“COME ON BITCH! JUMP, Please jump!” I though to
myself as 200+lbs of muscle came burrowing towards me. It’s a partly cloudy summer early
afternoon, as I walk home from a friend’s house after hours of playing video
games, I began feeling a bit adventurous and wanted to try a new route home. Unfortunately for me, I once bullied
classmates and did horrible things to them because of the pain within my life. The chain of events that happened on
this particular day was like a fictional experience fabricated within the mind
of a very troubled boy. I’m walking
in a Philadelphia residential neighborhood with homes that have 15 step porches
that are high above ground level. A
boy with a keen memory played with his dog about 20 yards away from me. In the
distance I heard his voice call, “Yo, ya name Shane Right?” At that time I did
not know the law of cause and effect, at that point in my life I was the cause
of a lot of heartache because of my actions. But, I began to move away from trivial reactions of frustrations
and began to think of the ramifications of my actions. But, my karma was slowly catching up to
me, within seconds of my reply the boy’s dog, like Coju in the 1983 Stephen King thriller, began to run towards me at full speed. I can only imagine what was going on in the head of the kid
who “sicced” his dog on me. An act of revenge, with an assumption that I would
react in fear! “COME ON BITCH! JUMP, Please jump!” I welcomed the warm embrace
of the dog as I prepared myself for the collision. The dog was now close enough
for me to see the spit beginning to foam at the corner of its mouth. This dog
who sole purpose for that moment was to fulfill its master request, a dog who
was trained to protect those it considered being its own. She leapt towards me going at least 20 miles
per hour. At that moment my glands were pumping adrenaline at capacity,
everything started to slow down and I could see every movement that the dogs
made, every step, every breath, every blink of its eye clearly like the moment
in movies when a character is dying and living doesn’t seem relevant. My only
chance is-NOW-! In that moment I stepped forward and with precision I hug the
neck of the dog and use all of my strength to squeeze the life from her.
Franticly, the dog’s limbs did everything they could to free from my hold. But
with every passing second I could feel the dog become more desperate for air, I
could feel she was in pain. It became a fight for life, which I had to win. I
could not allow this dog’s pain to make me feel sympathy for her, “its me or
her,” was the only thought going through my mind. With every scratch my hold
became tight and tight until “CRACK”- the sound that came from the neck of the
dog and its movements that were no more. I held on for just a while longer to make sure that the dog’s
life has left its body. To my surprise all I could feel was a since of relief,
masculinity and dominance that felt very primal. I looked towards the boy on
the porch, in my mind all I could say is, “You done this! Your actions lead to
death of this animal.” The look on his face, I will never forget. It was of the
look of a child who is told that his parents are being divorced. Confusion
quickly turned into frustration, the boy ran into his house as I begin my
journey back home. The next thing I heard was the sound of rusty hinges of a
screen door being hastily opened. I look back and see five grown men in the same manner as the
dog with the same vicious look within their eyes barreling towards me. Only
this time I knew I didn’t have a chance to fight my way out of this one. I ran,
I ran as fast as I could but that did not seem good enough; I saw one of them
already half way up the street before I had time to take a breath. The streets
were very small with frequent intersections where someone could easily be lost.
I turned a corner and then another, I then rolled myself under a car and all I
could do was play the waiting game. Just like the sound of a marching army I could feel every step
made by these men as they ran right past the car I was hiding under. I waited
and waited and waited; I wait for what felt like an hour. Until finally, the
coast was clear. Once I got home, I looked at the aftermath of the bout
with the dog; scratches all over my body, blood running down my arms, and a bite
on my nose. Scratched by a lone tooth of the dog. One scratch that still connects me to my past, a reminder of
a time that once was.
My encounter with the dog was not the first time I had thought about life and death. When I was seven years old, a song changed my life- it changed the way I saw the world. The theme was of death and the afterlife, a beautiful song that spoke directly to me with lyrics like “I don’t want to die” and “I’m gonna miss everybody.” When I first heard Bone Thugs ‘N’ Harmonies; Crossroads all I could do was cry, I cried the entire day. That day, I was suspended from school and was in the house by myself. I woke to the sound of a radio left on by my brother getting ready for school. My mother came home after an 8-hour shift; my brother and sister were coming home from school. My mother was upset with me for being suspended, immediately her frustration went away when she saw the pain in my eyes. Mother said nothing; she embraced me and held me close. Yet, her hold could not stop the tears that flowed from me, the loneness I felt. Knowing that this life is not guaranteed, that nothing will stay, even this false sense of happiness I had within my mother’s arms would go away and could go away at anytime. My brother and sister entered the room in an unfamiliar way; the sight of me crying for what seemed like no reason gave them some type of compassion for me. “Shane what is wrong,” they ask me, but I only begin to cry more, their concern for me helped me realize that they loved me. Crying so deeply felt like the life was being sucked from me because I could not catch my breath. Finally, I was able to manage to say a sentence “I don’t want you to die,” every word was like a dagger to my heart. In that moment the energy in the room sifted between my mother and her children. When my brother and sister realized what I was crying for, it hit them as hard as it hit me and they too began to cry. At that moment a battle between love and despair was waged and my mother had never experienced the pain of seeing her children in so much despair because of something she did not understand herself. All she could do was comfort us in that moment, “I am not going anywhere anytime soon, I will be here for as long as I can, but eventually I will have to go, we all will.” My mother’s resolve in her words and her strength to say such a thing so direct and not sugarcoat death, I looked at her face and watched her as she wiped the tears from my eyes. To me her words gave nothing to me but her action was what I needed.
