What’s a thug?

Jordan Davis was a 17-year-old who did what a lot of kids his age do. Listen to loud music and goof off with his friends at a gas station. Someone didn’t like the music Davis and his friends were playing at a Jacksonville gas station last November. Words were exchanged. A gun was fired. Davis wound up dead. 

While awaiting trail, the man accused of killing Davis, Michael Dunn, reached out to one local television station. Being the rabble-rousers they are, the station led a newscast with the writings of a man who turned Black Friday into a day the Davis family will forever remember for all the wrong reasons.

“This case has never been about loud music,” was just one quote in Dunn’s writing to the television station. “This case is about a local thug threatening to kill me because I dared to ask him to turn the music down.”

Yes, the man who stands accused of murder called the victim a thug.

There were other quotes, including the accused’s thoughts about the District Attorney in the case, how he has been around firearms most of his life and etcetera. But, what stood out was the fact Dunn went to the Zimmerman-tried-jury-approved tactic of labeling the victim, in this case Davis, a thug on multiple occasions.

In some ways, the Davis case is more of a tragedy than what happened to Trayvon Martin last year. The latter got in a fight when he was approached by a stranger. The former was in a car hanging out with his friends, and never left his vehicle, yet still wound up just as dead as Martin.

To add insult to insinuation, one television station stumbled over Dunn’s racially insensitive tripwire and reported Dunn’s bile about Davis at the top of its newscast.

There is a part of me that wonders whether local media would have jumped on the writings like Dunn’s had the accused been a minority. But, I’m reminded that 90 percent of newsroom supervisors in this country are white. Rather than using news judgment, one Jacksonville television station allowed Dunn to cast judgment, and its viewers were none the wiser for it.

When I told a close friend what the accused was allowed to say without comment from the victim’s family, associates or State Attorney reminded me the incident was another case of “white journalism.” His point was that had a minority been in a position to make a decision, there is a strong likelihood that someone points out the folly of allowing a man accused of first-degree murder the privilege of calling the 17-year-old he’s accused of killing a thug.

To me, it doesn’t matter what the victim looks like in this case, it matters that the person accused of murder has defecated on the memory of the deceased.

The dictionary defines a thug as “a cruel or vicious ruffian, robber, or murderer.” Tupac’s definition explicitly states thugs play the cards they were given… pack a nine until it’s time to go to prison. Either way, which 

person reminds you more of a thug, Davis or Dunn?

Just because the decision-makers are not minorities does not mean a sound decision about the letters could have been reached.

The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville’s newspaper of record, also published an article about the letters. Not surprisingly, the newspaper’s version features more context and notes that the accused believes he has been railroaded, the saw a weapon in the victim’s car the night of the shooting and that the jail is filled with thugs.

“I’ve never been exposed to thugs like they have here,” Dunn wrote in one letter, which was obtained by the Times-Union in a public records request. “The jail is chock full of blacks and they all appear to be thugs, along the line of 90 percent of the inmates.”

Clearly, Dunn has proven he’s a man who won’t let his version of the facts interfere with a good story, because only 52 percent of the people who were admitted into the Duval County jail when the most recent statistics were available were black.

Then again, something has to fill the airwaves. And there are no laws preventing one gullible news outlet from spending that time subtly soiling the legacy of a young man who received a death sentence for listening to the wrong music at the wrong time at the wrong volume.

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.

Is it wrong to be nostalgic on occasion?

The first time I heard the song I was staying up late for no particular reason.

It was well past 1 a.m. and I was beginning to nod off as the television continued to play music videos that appeared to have little point. I told myself I would endure one more song before calling it a night.

Then I heard the song that made so much sense. John Mayer’s “No Such Thing” was a song that made me eagerly anticipate my 10 year high school reunion even though I was still months away from graduating high school.

In a perfect world, I would have returned to Rockledge High School with a beautiful girl. I would possess a decent job, one that took me to a seemingly exotic place beyond the borders of Brevard County, Florida as well as a red car that would put people on notice that in the decade since graduation I was more than the dork I appeared to be in high school.

Admittedly, the song motivated me, all the while stroking my ego.

(As fate, and the good Lord, would have it, I am marrying a beautiful girl in December, live in South Texas and drive a red car that suits my lifestyle as a sportswriter perfectly.)

The first five lines and the chorus always spoke to me. Surely the pricked the consciousness of others, otherwise, Mayer, the former gas station attendant, wouldn’t have been given a record deal.

"Welcome to the real world", she said to me
Condescendingly
Take a seat
Take your life
Plot it out in black and white

That’s what I do. My life is literally written in black and white. Every day it begins on computer screens, before moving to sheets of paper that few my age bother to read.

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the
Top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

When the single was released in February 2002, I was the last person off the bench for the Rockledge High soccer team.

On those cool nights across Central Florida I would usually sit there and watch my friends win, while carrying on a conversation with a friend who was a student manager. We talked about a host of things, some of which were what we were going to do when we left Rockledge for college that fall.

I always got the sense from those conversations on the bench that we would not let the perceptions of others, define us, shape who we would become. To us high school was a journey with a lesson at every corner if we stopped to pay attention.

Of course our conversations were rarely that deep on the sidelines. I think she was grabbing water and keeping stats, while I was hoping we would blowout another hapless opponent so I could play.

They read all the books but they can't find the answers
And all of our parents
They're getting older
I wonder if they've wished for anything better
While in their memories
Tiny tragedies

Some classmates became larger tragedies than others. One sadly committed suicide. A few others wound up in jail. And, it’s not a stretch to say there are more that are 180 degrees away from the dreams they had as idealistic seniors in a quaint Central Florida town.

On the other hand, there are so many that have become spouses, parents, doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, soldiers, models and overall successes. As we all approach 30, some of us faster than others, Mayer’s final stanza applies to all of us.

I just can't wait til my 10 year reunion
I'm gonna bust down the double doors
And when I stand on these tables before you
You will know what all this time was for

 Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb