I was telling this story to one of my homeboys at IHOP a few weeks ago.
My female and I decided to break from our normal afternoon dinner routine and head into the West End (the Black part of my city) to get some hood Bar-B-Que. Now, I love my Black people, but I go out of my way to avoid the West End (affectionately called ‘the shooting gallery’) since the nigga-to-civilized ratio is damned near 1:1 and my appetite for the bull is low non-existent.
On top of that, the West End is swarming with pigs determined to fuel the local prison industry by shoveling Black souls into jail cells. Im 100% legit, but a young Black Man in a black BMW with blacked out windows in the west is begging to be stop-searched.
But on this sunny fall afternoon, my queen by my side, I decided to push the BMW down Broadway anyway. “What could happen?” I rationalized. “We won’t be down there longer than an hour”.
We slow to a stop behind a rusty brown pickup truck. The driver of the pickup was a middle aged Black woman, her passenger a middle aged Black man. Presumably, they were in a relationship. The woman had a cell phone up to her ear and made impatient gestures; ahead of her two vehicles were involved in a rush hour fender bender and held up traffic to inspect the damage. This was pissing the lady off – her pickup had stopped so close to the vehicle ahead of her that she didn’t have space to pull forward and be on her way. The truck shook as she bucked back and forth in increasingly agitated fits of rage.
I look over at my chick, who was happily swyping away on her iPhone. We conversed about how best to spend the afternoon after we finished smashin some rib tips and decided to blow some cush with her girlfriend later. Suddenly….
“Baby, watch out!!”
My head and eyes snap to the front to see the pickup truck’s tow pin pushing into the grill of my car. I pounded my horn with fury.
The woman had tried to back up to get around the wreck in front of her and had now caused a wreck behind her with no regard, no warning honk to let me know she was backing up, no glance in her rear-view to see if there were vehicles behind her.
I jumped out to survey the damage. Simultaneously, her passenger jumped out of the truck and started raising hell. Not the driver – she stayed in the car for another minute – the passenger started raising hell.
“Nigga didn’t you see us backin up?! That aint shit to fix!! Nigga we barely scraped that shit! Fuck yo car and yo bitch nigga! You hit us nigga!”
Now I had seen the Stinkmeaner episode of The Boondocks, so I knew I had found myself in the middle of a NIGGA MOMENT.
NIGGA MOMENT: A moment in which ignorance overruns the brain causing an outburst of irrational aggression
This nigga, who wasn’t even driving, who didn’t know who the hell I was (off-duty officer?), whose fat-ass chick had backed into me was severely popping off at the mouth. His chick was already on the phone with her insurance company, cursing the lady out. The dude’s stance and threats became more antagonistic. I had two options here: 1:
Or two: Collect on the insurance and be out.
I chose option two.
“Baby, get back in the car” I said calmly. My chick had gotten out to tongue lash the old nigga like only a female could. She was understandably upset at the foolishness of it all.
We headed to her girlfriends house to blow and said screw the BBQ.
Later, the insurance company called.
“Sir, we were so disgusted by her behavior over the phone that we are going to make sure you get as much of a settlement at her expense as we can provide you with.” A few weeks later, a nice settlement check arrived.
My homeboy sat across the table in disbelief. “Let me get this straight,” he responded. “A nigga hit yo car, threatened you and yo chick, and clowned you on the street and you just drove off and let him?! That’s that hoe shit. I woulda popped the trunk on dat ass!”
In hindsight, I am proud of how I handled the situation. Its sad, however, that instead of isolating and eliminating niggerish behavior, we would rather propagate it with nigga synthesis.
We have gotten to a point of social bankruptcy that instead of saluting maturity, we refer to it as “that hoe shit”.
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