Top Ten Reasons Why Living in the Ghetto Sucks

This is my tribute to living in the ghetto. I’ve lived in it since I was a kid, so I know first hand why it sucks. Basically it comes down to this: don’t plan on having anything nice.

1. Gas pumps are always prepay
   It wasn’t until I was driving for a while in high school, on the other side of town specifically, that I found out gas stations don’t always have their pumps set to prepay. People riding with me when I filled up in my neighborhood were surprised that I always had to go inside and pay for my gas first, especially since most of the ghetto gas stations didn’t start taking credit cards at the pump until much later than “everyone else”.
2. The bathrooms at the neighborhood drug store are always locked
   It really fucking pisses me off that if I’m in the drug store near my house I have to page a god damn manager to unlock the door to the bathroom if I need to take a leak. I’m sure it has something to do with the time I went in there and found a pair of XXXL tighty whities with doody all over them laying beside the toilet, but that’s beside the point. Why the fuck can’t druggies shoot up outside! Why do they always have to ruin it for us regular folk that just want to urinate while we’re waiting for our prescription to be filled?
3. Random people will knock on your door at any hour of the day and have a story about why they need money
   [photopress:crackhead.jpg,thumb,alignleft]This is a weekly and monthly occurance at our household, and it has been since I was a kid. There’s always some jackass with a sob story about how “their car broke down and their wife is in the hospital and they’re from out of town and don’t know nobody and they just need a couple of dollars for gas” or “I’m out of diapers for my baby and my sister’s out of town and I need to get some right quick cause I don’t want no mess all over if you knows what I mean”. Come the fuck on! I’ve been hearing that shit since I was 8 years old! You guys only fooled me once in 28 years too! That was the time the guy who said he was from out of town and had a pregnant wife in the hospital started crying on my ass. I couldn’t take it! I gave the dude the $3 I had just to get rid of him. Also, why is it that every time we offer to actually help you with your perported problem you just get mad and frustrated? “No gas?” OK, I’ve got a couple of gallons in the basement, let’s head to your car and fill it up! What, you’ll only take money? Get the fuck outta here! “Baby needs diapers?” OK, sweetie, I know how you feel, just so happens we have a couple of bags of Pampers left over from when our cousin visited with her baby. Money only, you say? Suck a dick crackhead, and get off my front porch!
4. Random people will stop you on the street at any hour of the day and have a story about why they need money
   See above, except imagine it all taking place on the street. Your best bet is to always avoid eye contact from a potential leech. You can tell when they’re sizing you up too, because they head right at you instead of continuing to walk the direction they were before they saw you. If you must be out and about, try and make yourself smell and look worse than a crackhead. That usually works.
5. Everything outside has to be bolted down
   [photopress:bolteddown.jpg,thumb,alignleft]If you don’t have it bolted down to concrete or a railroad tie, then it ain’t gonna be around for long. From the time I was 6 years old to the present, here’s a non-exhaustive list of shit my family has had stolen or vandalized: 20+ bicycles, 20 basketballs, 10 soccer balls, bunch o’ lawn furniture, 2 tool bins out the back of pickups, 6 car stereos, 3 home stereos, 3 sets of car speakers, 1 car stereo amp, my whole comic book collection (about 300+ comic books), a whole baseball card collection, 2 televisions, 2 VCRs, 6 broken car windows, 3 broken house windows, 4 house eggings, house paint and sharp tools thrown into my koi pond, 5 basketball goals ripped down, 2 doors kicked in, 100+ CDs, etc. etc. etc. I think you get the fucking picture. Even the tool shed my dad built in his backyard has to have bars on the windows and a big ass Master Lock on the door.
6. You have to have a car with power locks, power windows and an alarm
   [photopress:carlock.jpg,thumb,alignleft]If you want anything to stay in your vehicle, it better have power everything and an alarm, at the very least. Ideally, you would install a 40,000 volt crime-deterrant system. I’ve almost forgotten how many times I had the stereo stolen out of my old Dodge Neon. They were usually pretty damn sneaky, somehow jimmying the locks or bending the windows out to get the thing unlocked. Other times they just smashed one of the windows in, even if they had already stolen the stereo out of it 2 weeks before. Some of you may say, “why did you keep putting a stereo in it then?” Because I wanted to listen to fucking music! I’m not the one with the problem, see. I don’t steal a deck out of someone else’s car who paid $200+ for it just so I can hock it for $30 at a pawn shop for crack money.
