Welcome To Tha Ghetto

The ghetto is a scary place my friend.

     I realize that Hollywood would have you believe differently. Movies and TV make it out to seem like there's urban Disneyland right in the middle of South Central. Countless films have depicted teenagers having far out wacky adventures amidst dilapidated streets. Drug deals gone awry usually end in nothing more than having a crazy story to tell your friends. Getting in a dispute with a pimp over one of his ho's, usually ends in nothing more than having a crazy story to tell your children about how you met their mother. But are these hypothetical situations the truth? For the most part yes, but not always.
     For those are not well acquainted with the ghetto you may believe the hype. You most likely have pictures hanging on you walls of liquor stores, littered sidewalks, and people standing on street corners for no good reason. It's probably your dream to some day leave your small town and start a new and exciting life in Compton, Bedford-Stuyvesant, or even Harlem. You imagine getting off the bus and being greeted by countless delighted inhabitants. However the ghetto is not a bustling happy community filled with friendly people. In fact it may be said that even the opposite is true. The ghetto can actually be a very dangerous with less than amicable people. I know you may believe that your town is dangerous and inhabited by mean spirited types. But that time when the general store was robbed or that friend of friend was a victim of a mugging, the perpetrator was most likely someone from the ghetto passing through your town on his or her way to another ghetto.

     If you are still not convinced of the dangers of the ghetto then allow me to tell you a true story that happened to a friend of mine. He was walking in the downtown area. He was on Pearl Street enjoying a nice walk on a Saturday afternoon. Pearl Street is such a nice area. It's filled with little boutiques where you buy glass unicorns and ceramic unicorns and plastic unicorns... you can actually get a unicorn made out of basically anything you want. Any place that sells unicorns is a very upscale establishment so that tells you that this is a nice area. It also has fancy restaurants with fancy hard to pronounce food like quiche and quesadillas, and other appetizers that start with q. There is one place that I don't even know what it is. It has like a big smiley face painted in the front and I see nicely dressed (in suits!) old people walking in and out of it. Your guess is as good as mine as to what it is. So anyway he's walking out of a boutique where he just bought a fiberglass unicorn for his sweetie, when he forgets which way to go and makes a wrong a turn. Before he even realizes it BAM, he's in the ghetto.
     As soon as he notices he decides to turn around and back to Pearl Street. However he notices a group of poorly dressed (not it suits) individuals walking behind him. He remembers when back to when he was a wee lad when his father sat him down for "the talk". The ghetto talk. His father told him "Sooner or later son, you're gonna end up in a ghetto. Now first off don’t panic! People who live in ghettos can smell fear like us non-ghetto people can smell exotic cheeses. Now the most important thing is..." He didn't remember the rest of the stuff he said. His dad was boring. I remember him telling us some story about something and I was so not interested. Anyway he decided it was best to not go that way. He figured he would just keep walking and sooner or later he'd be out of the ghetto. However he just kept going deeper and deeper into it until it seemed like it had no end. And then he felt someone tap him from behind. He turned around slowly and saw a group of seven or eight guys, each brandishing a weapon. Some had knives, some had chains, some had make shift crossbows, and then one of them said "Yo, my man what you doing here, you lost or something?"
He replied "uhh... yes actually I believe I am lost."
"Well, let me tell you the fastest way outta here... it's in a box."
"A box?"
"That's right a boxcar. The railway runs right over there."
"Oh, thank you very much."
"No, problem"
     He saw the train pulling out and ran as fast as he could to catch it. However since he was running so fast, the fiberglass unicorn fell out of his coat pocket and fell onto the ground breaking into a million pieces. As he stood there and stared at the shattered pieces, he wept. He thought how we, like that unicorn, are fragile and can shatter at any moment, leaving nothing more than countless useless shards of ourselves that are impossible to put back together. He stood there ruminating the meaning and futility of life and noticed that the unicorn had left a number of fiberglass splinters in his hand. His sweetie would never get her unicorn and he was left with the splinters of lost love embedded deep within his palms. Then those guys from before beat him up and took all his money.

And do you know who that man in that story was?... His name's Bill. He's this guy I know.

     This story presents a vital and important issue. There is an urgent problem that needs our attentions. The number of crossbow related injuries in the ghetto has been rising astronomically. We need to help put a stop to crossbow related violence. Children are able to get their hands on crossbows at younger and younger ages, usually making their own. All anyone needs to fashion a crude crossbow is a sharp stick, some string, a spring loaded chamber, a paper clip, and just a basic understanding of medieval weaponry. Children as young as six are making crossbows and using them to mug people at crossbow point. They often wear suits to try to trick their unsuspecting victims. Please, if you are in the ghetto and see any six year old children wearing suits and brandishing crossbows, you should exercise extreme caution. My best advice would be to try to get as far away from them as possible, especially if you have any glass unicorns on you.