I Almost Got Shot 9 Times Like @50Cent: The Safety Conversations Black Mothers Have With Their Children

 I Almost Got Shot 9 Times Like @50Cent

@shantellewrites The first time I ever saw someone buss a gun I was 6, playing Double-Dutch in the parking lot of the YMCA day camp. I remember the smoke from the gun and as I looked up to God in the sky, the cross at the top of the church steeple.

I always warn my daughter when she’s going out that if a problem pops off, make sure she goes in the opposite direction. Don't try to go see what’s going on cuz if someone pulls a gun in that fight, a bullet won’t have a name. I always thanked God for finding out about ‘who got shot’ over the telephone at home. I partied in the hood, but I didn’t parking lot pimp. I’m not nosey enough to die. But even that never stopped me from ducking bullets…

#2 Roll Down the Window 

Cause when the Oddfellas club let out and my responsible 16-year-old-self started high-stepping it back to my mom’s old white station wagon a few blocks away, the parking lot pimps followed me. My cousin jumped in the passenger seat and her friend kicked it in the back. We had a good time and I was turning up the radio when I noticed a car moving into my peripheral. I turned to the left to see a car full of thugs, like the opps in Boyz N’ The Hood. He made a hand motion for me to roll down the window. I didn’t really want to, but my passengers were ready to keep the party going. The station wagon didn’t have power windows, so I did exactly what his hand motion said, and turned the crank handle. 

He surprised me with his violent response. “Bitch, you ain’t hear me calling you?!” I really hadn’t, and I was surely sorry when the passenger in the back rested what looked like some kind of heavy artillery across his halfway rolled down window. I said I was sorry, and they laughed at my unrequited fear and drove off. My boys went looking for them later, but didn’t find them. This is why I added a new piece of advice for my daughter: Never embarrass a guy who tries to cat-call you. Do your best to politely and quietly decline–away from his friends. That way, he can tell them whatever story he wants and you can stay safe. Also, never give a wrong number in case he calls you on the spot. It’s better to flip it and ask for his number, or just text him later that you have a boyfriend and block him. It’s important to give that closure just in case you run into him again.

#3 The Juneteenth Block Party I Missed  

The other time woulda been the Juneteenth block party I would’ve taken her to when we first moved to the most violent section of Charlotte. I heard about this block party on the famous Beatties Ford by the corner store I walked to everyday. There was always something I needed out there –Food Lion or the hair store right across the street; maybe cheap cleaning or art supplies from Family Dollar on the corner. We went to Washington DC instead to visit my aunt in her big house, afforded by her accomplished service in the army. My aunt has jumped out of planes, competed in bodybuilding contests, and when I called her crying from college, overwhelmed, she was in Iraq. She shifted my perspective quickly, telling me she had to run 3 miles in 103 degree heat just to use the bathroom.

My daughter and I were full of joy in the airport, telling every person Happy Juneteenth! Causing their serious faces to erupt in ear-to-ear smiles. Juneteenth is a new holiday and I love reminding people how beautiful and smart they are on that day. When we got back from DC, we were on the pink cloud of spending time with family. I walked to the store, probably to get a blunt, because I smoked then and loved to be unaware of my surroundings. I saw candles in the glass containers I usually see in Catholic homes and flowers, by the telephone pole and every few steps. I shrugged off their presence, and learned from listening to the hood dudes by the cooler in the back of the store, that each candle-flower setup was a memorial. I walked back outside and read the sign on the pole. It was a beautiful young girl–dead. She was so fly too. One of three people that died at the block party I missed. They fired 181 rounds.

Everybody gon’ respect the shooter

But the one in front of the gun lives forever.

