Bite The Apple Rotten

Walking up and down. You don’t answer. You try to avoid eye contact. You try not to entangle your hairs in the path of the rotten in front of you. You call them the rotten because that’s what they are. We all do it. We all have the same thought at times which is; You can no longer tolerate homeless people. They take up space on the trains, sidewalks, and the corner of a picture that shows your child playing on the swings in the park.

Now you must photoshop a perfect picture. Now they can’t go into the next train car where there is a lot of space because the homeless lady in there smells of a toxic death. Now people must walking on a narrow path and simulate the flow of water being compacted and pulled back to normal size because a homeless man and his son are sleeping on the sidewalk in a makeshift tent. Now you couldn’t sleep last night because your alcholic aunt wanted to stay up and watch the tv with the volume pretty high. Now how do you tell your professor that the reason you missed the final was because of an infection in your family that seems to be getting worse? How are you suppose to explain to your child, who is the first grade and sitting next to you, what a homeless person is, where homeless people come from, why you should give homeless people money, and why you shouldn’t give homeless people money?

Now before you go all ape shit on me about how cruel I am to be so insensitive or being to caring for them, let me enlighten you. I am one of four siblings. I am the second oldest, first boy though. I have my paternal side fo the family and in a nutshell, the vast majority of them, a good 80% of them will never be able to live a comfortable lifestyle. Mind you, I’m po… Too poor to afford the O.R. in poor so I’m po for now. As I write this I have no more than $200 in my account. I just graduated this past summer from City Tech. I studied Architecture. Yea. I know, I should be patient.

My parents have allowed my aunts and uncles to sleep on the couch and in my room that I shared with my little brother. My parents allowed them to shower, cook, sleep, do anything they wanted to make them feel like they’ve been living with us for years and not outsiders that are frowned upon. My parents only asked for them to chip in with money to help make the food budget or the light budget lighter on my parents… Now the amount as far as I could remember was always determined by my aunts or uncles. The only thing my parents asked was for them not to smoke or drink in the house.

Needless to say that didn’t go according to planned. Over and over again, they were just fucking disrespectful. They would drink, smoke weed, and for those who did, smoke cigarettes, they would throw off everyone’s schedule as a result of them being up all night, falling asleep with the tv on, sleeping until the afternoon, waking up just to be up all night. All of this happening during a time period of me being in elementary school or Junior high school until my little brother’s first year in college (Now). Mind you there is an eight year gap between my little brother and I. My parents helped my aunt get her G.E.D. and if I’m not mistaken, paid for the books and paid for her to get the classes. I was in a program in Harlem called Strive. I was in it with my aunt. In the program, they were teaching us so we could become certified in Microsoft Word and Excel. I passed with I think the highest scores in the class. My aunt never even went to take exams. I offered to help her.

However, this infection. This meager way of life. This lifestyle of playing scrimmages of hide and go seek with the food in the trash cans, scrabble with words just to get someone to give a dollar, or the last resort of having to eat a water bug as your entrée and for dessert, a roach; Is this what you have to show for it? Would you want to go through that?

People lost homes, lost family members who handled all the finances because their significant other couldn’t balance the household budget, people lost parents due to illness, and had to endure tradegies that occurred at no fault of their own. Did you forget about the other side? They were just like you and me. The brightest, cutest, well mannered, self-motivated, stubborn, egotistical, loving, and normal apple you could come across in the produce section of a grocery store or a high-end maintained supermarket. You don’t care to ask how, You don’t care to wonder why you just know that the thing in front of you is a rotten apple. We all do it. We all have the same mentality. Here’s the answer as to why; It’s called human nature. If you want to take it a step further you can simple say it is one of the fundamental foundations of life.

I found out August 18, 2016 that my slumlord’s private house in Brownsville Brooklyn was in the process of being foreclosed. I had to move; Move earth, fire, wind, rain, and a couple of rounds of Russian Roulette with my friends list on Facebook in hopes that I could find someone, anyone who would be able to give me a lending hand.

On this train you don’t want to feel the sensation of not my presence because I am sitting right across from you biting an apple. I found a friend who was willing to help me out, not that you would actually care because its not you. The presence you don’t want your senses to acknowledge is a stranger but also your reflection. What if you lost everything, wouldn’t you want someone to help you? Wouldn’t you like to have a slice of hot pizza, a jolly rancher, slice of bacon. The honest truth is not all homeless people drink, smoke, or do other drugs. Some have mental issues and no one to care for them. Some had circumstances that left them walking past you and your child asking for money;

Sometimes you have to Bite the Apple: Rotten.