year we had a Business Law class together (wait until I share with you the time the FEDS came to speak to our Business Law class). Now even though our high school was confronted with many of the same challenges that most urban schools are unfortunately engulfed with, we also had some of the finer academic programs and teachers known to man. I repeatedly say that my saving grace occurred during my sophomore year when I was afforded the opportunity to become a student in the Baltimore Academy of Finance, a four year high school program created to prepare students for careers in the financial service industry. It was a school within a school that allowed us to graduate with three credits from Morgan State University, our high school diploma and a Certificate of Financial Studies. Not to mention that by the time we graduated, all Academy of Finance participants would’ve had an established resume because we had internships at Fortune 500 companies during both our junior and senior years. By the time I graduated, I was the President of the Academy of Finance. Now while my main man Ninety wasn’t in the Academy of Finance, he was in another stellar Business Program at our school.

I guess you could say that he and I also shared a common interest in business. It’s just that throughout the years, he’s proven to be a far more astute businessman than I have. Part of the reason is he’s more disciplined with saving his earnings. Well in my case, you ever heard that old saying, “don’t let that money burn a hole in your pocket”? Or is it, “you acting like that money is burning a hole in your pocket”? Either way, I ain’t want no holes in my pockets so I’d spend whatever I made before it could be saved. I completely misinterpreted the old adage, “pay yourself first.” As I go further into our story, you’ll understand more and more. 

We’re in high school, just making our way, coming of age. Like I mentioned, I figured that upon graduating I would join the armed forces. My idea wasn’t based on the fact that I was so patriotic, instead it was more out of not having a solid plan. Even if I wanted to attend college (which at the time I wasn’t completely sold on that idea either), I figured my parents didn’t have monies for that. And truth be told, there was only one person in my family that had attended and graduated college. She’s my older cousin and she attended and graduated from the historic Wilberforce University in Ohio. And even though I was extremely proud of her, I never inquired about the college experience, all she had to do to get there, remain there and graduate from there. Truth be told, now don’t take my black card for this, but I had never even seen School Daze in its entirety. But I did know KRS-One’s notorious verse from his song Love’s Gonna Getcha. I pull about a g a week; fuck school. 

I’ve always been a bright student. But I’m also the student, that as a teacher, I despise. You know the student that thinks he’s intelligent? I’m that said student. You see, those students never actually reach their full potential, until they change their mindset because nobody is able to tell them anything. Not to mention that because they’re somewhat intelligent, things come to them a little easier preventing them from building strong academic habits. So I didn’t work hard at learning in secondary school. I coasted. Which is one of my greatest regrets. Now my man Ninety, on the other hand, school wasn’t his thing. Very intelligent, but not so apt to apply himself in class. By the time we met, it was obvious to me, that his mind wasn’t equipped to sit in a single filed row in a classroom and be programmed to think. He had a mind of his own. And if you weren’t teaching him a means to make money, welp it appeared that my man just wasn’t interested. So he coasted as well.