7. You have to be good at either:
   (a) defending yourself,
   (b) running really fast, or
   (c) handling a firearm
   if you plan on walking anywhere after dark
   I wasn’t very good at any of those until I was basically an adult, and even then only (a) and (c). My younger brother was very good at (b) and pretty good at (a) so he could handle himself pretty well in the hood. I, on the other hand, didn’t really get to be a burly guy until I was 17 or so. So I got my ass kicked a couple times as a pre-teen, and even got jumped by 4 dudes right outside my house when I was 14. Nowadays, I’m pretty good at projecting the “don’t even come the fuck near me look”, so worrying about myself isn’t nearly as much of an issue as it used to be. But still, I can’t feel comfortable with my mom walking around her neighborhood at night (and she has a tendency to), and I’ll probably never let my girlfriend walk around outside in my neighborhood after dark.
8. Your pets are prime targets for hoodrats driving their Impalas and Monte Carlos down your street at 60 mph
   [photopress:montecarlo.jpg,thumb,alignleft]I have to say that the rest of my family and I have been VERY lucky not to have any of our cats or dogs hit by a car, knock on wood. Not that we haven’t had a pet die tragically, we just thankfully never had to see one get hit in the street. But that doesn’t mean that way too many people haven’t experienced exactly that in my neighborhood. I hate thinking about how many times I’ve seen cars speed up to try and hit a cat or dog that’s crossing the street. I’ve also had the pleasure of seeing a few of these connect, and of course the driver never applied his brakes or looked in the rearview. If I was the kind of guy to carry a gun on me at all times, I’m sure I would already have been arrested for shooting at motherfuckers like that. That type of behavior is just indicative of how they feel about life in general. They just don’t give a fuck, and other people’s misery makes them laugh.
9. It gets very easy for you to tell the difference between gun shots and fireworks
   I can remember the first time I had a girlfriend over at my parents house in high school and we were sitting on the front porch enjoying the summer evening. Three shots go off from about a block away and she gets freaked the fuck out. I have to decide real quick if I should tell her that this shit is normal, and not to worry about it unless you’re close enough to hear some motherfuckers arguing when shots go off, OR lie and try to tell her its just kids playing with firecrackers. Well, I decided for myself because she saw the look on my face and knew it couldn’t be fireworks. So much for not being naive. It was quite a while before she came back over to the house again. What’s really cool though is being able to tell the difference between fireworks, semi-automatic fire, and automatic fire on the Forth of July. It gets a little more disturbing every year how many guns are fired into the air when the fireworks show begins.
10. You breathe a sigh of relief every time:
    (a) You wake up and you’re car hasn’t been broken into,
    (b) You come home and you’re house hasn’t been broken into,
    (c) You look outside and see that you’re backyard hasn’t been vandalized, or
    (d) You let you’re dog in and it hasn’t been poisoned with anti-freeze
    [photopress:relief.jpg,thumb,alignleft]It’s a sad state of affairs when you’re simply relieved that none of your shit has been fucked with while you were away or sleeping. I’m tired of being thankful that no one decided they needed to look over the fence and pour bleach into my koi pond. I’m just exhausted from going out to my vehicle everyday and praising god that the windows are intact and the tires aren’t slashed. I’m pissed that I should be happy that no mini-gangbangers decided to throw eggs at the front door this Halloween. I shouldn’t really have to worry about any of that shit except in passing. A few preventative measures and some common sense are all I should really need living in any neighborhood.

I was actually planning on making this list mostly humorous, but it got WAY to difficult on a few of these. Some of those just aren’t funny, but hopefully some of you can see the irony and humor in most of them anyway. I’m thinking that those of you who read the list will have one of three reactions:

• Shake your head and wonder where something like this could go on in the US,
• Nod your head with almost every reason and come up with similar examples in your own head, or
• Call me a pussy and tell me to suck it the fuck up because I have no idea what it’s like to live in a real ghetto.