that oberlin sh*t.

(i will apologize beforehand for this. i'm not doing this to put anyone outthere, hence why i didn't use any names. sorry to make you into a story. i'm lying, i'm not sorry, but know its not done with malicious intent. well, maybe some. yes i am a bastard. yes i am.)

i wrote a friend of mine an e-mail, where i asked her a question:

"are father's stronger than the childless man?". simple enough i thought. nothing much to read into, or so i thought.

the response: "define father."

okay, wasn't quite expecting that. i exhaled

(here we go)

and even though didn't want to, i started to type out my definition of father. but before i could finish, i got another e-mail.

"even before you answer my other email. i must say i dont like that question. i've pondered. i have no clue where you're going with that question but i feel as if it shouldn't matter whose stronger."

what?
see...that's that oberlin shit.

my first crack at higher education came at oberlin college. beautiful campus, hyper-intelligent students, dedicated staff. i learned a lot about a lot at that place. a lot about people. about how people take things, and themselves, far too seriously. back home, i could say something, and i know i would get a normal response.
my pops died. i told my man ronald. he replied:

"damn. that's fu*ked up."

see? see how simple that was? how something so complex didn't necessarily require a complex response. just a honest one. that's what i was used to, that's what i grew up with. that's what i respect. oh how did all that change when i went to oberlin. now everything was a debate. everything was thoroughly examined. everything was scrutinized and mulled over, everything became a damn dissertation. i walked into a extentialist nightmare's nightmare. it was like talking to a film student about magnolia, or a english major about that dumb ass poem about the red wagon.

what you mean by 'black'? when you say 'man', what are you implying? when you said that her name was 'pretty', were you making the inference that she identified as a woman?

if it wasn't that, then it was people taking offense to everything in the world. i remember one time this white girl made these flyers to promote a party she was having at little dance hall on campus. on the flyer, there was an old time drawing of a man dancing with a girl, i think. the man looked chinese to me. to everyone else, he was a minstrel. they made a big deal about that. they had a damn sit-in.

basically you couldn't say anything with either someone breaking the shit down like a lego castle, or getting indignantly pissed about it. and people were so proud to be this way. of course, nobody said it outright, but they thought of themselves as intellectuals, progressive. liberal. cognizant. people aren't supposed to be that way outright. you need balance. think about life, but don't drown life in the sea of your thoughts, realization, pondering and the like. you think your way out of enjoying what life has offered you because your thinking about being offended, or offended by your thoughts. nothing meaningful ever gets done. and i mean rocking chair meaningful. sitting in a rocking chair, knocking on heavens door, and you can think about it, and it still means something good to you. whether it be a action, or a conversation.

(you will have played the game of life and lost.)
you have taken the human element out of living. the simplicity of being human, one of the foundations being simple, normal conversation. on the inside, we love it. we need it. look at the movie that won the oscar for best picture this year. no country for old men.

simple conversation. read the book. plain talk. yeah, the characters were "complex", but so is everyone whom god gave breath.

the question i asked my friend, about stronger daddies came from me and my homeboys talking about "daddy strength". how when you get grown, you get a little stronger, esp. when you need to put the big hand on one of these young boys that will come eventually visit your future daughter. shake his hand, and let him know that your daddy out here. that was it. nothing more, nothing less. i didn't want to define father, or to be asked to define father. i didn't want my question jammed on with no explanation. i didn't want that oberlin shit. but that's what i got.

if i have been guilty of it, i am truly sorry. never again.