After our freshman year, Ninety and I didn’t travel with one another around the building. We’d see each other in passing, crack a joke or two, then keep it pushing. And when I say share a joke or two, I mean we’d laugh so hard with and at one another that it was damn near painful. I’m surprised that he and I both didn’t curl over and die from laughing because practically every day we would “die” laughing. Look, one time we were shooting dice in the boys locker room after class. I was on the dice and I was winning. So you know how niggas act when they’re winning? I’m talking all types of cold trash. I’m damn near breakdancing with the dice in my hand. And in between my acts of rolling the dice and scraping up my winnings, I began to smell something rotten. So I hollered out, “gotdamn, somebody smell like pure dee shit in this bitch!” I’m up, niggas talk shit when they up, so I felt that I could say whatever I felt like saying, right? So the more I kept winning and scraping up my winnings, the more I kept saying it. In my most gangster East Baltimore vernacular I said, “gotdamn, somebody smell like pure dee shit in this bitch!” Gym was our last period, so after the dice game, we had to return back to our homeroom for dismissal. While I’m sitting in homeroom waiting for the dismissal bell to ring, I can still smell shit. I’m puzzled. Whodafuq in here smelling like shit, I posed to myself. Then I did the old, scoot back from the desk and inconspicuously laid my head down so I could take a whif to confirm that it wasn’t me. And I be damn, guess who it was smelling like “pure dee shit”? It wasn’t enough money in my pocket that could’ve saved me from the embarrassment that I posed on myself. And just think, didn’t nobody else acknowledge the foul stench during our dice game accept me! Man I ran out that classroom and raced home to clean myself up. Months had passed and nobody ever said anything else about it. I felt like I had gotten away with the type of embarrassment that could’ve ruined a person’s high school career. I could’ve been done before it ever got started. Who wanna be known as the nigga that smelled like shit? So one day me and Ninety were in Biology class trading notes back and forth, crying laughing about all types of things. I had the genius idea, “boy I’m gonna kill him with this one.” I wrote on the note, “remember that day we were shooting dice and somebody smelled like shit?” I passed it to him crying laughing. He sent the note back, “yeah, I remember.” I returned it, “it was me.” Dying laughing. I was sitting behind him, I observed his shoulders shake, he laid his head down on the desk laughing hysterically. I was two seats behind him damn near falling out of my chair. He gathered himself and mustered up enough energy to write something on the note and passed it back to me. When I opened and read it, it had two words, “I know.”  

Ninety was always good at protecting me and diverting unwanted negative attention my way. He and I did that for each other, in many ways. While in high school, I was clueless when it came to girls. Shid, damn near until I got grown, I was clueless when it came to girls. Truth be told, I’ve only had two girlfriends in my whole entire life, and I’ve been married to my second girlfriend for 25 years. Half of my life. Ninety, on the other hand, seemed to have been a chick magnet. Not to digress, but that previous line is some old school shit. I don’t think I’ve ever said, nor typed the words “chick magnet” before, but I thought it was fitting and I know you’ll get the gist. Anywho, Ninety never lacked in that department. So every Monday in high school, during lunch, Ninety would have a remarkable story to tell, that always included romance (wink, wink). We’d sit in the cafeteria and it was as if he was holding court. All of our classmates would sit around him and listen to his weekend tales. I’d sit and soak the entire story up, damn near marveling at everything he was saying, envisioning it being me. As a high school teenager, he was telling some of the most profound and amazing stories about his life experiences as a young man growing up in East Baltimore. And I’d sit like a sponge. I never felt compelled to make up a story to match my main man’s exploits, like most niggas do. Simply put, I never felt compelled to lie. I was still a virgin until our senior year of high school. And he knew it! But I was cool enough to portray myself as if I was in the mix. That prevented me from catching the slander that many other young men experienced during that time. Ninety never publicly berated me and teased me for not being sexually active, like we berated and teased other young men. 

In high school Ninety had two trucks! First he had a Ford Bronco, then he got a Jeep Cherokee. He was switching out vehicles like most dope boys was switching out sneakers. And he wasn’t a dope boy, at the time. But for my high school, this shit seemed to be the norm. The regular school day was like a fashion show and dismissal was like a car show. Consider the time, late eighties-early nineties. In my city they had dope spots doing ten’s of thousands of dollars a day, multiple days, per week. And many of the runners were kids my age. Kids getting to it. Making thousands of dollars a week. So, what do you think they spent their monies on? Yup, clothes and cars. And when they decided to show up at school, shid, they not only showed up, they showed out! Boxed Maxima’s with the soft top and BBS rims, 300Z’s, Supras, Cressida’s, Scooters all types of shit. You know the scene in the movie Paid In Full, of them reenacting how Willie Burger’s looked after the club let out in Harlem? There were day’s my school looked like that, no lie. And my young impressionable mind had me thinking, “how the fuck am I gonna get that”?

