Why should we have children?

The Jacksonville Sheriffs Office had four marked vehicles patrolling the gas station where
Jordan Davis was killed in the aftermath of a highly publicized case where the unarmed 17-year-old
was killed after an November 2012 argument with Satellite Beach resident Michael Dunn. (Photo by Will Brown)

By Will Brown

Every month my wife and I share a laugh and a high five when we know parenthood is once again postponed.  

We are aware raising a child, especially a black child, will be a rewarding challenge. Recent events in our native Florida have highlighted how difficult our task will be.

Whenever our child arrives he or she will enter a world where it will be perceived by some as a second-class citizen. Our daughters will be objectified. Our sons will be vilified. Meanwhile, we will be petrified at the possibilities of what may happen when they are not in our sight.

Travon Martin and Jordan Davis were perceived as threats, despite the fact neither of them weighed 160 pounds when they were killed. Genetics say it will highly improbable our child will be that slight when they are 17 years old.

If being mouthy and picking a fight can get Davis, Martin and too many others murdered, one can see why we would be concerned to bring a child into this world that will be tall, dark and opinionated.

That cold truth was splashed across our faces at a family dinner Saturday night when six of us went to a restaurant in a Jacksonville suburb.

Behind us was a family of five. To our left was a family of four. The first family had a husband, wife, two young sons and a daughter. The second featured a husband, wife and two young sons. All four boys appeared to be under 10 years old.

As we discussed Michael Dunn’s conviction on attempted murder and shooting into an occupied vehicle — but not of killing Davis — we realized the two boys at the table behind us will be perceived far differently than the two boys at the second table five years from now in part because they are black.

The perception of young black men was all the more apparent Sunday afternoon when I visited the gas station at the corner of Southside Boulevard and Baymeadows Road.

As I walked inside a uniformed officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office stood 50 feet away profiling me. The dread, anger and impulsivity that washed over me during the 15 seconds the officer was assessing whether I was a threat were all too familiar.

I have endured similar looks from law enforcement, store owners, potential employers and others during my lifetime to know when I’m being profiled. Having been previously profiled, I knew it was prudent to take off my sunglasses, tilt my hat higher so more of my face could be seen and wait patiently with my arms in plain sight Sunday afternoon while I waited on a friend to return from the bathroom.

Two other young black men walked into the gas station while I was inside. Both were sized up by officers as well in the time they walked from their cars.

Four police cruisers and at least that many uniformed officers were at that gas station Sunday because that was where Davis was killed. 

It’s not as though the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office did not have anything to do.

Since Saturday’s verdict eight people — yes, eight — have been shot in two separate nightclub incidents in Jacksonville. The identities of the victims, or the suspects, have not been released. Regardless, it’s a tragedy.

What is also sad is the realization that no matter how smart, gregarious and courteous our child may be there is a significantly higher chance he or she will be the victim of homicide than any other racial or ethnic subset in America.

The FBI reported there were 12,765 homicides in this country in 2012 with 6,454 or 50.5 percent, of those deaths being blacks.

If such statistics do not sound intimidating that is because it was not your son, daughter, mother, father, spouse or friend who was eulogized.

The FBI statistics indicate that strangers are much less likely to commit homicide than one’s family, friends and acquaintances. However, when strangers, like Dunn and George Zimmerman are allowed to accost, shoot and not face consequences for their quick triggers and tempers it is a reminder of why some still subscribe to Richard Pryor’s observation about American prisons: “you go down there looking for justice, that's what you find: just us.”

When Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States, publically admitted last summer that he spoke with his teenage son about how to act when interacting with the police and strangers, it was enough of a jolt to make me question whether it is worth it to have children.

At the time Holder stated this is a sad reality in a nation that is changing for the better in so many ways. So long as that is a reality, I am just as fearful for my child as America is of my child.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Who needs Disney when “The Princess and the Frog” are in your house?

By Will Brown

She frantically opens the door to tell me there is a situation that needs solving. It was 2:50 in the morning and the last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed.

There was a frog in the toilet.

“At first I thought it was a turd,” my wife said when I asked her about it later. “Then I looked at it again and it was a frog. I closed the lid and opened it again and it was still there. Then I got you.”

On warm Florida night, the reptile found its way up the pipes and into the toilet. Hours later, I joked she would have died on the spot if the slimy sucker said “I am Prince Naveen!”

Since it was nearly 3 a.m., a fact I knew because I incredulously looked at the cable box to figure out what time I was being asked to investigate something I assumed could wait until the morning, I tried the flush the little fella out.

Two flushes later, the fist-sized frog was still there. Just as comfortable as he was before she opened the toilet seat and saw him sitting on her throne.

Since it was nearly 3 a.m., and our slippery friend wasn’t going anywhere, I retreated back to my bed and she reverted back to working on her stationery business. We both hoped the visitor would go back to wherever it was he came, so I didn’t have to forcibly remove him and so she could use the bathroom without the fear of warts.