~ Kendrick Lamar,  m.A.A.d City

#4 The Drive-By at the Park 

Eventually, the flowers and candles are worn down and disappear over time. They never stopped me from walking fearlessly to the store. It’s what I’ve always done in the hood: Replace fear with ambivalence. I took my dog on walks down that street and took a right down Catherine Simmons. I pass the predators, panhandlers, and stop to talk to a young boy in distress. Empathy led to generosity, which led me to walking back to him to give him the rest of my blunt. He was so happy, and so was I when I realized that stop saved my life. It kept me on the path a little longer, before a drive-by shooting at nothing in particular in the park. I grabbed my dog to lay down, belly to the grass, as I hit the ground.

#5 The Girl Stuck in the Folding Chairs 

Before I laughed jollyly with Fat Man Scoop at the gas station, we’d both just escaped a shootout at a teen party. My little cousin was a star, Harlem-Shaking, before the shots rang out…We scattered… we all tried to get out the door, and unlike Diddy’s first party in a gym just like this, we were able to. It’s funny how we were all so desensitized to danger, we found time to laugh at the girl that got stuck in the folding chairs trying to escape.

#6 The Day Sandy Hook Changed Everything 

I was on my first trip to gather business requirements from a healthcare facility, agitated that my older mentor and boss drove so slowly. I was a young fast driver before I would move to North Carolina a decade later and get 3 speeding tickets in one week. But I didn’t need him to drive faster. The drivers around us would inject the adrenaline into my veins for me. Regular hooptie cars around us would start opening their windows. Middle-aged white arms would reach out of those windows and place sirens on their roofs, driving towards Sandy Hook.

A 20-year-old gunman forced his way into the school and killed 26 people, including 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7, and 6 adult staff members, before taking his own life. It remains one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. I went to a school just like Sandy Hook, just 45 minutes away. I had the realization that now school was just as dangerous as living in the hood. I wasn’t escaping anything. Apparently, there are Dangerous Minds everywhere. Butterfly Effect is the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a storm or prevent a storm on the other side of the world. Count the orange shirt I’m wearing (#WearOrange) and my writing to support June as #GunViolenceAwarenessMonth #ProtectOurKids.

My Daughter's First Active Shooter Threat 

My Daughter Almost Got Shot and she’s my heart on the outside of my body.

I went to private school, but Dangerous Minds and Light It Up (with Usher and Rosario Dawson back in the day) showed me poor public schools with metal detectors. It’s funny how black kids don’t do mass shootings though. Down here, in North Carolina, where men port pistols on their waists at the mall, I’ve had to talk my daughter through the threat of an open shooter. I told her how to stop the door. I told her to calculate the jump from the classroom window. She was actually one of the people alerted via text by the shooter. I’ll still count the fear she felt as one of her ‘almost got shots’.

#7 Diversity Is a Joke 

I hate re-telling this story, as you’d know from my blog, so here’s an excerpt from Diversity is A Joke. I’d just stopped to say hi to my aunt on a Friday evening in the Greens Projects…

I tried to walk to my car only to hear the threat from a big strong white man in full SWAT gear say, “Bitch, you don’t think I’ll tase you?!”. They sat us all down on the pavement in a line in the projects and looked at my face and compared my facial features to my cousins in line and knew we must be family. Then the chief detective, well known to my cousins and the residents as someone not to be fucked with said, “I can’t stand you niggers. I hate you fucking niggers. You all out here on welfare…” He didn’t see me as cultured at all, and the sting of the situation hurt for weeks. He wrote me a ticket for trespassing, because I guess the projects are technically government property. I never was summoned to court for that ticket, but I do remember the over $100 fee causing me stress. 

#8 The Man at My Door 

Then there was the time a spurned lover knocked on my door with a gun.

I wasn’t even outside. I wasn’t at the club. I wasn’t in somebody’s parking lot laughing too loud or walking to the corner store like danger had never heard my name before. I was home. The place everybody tells you to go when you want to be safe.

But danger knows addresses too.

He knocked on my door and something in my spirit knew not to open it. I didn’t need to see the gun first. I didn’t need to be brave and confront him. I didn’t need to prove I wasn’t scared. I called the cops before I opened that door, because there are times when wisdom looks like fear to people who don’t know how close you are to dying.