Before I ever aspired to be like Dr. King, I wanted to be like Peanut King. Peanut King was like a hero to many youth growing up in East Baltimore. He is credited with creating open air drug markets in Baltimore. He was a kingpin. Remember I mentioned earlier about the time the FEDS came to speak to our Business Law class? Well Ninety and myself had many questions for the speakers. However, most of our questions didn’t center around business nor law. We had all types of cartel and street affiliate questions, as teenagers, in a high school classroom. As a matter of fact, it was the FEDS that told us Peanut King was the brainchild behind the open air drug markets created in the early ’80s, that we now know as a facet that led to the detriment to a once thriving community. Although I never met Mr. King personally, when I became a teacher, I began to write him while he was still incarcerated, serving a sentence that netted him more than three decades behind bars. I decided to write him to ask if I could use his story as a cautionary tale for my young students who were drawn to the streets. He’d write me back, always giving me words of wisdom that I ‘d impart on my kids, with the hopes that his story could deter them somehow. Years later, you know who else I’d have come speak to my kids to impart firsthand knowledge and wisdom of street allure and the trials and tribulations endured if one chooses to take that path? One of my best friends in the world, Ninety.

Ninety and I had a wonderful high school career and experience. We both graduated. I got accepted into college with the intentions of studying business. Ninety was looking into enrolling in a real estate course because he had intentions of buying the block and flipping houses way back then. We never really hung out with each other outside of school, but shortly after graduating we’d find ourselves in each other company regularly. I opted to go to a small HBCU in West Baltimore because the young lady I was dating at the time enrolled in MSU in Northeast Baltimore. And we thought that we would be less of a distraction to one another schooling if we didn’t attend the same college. First love. You know how that is? You think you have everything figured out, until you don’t. I eventually graduated college with a degree in Business. I thought I was going to become the Wolf of Wall Street. I aspired to be the next Nate Chapman, Reginald F. Lewis or Michael Milken. Simply put, I aspired to get some money! However, fate would have a different career path for me. Ninety didn’t enroll into a real estate course, but that didn’t stop him from buying and flipping houses. His father, a great man that I have the utmost respect and love for, had given him the blueprint on multiple ways to have many streams of income since a child. Ninety was a hustler from the start. He always told me that money was drawn to him. I can attest to this firsthand. I don’t ever recall him worrying about money. And I’ve known him for damn near 40 years! 

I’ve been investing money in the New York Stock Exchange since I was old enough to open an account at a brokerage firm. As I stated, I was in the Academy of Finance in high school. We learned everything imaginable about the stock market. I started playing the “stock market game” at 15. That’s a financial game in which each group is given a makeshift $100k to invest. We’d compete against other teams and schools. It’s a phenomenal game that teaches young people about investing and managing money. We weren’t just investing make believe money on a whim, we had to research each company and make sound arguments on why we should purchase, hold or trade the stock. As a high school student, from 10th grade until graduation, I read the Wall Street Journal daily. Believe it or not, I was first introduced to Washington, DC’s very own convicted drug kingpin Rayful Edmonds and his organization from reading the WSJ. The article was about his ability to run an alleged $350 million dollar drug empire. The author pondered the question, “if only Mr. Edmonds would’ve been given the opportunity to apply his business senses to running a legitimate business operation, how different would his life be”? Unfortunately, there are so many different “Rayful Edmonds” that we know and not enough Robert Smith’s. I wanted to change the narrative.

At 18 years old, I told my homies that we were going to invest in mutual funds, buy stocks and bonds, as well as purchase real estate. I didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. All I had was a vision. I was in school, working part-time, hustling and dreaming. I’ve always been a dreamer. And maybe to my own dismay, I’ve spent more time dreaming than actually doing. Oftentimes my dreams seem so farfetched that when I utter them aloud people tend to think I’m delusional. I recall telling my best friend everything that I envisioned doing during our freshman year in college. When I tell you that he laughed so gotdamn hard. I’m talking about one of those laughs that you start out thinking to yourself “oh we’re laughing together” until you realize, “this nigga is laughing at me.” I. WAS. HURT. Me and my homeboy’s give each other the toughest love, you hear me? Nevertheless, it was around that time that my mom told me, “your dreams are your dreams, the only person you need to convince to believe in them is YOU.”