That didn’t happen. The frog was still there. Since it was, I knew what my husbandly duties entailed: removing the usurper to the throne.

As I thought of how I would get rid of the frog, I enjoyed mocking my wife. First it was hinting that the raggedy reptile had escaped into the shoebox I commandeered to capture him. When that was bothering her too much, I reverted to lines from the Disney movie “The Princess and the Frog.”

Having a good-for-nothin frog as the antagonist as well as a FAMU graduate who worked extremely hard as the protagonist in this reptile removal meant the comparisons were far too easy.

It took about 10 minutes, and one froggy attempt at freedom, for the visitor to be captured in a shoebox. The princess, who was kind enough to part with the Nine West shoebox that held the big brown visitor, was more than happy when I took him to the other side. …

I walked out the house, shoebox in hand, freed the frog in the middle of the street, far enough away from the house so the princess could breathe easier again.

As soon as the situation was handled, she joked that she has already kissed her frog: me.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Who else puts the “Happy” in Happy Birthday?

Fittingly, June 27 is typically the midway point between the beginning of summer and the Independence Day holiday. For someone who loves both almost as much as liberal causes, it’s fitting that was the day my wife Whitney popped out and said “Hello, world!”

Thanks to Facebook remembering birthdays is not necessary. We receive a reminder on our home page and proceed from there. Some people make birthdays a big deal, whereas others like to celebrate another year without much fanfare.

Despite Helen Keller, director J.J. Abrams, designer Vera Wang, legendary soccer player Raul, a former girlfriend and the famous for no reason Khloe Kardashian having birthdays on June 27, it’s a day that is dominated by one person — Whitney. She was aware of her sisterhood with Keller and Kardashian. A Google search revealed the rest.

My wife is one of those people who believe birthdays are a big deal.  

They are days where birthday cake, confetti, balloons and random silly things should be done to commemorate another year. Birthdays are times when family and friends battle to be the first one to blow up her phone at midnight in an attempt to be the first to share their well-wishes. To her, it’s a reminder her favorite holiday is in a week and summer has arrived.

To know Whitney is to love her, especially on her birthday.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

How can a cucumber tell time?

For years wife and I have maintained our similarities, but with individual wrinkles. Her juicing infatuation in the mornings is the newest example. A combination of kale, carrot, apple, strawberry and cucumber go in the juicer for her breakfast. Stray strawberries and bananas go into the blender for my breakfast smoothie.

A recent trip to the local farmer’s market harkened back to a summer where a cucumber was the length between adulthood and adolescence.

It was 2002 and I was a packaging engineer at a grocery store. Scrawny and lacking self-awareness it was a period where the summer seemed endless.

On that steamy Florida evening the boy whistled a Beatles song. From Me To You was in his mind because it was on a relatively new compilation release. Upon hearing the lyrics, the cucumber-carrying colleague at the grocery store inquired about the lyrics.

“If there’s anything that you want,
If there’s anything I can do,
Just call on me and I’ll send it along…” 

The lyrics were just the opening she needed. Instantly, she quipped there was something she needed and I could provide it. The cucumber the coitus-seeking-cashier was twirling in her hands answered the question before her bespectacled brown eyes.

The boy’s joke about being able to answer the question and her desire received a woman’s response. A raised eyebrow and a lustful look were enough to unnerve the lanky wiseass.

She was 10 years older. A combination of being older, with money and interested in my comings and goings made her seem exotic to someone who had no responsibilities other than saving spending money for college. 

She drove a brown Ford. It was probably a Taurus, but his memory evades him. The open ended invitation was too much for his synapses to compute while coolly strolling to his car. Sensing his insecurity, she said the cucumber would suffice.

At the time the cashier was 27. It was an age that seemed beyond imaginable and well into the future. Four weeks before my wife’s 27th birthday, the case of the curious cucumber arose again.

Wife’s eyes didn’t bulge at the sight of the massive cucumber at the market. To her, it was going to make a lot of juice — the type that was far from the tongue of a teenager a decade ago. Throughout the years the cucumber remained the same, its application, by two different women wasn’t the same. In short, it was the difference between adolescent and adult.

Are you someone who “Cannot Understand Normal Thinking?”

We find out who our truest friends are when we are caught with our pants down in a compromising position. That may not be an adage, at least not yet, but it sure sounded nice.

By all accounts Tampa socialite Jill Kelley has kept her pants on since her role emerged in the resignation of David Petraeus earlier this month.

Petraues is the West Point graduate, former leader of American forces in Afghanistan, and CIA director who resigned because he was caught opening up to his biographer. Based on his previously glowing media coverage one would think he is our generation’s version of Washington, Grant, Eisenhower, Westmoreland, and Schwarzkopf rolled up into one brassy uniform — but I digress.

