Alright people. They’re are a few parts before this particular essay here. There’s a Vol I, Vol II, Vol III and a Vol IV. This should be the final chapter in this arc of my life story. Unless I get all wordy, because I tend to go on, like Abby Scott.

Hey, you know whats not cool? MRI’s. They’re definitely NOT cool. If we were to, lets say,construct a list of things that are cool. MRI’s? Definitely, positively, absolutely, NOT ON THE LIST. They’re fairly uncomfortable. Wait, ya know what? I take it back. For all I know MRI’s are like craftmatic adjustable beds now a days. But when I was shot back in ‘92 it wasn’t exactly fun.

I had to get an MRI because they needed to know where exactly was the foriegn object that was currently causing me such great pain. They knew it was in my head, and they knew it was probably to the right of my head, but past that, it was a mystery to everyone. They knew it hadn’t exited my head because, well, there was no exit wound(thats a technical term for when bullets dont leave your body. I know, im enlightening everyone like a mutha).

When they got the cool pics of my pain wracked head back they saw the wrather large object in my head. I’m sorry, the large object that was embedded in my SKULL. It was a b.b. a wrather LARGE b.b. It seems that It ripped through my head with the force of .22 caliber pistol.

‘Awww, man, a .22 aint nothin‘.’

This is a comment that has actually been said to me before. I find this amusing because it was uttered from somone who had never ever been hurt in any way EVER, minus being told he couldn’t have the cocoa puffs he was in fact so coo coo for(dude loved his cereal). The doctor said that if it had hit me about a centimeter to the right I would have been dead.

DEAD. A .22 may be nothin’ but it still has the ability to kill you idiot.

Ahem. I digress.

I was brought to surgery where they used some sort of ultra poweful magnet to pull the b.b. out. I still had an eye, and they didnt want to rip it out to get to the b.b. They figured I’d be able to see out of it again some day.

And that was that.

The next couple of days I recieved a lot of visitors. Cards and people crying. My Grandfather came by one day while my best friend, a guy named Fahnon, was there. Fahnon had dredlocks down to his lower back. Grandpa was a 75 year old preacher with pretty bad eyesight. This was comedy in the making. After making sure I was okay and that things was being taken care of Grandpa turns to the group of people surrounding my bed and asks,

‘So who is the young lady?’

‘Grandpa, he’s a boy.’ I whispered.

‘I understand that, but whats her name?’

‘Grandpa, he’s a boy.’

‘Daddy, he’s a boy, its a boy.’ My mother chimed in.

‘Yes, thats all fine and good but I just want to know the young ladies NAME.’

And as if we were mimicking a greek tragedy, the entire room turned into a chorus and yelled ‘HE’s A BOY!’

Fahnon stood there, mortified.

Grandpa put his head down and mumbled ‘I just wanted to know her name.’

Grandma couldn’t take it anymore and yelled ‘Elder White. That is a Boy, they have been yelling he’s a boy. He is NOT a young girl. HE’S A BOY!‘

‘Well why didn’t you just say that?’

That particular story lives in legend amongst my friends today.

The incident was in the Newspaper, and on the evening news. Not the Grandpa incident, the shooting incident. I didn’t gain any celebrity because they never mentioned my name. I was a minor and the victim so it was against the rules to say my name. Assholio McRuinedmylife was mentioned just fine. He was kicked out of school and awaiting trial.

This was gonna be messy.

I was released from the hospital with an eye patch. I they wanted to find out what was going to happen with the eye. My church decided that I was going to see again. There was a lot of prayers and a lot of Haleluyah’s around me. I was annointed in holy oil and spinned around and even prayed at over the phone. They were trying to appeal to God so that I might see again.

It wasn’t working.

A few weeks later my mother was told by my doctor that we had a choice. Ya see theres some weird thing called ‘Sympathetic Ophthalmia’ where the severly traumatized eye starts to draw the sight of the good eye, causing possible blindness. We had a choice. We either risk the lost of both eyes, or I give up on this one and have it removed.

My told me it was up to me.

So what do you do? Possible blindness or absolute loss of one eye. I didn’t take long in my decsion. I had looked at my damaged eye for a few weeks at this point and it was horrible looking. I had some light perception in it but that was about it. It was about to be gone. I couldn’t imagine it healing and the doctors didnt have that much faith in it either. So I actually gave the word to remove the eye.

I had been out of school this entire time. I was given a tutor and had lessons everyday. I thought that to be tremendously unfair. I just lost an eye, I shouldn’t be forced to learn. Now thats just cruel. Once I healed i was able to get a Glass eye. I know it was a very weird process at one point, but i think its gotten way weirder. They litterally poured goo in my eye socket and let it harden and then took it out.

Goo.

In my fricken EYE socket.

The results were great though. Fact is when I stand straight and look at things most times you dont notice something is wrong. And when you do notice it just seems like I have a lazy eye. For a long time I almost never told anyone that I had a lazy eye because I didn’t like the fact that I would be so vulnerable. Especially in my old neighborhood where the thugs liked to kick me around like a soccer ball. All they needed was that little peice of information and it would be over.

‘Punch that nigga in the left eye. He’ll never identify us then!’

Yeah. so that became my little secret.

Once I became ready for primtime again I had the lovely choice of picking a school. I had been accepted to Brooklyn Tech before I ended up going to the ‘Highschool of where i got shot at’. But the Board of ed wouldn’t le me go there now. I could go anywhere…just not there. So I did something that dramatically impacted my life forever.

I chose a random school that was on a poster in the office of the board of ed.

I didn’t think very hard about it. I didn’t research. I just picked what I saw. It happened to be John Jay High School. It happen to be a place of crime and thuggery. But nooooo one seem to say anything to me until I got there.

And thats when A whole other story started to unfold.

fin.

Comments

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 Comment so far

1. Abby Scott on February 16, 2006 10:00 pm

   Holy smoke!

   Thanks for the shout out!

   Consider yourself linked.