Hey Ninety, I got this stock idea to invest in, are you interested? After learning about business and the stock market, I envisioned myself becoming rich. As a matter of fact, after learning about business and the stock market, I wanted to become a stockbroker, then eventually an investment banker. I wanted to have my own brokerage firm like Nate Chapman and make multi-million-dollar business acquisitions like Reginald F. Lewis. At the time, you couldn’t tell me that I wouldn’t author my own autobiographical account like “why should white guys have all of the fun” detailing how I to, became a rich black man from East Baltimore. My road to riches started at 18. Since I was a student in the Academy of Finance, I was privy to information, opportunities and rooms that most young black men from the hood weren’t. So, I was almost like a hood cointelpro operative for my people. In addition to that, my mother had always told me, “You must learn how to play the game.” In hindsight, I’d bet that I have been learning how to play the game ever since I’ve learned how to speak. So, I knew how to assimilate in rooms to make others comfortable enough to speak in front of me and share with me. What I realized early was that in most corporate office spaces, people freely share stock tips with one another and talk about business moves and transactions. So, while interning at a fortune 500 company in Baltimore, about my second year in college, somebody hipped me to a stock tip. It was a car security company, whose stock was trading fairly low but had great potential. The company manufactured equipment to easily track stolen vehicles. And they targeted working with police agencies, as well as car manufacturers. After receiving the tip and researching the company to pitch to my main man Ninety, I made my proposal. It was a no brainer. We invested a few thousand dollars in the company. The stock skyrocketed in a matter of months. I felt like the black Gordon Gekko in my hood. At the time, I was studying for my Series 6 License, interning, shadowing brokers, and reading everything I could get my hands on about investing money. We were going to be rich before I was old enough to legally drink. But there was one flaw in my business model that severely differed from Ninety. Unlike Ninety, I like to floss. And oftentimes I floss before I technically have it. Shid to be totally honest, I ain’t never had it like that. Though I’ve always been on the verge of having it like that. Well needless to say, I fucked the stock money up. How you ask? I decided to floss before I technically had it like that. Ninety was understandably sick and upset with me. And that was a blight on our friendship.

While I was trying to become the Gordon Gekko of the hood, Ninety was fully embedded in the hustle. He and his father had a storefront, he had real estate investments and several other hustles that garnered him a lifestyle envious of most hustlers. Though I was still in college, I commuted every day. However, most days after school and in between work, I would spend my time hanging out with my homie at his store. While there, I would see everybody who was somebody in the city stop by to holler at my man. He’d always introduce me as his “friend in college studying business that’s gonna do some great things” one day. I’d just smile and nod my head in agreement. Now at the time, I didn’t totally understand what my main was fully engaged in. Though it was during this time that two pivotal moments occurred that opened my eyes clearly and cemented our friendship forever.

I always hustled something. Always. I would regularly take half of any monies I earned and purchase something to sell. That has always been my mindset. But again, my problem has always been spending instead of stacking. So look, I’m in college and I’m working at different financial institutions during the years I was in school. However, when I wasn’t in school or at work, I’d be hanging out with my main man Ninety. We’d be at his store until closing time, and then we’d hit the streets. As I explicitly said earlier, I never really knew what my man was engaged in because he never shared with me all that he was engaged in. And since he wasn’t a flashy guy, you couldn’t tell just by looking at him that he was that dude. Until…

So, look, one day, in about ’93 or ’94, my homeboy said to me, “when I put up my first hundred thousand, I’m thinking about having a party.” We were both high, I took the jay from him and said, “man gohead wit that shit.” I couldn’t fathom a kid at the time earning $100k, let alone saving a $100k. I got jealous. I said to myself, “damn we smoking the same weed, how he getting higher than me.” I start to hit the bitch harder. Shid, this some good ass weed that can convince you that you can save a $100k. I need to be THAT high!

About 3 or four months passed. We hadn’t revisited the conversation at all. I walked into my homeboy store, he had a slick ass butter leather coat on with a matching tam. He had a big ass Landcruiser parked outside, to which he said, “yeah nigga, I know you see it.” Then he fucked my whole head up when he said, “you know I’m ready to have my party”! I swear to GOD (and LORD knows I don’t mean to use his name in vain or in blasphemy). But I need yall to understand how emphatically I said, “yo I’ll quit school today. Sign me up with whatever you’re doing! I wanna be down”! I meant that shit. I ain’t want to be Gordon Gekko no more. I ain’t want to be Nate Chapman no more. Man, whatever my man was doing, I wanted to be that! I wanted to be that! But pay attention to his response to me.

Ninety said, “naw homie, keep doing what you’re doing. You’re doing the right thing.” He encouraged me to stay in school, get my degree. Keep working, do it legitimately. He said, “and when we’re together, I got you.” That was a pivotal point in my life. If my homie would’ve said, “boy I been waiting for you to ask” the trajectory of my life would’ve been different. In hindsight, I can honestly say that it would not have been better, but tragically different. As a 23-year-old kid, Ninety had the foresight, and I honestly believe, enough respect for me to not play a part in ruining my future. For that, I’m forever grateful. I also recall him telling me how his significant other at the time would say to him, “don’t mess his life up.”

I remember one night Ninety was invited to hang out with some big-time dudes in the city. I was his guest. After closing his store, he and I joined the company of some honorable men for a birthday celebration. We first went to dinner at the most popular restaurant in the city. You know, one of them fancy places where you need to have a collared shirt and blazer. When we arrived at the location, the maitre d stopped us and attempted to turn us away from the establishment. We weren’t properly attired, and in comparison, to everyone else, we looked like kids out of place. Then one of the gentlemen whose company we were in said, “they’re with us.” Man, when I tell you the reception changed immediately. They damn near carried us to our seats. Several tables were pushed together, and it was food and drinks spilling off of each one. It was like a scene from a mafia movie, in real life. I tell no lie when I tell you this. And they just told stories on top of stories and laughed and ate and drinked. And me and my man was in the midst of that shit, just taking it all in. As I thought to myself, “and this nigga want me to stay in school.” After hours of celebration, they decided to move the celebration to a nightclub. After the bill was tallied, everyone departed in their fine automobiles. There was a convoy of cars pulling out, every foreign whip imaginable. Pulling up the rear was me and my man Ninety coasting in a Toyota Landcruiser. Big shit. He was definitely one of the first in the city with it. So, as we driving, listening to Pac, smoking the yettamean, following about 9 of the finest whips we’d ever seen, Ninety and I both got quiet. Then it seemed like we simultaneously looked at one another like, “yo this shit is incredible.” I ain’t gonna bullshit you. I was also looking at him like, “and nigga, you want me to do what? stay in school”?

The lifestyle appeared to be everything that we knew success to be, at the time. Or should I say, everything we were made to believe success was. But neither one of us realized that it was all a trap. Many years later, after all types of losses, attempts on his life and incarceration, my man Ninety revealed to me that hustling and its lifestyle is just as addictive as the usage of drugs itself. Up until then, like most, I only viewed the addictive behavior by the users. I never once considered that those hustling had an addiction as well, until my man gave me a different perspective.

All of this happened in the ’90s. It was a lot going on in my city then. Very dangerous. As a matter of fact, one of me and Ninety’s ongoing jokes is us both knowing that I would not have been safe in my city getting money back then. Because everybody and their mother would have known that I had it. And somebody would’ve tried to throw my dumb ass in the back of a trunk to rob me. Not knowing that everything they were looking for was already on me.

I’m not being facetious about being “thrown” into someone’s trunk.  I’m referencing a violent time when people were adamant about robbing hustlers.  Shid, sometimes the bandits got it wrong.  And were robbing dudes they perceived to be hustlers and were angered by the outcome.  Throughout all the trials and tribulations of the streets, amidst monetary gains and successes, Ninety experienced it all.  Prison, attempted kidnappings, shootings, phone taps, betrayal, loss, gain, fame, shame, every trial and tribulations that we all heard about before anyone of us said “I Do” to the game. 

In the mid-nineties, we were still hanging thick as thieves.  He was still making money hand over fists.  And I was still dreaming about making money hand over fists.  Nevertheless, we were still partners, brothers.  In between dreaming, trying to figure things out and selling yettas, my man hired me to manage his store.  That didn’t last long.  About a summer.  By that time, I was dating a grown woman.  A woman that I would eventually marry and raise children with.  She needed more stability than a nigga selling candy and loosies.  She needed someone with a real job. She needed a man.

That fall, when I did get a real job working in banking, I started spending less time hanging out with Ninety.  I would still drop by the store, every now and then, but the extensive hangouts lessened.  Yet and still, I friendship, our brotherhood never faulted.  It never changed.  He could call me at any time if he needed me, and vice versa. 

Years passed.  I transitioned from banking to being an Educator.  Ninety was still the ultimate hustler.  By this time, I was married with a family and his family was steadily growing.  We were grown men, literally.  And even though we were running in different circles, there was still a purity of our genuine relationship that always allowed us to forge a close bond and that sustained itself.  Far less than before, when we were younger men, we’d still get together, catch up on all that was transpiring in each other lives and damn near die laughing like we did, when we were younger men.  Even though I’m a square, I’ve always kept my ear to the street.  So, I’d hear about all the moves my man was making outside, and I’d always interject with, “yeah, yall know that’s my nigga.”  I would say that shit proud as a motherfucker!  Just as proud as he would proclaim, “yeah, that’s my man” when he heard people speak about the things I was doing in a completely different arena.

Regardless of the paths we both chose to take in our lives, our friendship never wavered.  I believe at the core of who we are as individuals, our morals, values, principles are where we connected and established our bond.  And to my mother’s dying day, she had the utmost respect for Ninety because, unlike so many other people who were willing to help usher their peers down an unforgiven road of despair, he didn’t do that to me.  Even at my own petition, he said no.

Ninety went on to open clubs, bars, restaurants, invest in real estate and do many other business ventures that materialized into profit.  After coming home from federal prison time, he vowed to go legit.  Without ever being in criminal trouble as a juvenile, or being incarcerated in state prisons, Ninety did about 7 years in the feds.  While he was on the box awaiting his sentencing, I’d sit with him, and we’d talk and laugh.  I remember asking him “what are you going to miss the most while you’re gone”?  Every time he’d say the same thing “cooking breakfast for my children.”  I remember one day leaving my mother’s house calling Ninety and asking him, “do you think your life would’ve been different, would you have made different choices if your mother was still living”?  Without a moment of hesitation, Ninety replied, “definitely.” 

We were always more alike than not.  We’ve been friends for almost 40 years!  My mother was always motherly to him and his father has always been like a father figure to me giving sound advice.  It all started from shooting dice in class and cracking jokes on one another.  Now we send one another invitations to wedding renewals, fifty-year-old birthday celebrations and church Christmas plays that we’re acting in.  Now we brag about our children’s accomplishments and discuss what retirement will look like.  I guess you can say we made it.  Not unscathed, but we made it.  We just ushered in a new year.  Another year pregnant with nothing but possibility and unlimited success.  We’re truly blessed.  As a matter of fact, I just texted Ninety and asked, “what’s your plan for 2025 homie”?  His response, “get that money and get out the way.”  When I shared our exchange with my wife, and said, “shid baby, I still want some money too.”  She said, “boy you a teacher, and a writer, go get your lesson plans together for the week and think about the next story you’re going to come up with.”  Say less Mrs. Lemon.