Kelley was originally a minor player in this story. But the more information that pops up, like Petraeus in missionary, the more people are speaking on the record to the media about the authenticity of the 37-year-old wife of a Tampa cancer surgeon.

While the story arouses one’s curiosity about many things, it should lead us to consider how frivolously we confer status on someone or something.

Money cannot buy one class. Just as a high-profile position does not afford integrity, possessing a few degrees does not make one intelligent and cooking Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t make one a chef, money purchases many things, but not everything.

Kelley probably learned that the hard way this month as countless people have essentially called her a poser in the Tampa Bay Times and other publications because she wanted to enter South Tampa’s high society.

In high school I used yearn “to be popular.” Looking back, it was such a silly thing to strive for. Then, and now, I didn’t have the most money, world-class looks, the fanciest car, or a personality that is particularly flashy.

I would like to think I am funny. However, that may be stretching the truth, and may turn me into one of the “C.U.N.T.’s” that believe all that is superficial is all that matters.

In truth, I am a sports writer in a sleepy South Texas town that prefers to be told selective truths as opposed to the slightly snarky honest prose that has become a trademark of my writing. There is more to me than the byline people see in the newspaper most mornings.

There is more to most of us than what we post on social media, cram into a 160-character text message, or slip into a phone conversation.  The Times story illustrates the Kelley’s didn’t have too many true friends in snooty South Tampa.

While it’s easy to saturate ourselves in the silly, at the end of the day little of it matters. People preen and pretend to care for others all the time. They are the people who cannot stand normal thinking, because everything is about them.

Those who are really in it for the long haul are usually the people who not only — figuratively— know when you pants were down, but tell you where to buy a new pair because your current pair are stained.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

What's the difference between Eve and Steve?

I must have been in elementary school the first time I heard the word faggot.

There wasn’t a seminal moment where a light came on or anything like that. But to my curious mind it was such an interesting word. When my mom refused to spell it for me, I broke out the dictionary to find out it meant a bundle of twigs or sticks.

For the better part of the last two decades if someone says the word faggot, I instantly think of a bundle of sticks.

Maybe that makes me odd, but I thought about my original interaction with the word, which in American English, has been derisively used to label homosexuals Wednesday afternoon. Six months before he hopes to be reelected Barack Obama indicated his support for same-sex marriage in an interview with ABC News.

Some people found Obama’s support of the issue truly groundbreaking. A part of me instantly considered it cowardly, or a ploy to win voters this fall.

It is possible one’s position on an issue evolves over time. Then again, it’s more likely that the president had a slew of fund raisers planned in the next six weeks where important members of the LGBT community will be courted for their dollars, influence and votes.

History always smiles on those who favor justice and equality, even if the timing is curious. Or as Obama once said:  “The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an "awesome God" in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States.”

Whatever may have been Obama’s motivation Wednesday, the man deserves credit for taking a stand on a divisive issue. This is the same man who introduced himself to us by reminding America that “e pluribus unum” means “out of many, one.”

In high school I used to say “I don’t hate gay people, I hate annoying gay people.” The point then, as it is now, is that I could care less what someone does in their bedroom.

If you are going to be a jerk I don’t care who you sleep with, I don’t want to be around you. Of course, it would be hypocritical to write about tolerance, and my disdain for annoying gay people, yet not admit to laughing at a well-time gay joke with just as much zest as I would a laugh about anything else that straddled the fence of polite speech. But, the point remains the same.

In 2001 I was a pudgy junior in high school who likely would have been turned down for a date by a blow-up doll. Girls were in no rush to hang out with me. For crying out loud I was six weeks away from my 17^th birthday when I kissed someone for the first time.

A boy in my English class once said I looked like Steve Urkel. When I quipped I could wear a pink button-down — as I was that day — without people questioning my sexuality he got offended. People said I was mean for picking on him. However, I reminded everyone that I wouldn’t have said a word if her friend hadn’t tried to be funny in the first place.

It’s the same with public displays of affection. If two men, or two women, are walking somewhere holding hands or kissing, I might look for a count longer just to ensure my eyes are not playing tricks on me. But after that, I get just as disgusted as I would were a man and woman groping each other for the entire world to see.

A half-decade after the Urkel incident a college friend of mine tried to tell me a “friend” of hers was dating a woman. Quickly, I interjected that I figured that “friend” was her. Before she could even finish her sentence asking my thoughts on her sexual situation, I reminded her that I didn’t care who she slept with since she wasn’t sleeping with me.

Wednesday’s announcement from Obama doesn’t change any laws. The bigger news on the gay marriage front arguably came Tuesday night in North Carolina. Regardless of where one resides on this steamy issue, we should all agree that discrimination or the intentional mistreatment of anyone has no place in society.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb