B is hilarious

You still shouldn't put your kid on a leash

One time I saw a white mom reunite with her child after they had been temporarily separated. She seemed thankful that she'd found the little boy.

One time one of my brothers got separated from our family. It was not the same scene.

My father got mad at him like he did something wrong. It was a big ass mall. Way bigger than Nigga Oaks. My brother was 8; I was 14 and I woulda cried if I'd gotten lost. It was that big. One of those malls where the same store is in it multiple times. Why do they do that in white malls? We don't have two Foot Lockers, so why do you have three Forever 21s?

What happened was my brother, being a kid, saw something he wanted and wandered over to see it. It was just for a second but in a mall that large, that's all it takes for you to get lost in the crowd. We were pretty close to the exit when this happened which makes it a little more ok that no one noticed he wasn't there until we got in the car. Because when there are 6 kids on a light day, you notice if there's extra space. And while I immediately felt guilty that I, as the oldest, had not noticed one of my brothers missing, my father got angry as if broski had done something wrong. In my mind, he was being a kid. And I know you're thinking oh, he was upset because he was scared that something could have happened to him. But naw. That nigga was just mad.

It didn't take long to find him. He had kept walking in the direction we were headed. Slowly, thinking we would have noticed and would be looking for him.

Wrong.

It makes you think about how prepared some parents are for disaster. They take pictures of their kids before they go anywhere with lots of people so they know exactly what they have on, write a phone number on the t-shirt tag, drill the kids on a protocol to follow should they get lost. Then on the other hand, a kid gets lost without being taught any of this and it's their fault when they don't do the "right" thing.

It's not like if something terrible actually happened the parent would be like, "He shoulda stopped focusing on building a damn bear and held somebody's hand. Bet you when he starving in a basement he's going to wish he hadn't wondered his little ass off." Or maybe they would. What do I know.

No Santy Claus?

I have a story to tell. It's about Christmas 1997. That Christmas little Encyclopedia Brittanica (that's me) decided this whole Santa deal didn't make sense. Some things change when you grow up. Some things don't. I still know everything and I still ask a shit ton of questions. And one cold December day, I needed answers. Could I have pondered the mysteries of the North Pole on my own? Yes. Could I have Googled it? No, Google didn't exist. This resulted in me pulling up my britches and stomping into my parents' room. Without a hello or how do you do I ripped into them with a searing question.

Is Santa real?

Without hesitation, the blow was delivered.

No.

Cold bloooooded

I did what any self-respecting 9 year old would do. I burst into tears and marched out the room. I was pissed. Partly because Santa wasn't real but mostly because these muthafuckas had liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiied to me.

They had lied to me for 9 years. NINE YEARS. Do you know how long 9 years is to a 9 year old!?!

Now that I'm older, I can ponder the absurdity of the Santa Claus character. A fat white guy commits B&E by shimmying down a chimney just to leave bad ass kids presents. All the happiness in the world was brought by some fat white guy. I don't recall the answers my parents must have fed me so I would shut the hell up but I wonder if it ever crossed my mind how he got in. We didn't have a chimney. Did someone purposely leave the door open? How do we know Santa is white if no one ever sees him? I guess 'cuz if Santa was black, he woulda been shot and/or arrested by now.

It makes me think about whether I will tell my kids about Santa considering a lot of the time I wish I could just opt out of Christmas. Probably because I never had a great Christmas. As a kid I never wished and hoped and prayed for one thing that I would go ape shit over if it was under the tree. I was very practical. I didn't ask for ponies, I didn't like dolls, and I didn't know what a rock tumbler was. In fact, the most I've ever yearned for a gift was Christmas '09 when all I asked for was an external hard drive. After opening the 5 or so gifts from my father and step mother (redacted mean statement) I was pissed. Then we went to my grandma's and turns out she got it for me. But it wasn't like I was ecstatic. I just wasn't pissed any more.