Eric Morris came to my door the other night selling magazines.
I don't know Eric and neither do you. All I know about him is that he turns 20 this week, he has been in LA for less than two weeks and he's fresh out of Durham, NC and trying to turn his life around. So he's hooked up with an outfit called Second To None and they've put him up somewhere in Buena Park. I bought a subscription off of him and we sat down and talked for a minute.
He was new, and not slick. I could tell that he was trying and hadn't gotten the salesman's crust. But I could also tell that he was reaching out to me, young black man to old black man. I gave him a chair and we rapped on my front porch as the winter darkness closed in.
I told him about half a dozen jobs I hated in the four years between my break from schooling and that the worst one was selling photocopier supplies. He told me about the other blackfolks in my neighborhood that didn't give him the time of day. I told him I didn't know any of the other blackfolks in my neighborhood, he said that I wasn't missing anything. Funny. I didn't think I was, but I never really thought of it that way.
He told me that he just learned to tie a tie. He was wearing a clean white shirt and the knot on his blue and green tie was acceptable. He wore his hair cut short, a one on the electric clippers and no mustache. I told him that now is the time to take risks if you want to do sales. All he has to do is take care of himself and when people want the product, you just have to be there and it sells itself. He laughed. I think he knows something about moving products. But these days, Eric wants to be a nurse, or at least that was the thing that warmed him up the most as we talked about the possibilities. I have faith that he's going to do alright and I told him so. He's already made the biggest and most risky move - all the way out here to Cali, and I was glad that I was able to give him a seat that evening. I hope if and when he sends me an email, that it doesn't get caught in the spam filter.
I don't second-guess black people and while I will continue to call out fools who are an embarrassment to themselves and to all Americans, I have no doubts that boys will grow to be men and that some of those men, no matter where they came from, will remain the strength of this nation. Eric also thinks about being a cop too. He's getting righteous, and I could tell that about him. When I told him that I had thought about moving to Durham, he warned me off. I said that I thought the area was nice, and he said there's nothing nice about it. Later I clarified that I meant Cary, to which he immediately assented. Oh yeah, that's nice, he said. Eric's not a fool.
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