That’s the thing about being a woman. You don’t just survive strangers. Sometimes you have to survive people who once said they loved you. Sometimes the person outside your door isn’t a monster in a movie. Sometimes he knows your laugh, your schedule, your weak spots, and exactly what to say to make you second-guess yourself.

I think about that often when people talk about women being dramatic. A woman ignoring her intuition is how she ends up on a T-shirt. A woman being “too nice” is how she ends up as a candle-and-flower memorial by a telephone pole.

I didn’t open the door.

I called the cops.

And I lived.

That was one of the times I learned that controlling rage is not weakness. It is survival. It is a strategy. It is choosing not to meet chaos with chaos when chaos is already armed. I used to think the strongest thing was to go outside and handle it. Now I know sometimes the strongest thing is to stay behind the door, breathe, and let somebody else deal with the demon on the other side.

#9 Big Yard 

The last time was in Big Yard. Big Yard isn’t a place on Google Maps. Big Yard is where Jamaicans choose somebody’s backyard, pull up, smoke, talk, laugh, listen to music, bring back fish from the river, grill it, eat it, and then everybody disappears to get dressed so we can go club later that night together.

It’s not just a party. It’s a chosen family. It’s uncles that aren’t your uncles. Cousins that aren’t your cousins. Somebody’s auntie watching everybody’s plate. Somebody’s man on the grill. Music loud enough to make your shoulders move before your mind catches up. Smoke in the air. Fish on the fire. Laughter cutting through the whole yard like church bells.

And me, sitting there, noticing everything.

I saw a car drive by more than once. Something about it didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t know if I was being paranoid or if my spirit was doing that thing again where it taps me on the shoulder before death gets bold.

So I alerted the guys next to me.

“Watch that car.”

They looked. They listened. They didn’t dismiss me. That’s another kind of protection — when men don’t make you feel crazy for noticing danger.

When the car came back again, they jumped out mad about some gas station road rage incident around the corner from Big Yard. They came to scare us. Fake guns. Real stupidity. Real consequences.

But the Jamaicans I alerted had the machine dem.

Legal machines.

And that night, danger met people who were not sitting ducks. They came back to scare us and met their death.

Not me that time.

That time, I felt protected.

That time, I felt what it means when community is not just a word. It is a shield. It is somebody looking when you say look. It is somebody standing when danger pulls up. It is the difference between being a headline and being able to go home and tell the story later.

Final Thoughts: How Many Times Can One Person

Almost Die?

I always thought I would never have a gun. Not because I didn’t understand why people had them, but because I understood myself. I didn’t want access to something I could use in anger. I didn’t want one bad moment, one heartbreak, one insult, one flash of rage to become the rest of my life.

But now, that’s changed.

My daughter took me to the Blackstone Shooting Sports Range for Mother’s Day. Of all the gifts in the world, my baby took me somewhere to practice not being helpless. And I love when somebody sees the target I brought home as a souvenir and comments on how great my shot is.

There’s something wild about that. Me, the same girl who saw smoke from a gun at 6 years old and looked up at the church steeple. Me, the same woman who kept surviving bullets with no name on them. Me, now in a state where I’m allowed to have a gun and it seems normal. Even the prissy girl at work keeps a Glock.

I need one too.

Because down here, you don’t just get in arguments. You assume everybody is strapped. You don’t assume road rage is just honking. You don’t assume a man at your door only wants to talk. You don’t assume church is safe because it’s church.

I don’t want to be a sitting duck.

I need something if a crazy white man comes to church to gun me down. I need something if the wrong person decides my life is the place they want to make their point. I need something because I have lived too many almosts to keep pretending protection is only prayer.

I still believe in God.

I still believe in wisdom.

I still believe in walking away.

But now I also believe in not being unarmed in a world that keeps proving it has no problem aiming at me.