WHEN DOING THE RIGHT THING MEANS RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE.

How many times has someone shot at you with the intent to kill? 

 Once is one too many times considering I’ve been involved in three shootings. One where the shooter was gunning for me and I’ve had a gun drawn on me at least three times. 

One of those times may have been a bluff.  The other two by my step-father. I’ll explain that at a later time. 

The bluff I mentioned, happened while I was working as a supervisor at a Boys and Girls Club in Greensboro, North Carolina while I was in college. One of the local kids got mad at me for kicking him out of the gym for unruly behavior. He came back later in the day and stood in the doorway of the club with his hand in his pocket, suggesting that he may have had a gun. I wasn’t sure if he actually had a gun or not, but I couldn’t take any chances with the lives of the children I was in charge of keeping safe.  I have never really talked to anyone, professionally or personally, about the shooting incidents I have been involved in. This is an essay about the about the one time I was actually shot at where the person had all intentions of killing me. 

Sidebar

“I decided to ride my bike to the park today so I could get a little writing done. I needed a change of scenery. I’m in my home eighty percent of the time. I wanted fresh air and sun on my skin. I needed to feel alive and its simply beautiful outside. I don’t think I would have noticed how beautiful today was if not for the pandemic. I've started to appreciate things more lately. As I sit here and type and watch children live without fear, I can’t describe to you in words how bad I want to show my appreciation for this moment. I wished I could run around the park like a five-year-old, as fast as I could, with the breeze keeping me cool, without someone shooting me for acting crazy. However, I did do a few back handsprings. There’s footage if you don’t believe me. I think about how proud of myself I am that I can still do back handsprings while simultaneously hating that I have grown old and one day will die. I’m all sorts of fucked up.” Back to the blog.

When … my mother, sister, brother, and I lived in lower middle-class apartments called Brittany Apartments. They were located on the east side of my hometown of Charlotte.  Like many cities, Charlotte had its good parts as well as its bad areas. 

We lived directly across the street from some drug-infested apartments called Barrington Oaks Apartments. When we moved to this neighborhood, I was warned early on that I should think twice about going into those apartments unless I was prepared to die. We also lived adjacent to some government-run apartments that were called The Projects. I have never seen anything positive about living in the projects, other than it motivating you to get as far away from them as possible.

It was easy for me to make friends when I was younger because I was always in search of people that I could recruit to build the sort of relationships I fantasized about when I watched shows like Scooby-Doo or Recess. Sadly, the kids in my neighborhood didn’t have that childlike imagination anymore. After I realized that those kids did not care about childhood things, I turned to sports as a way to make friends. I cut my teeth at learning how to play basketball at the local Boys and Girls Club. Unfortunately, it was located in the middle of all the neighboring apartment complexes. That meant children from all walks of life would be in the same place at the same time.

I truly believe fear is taught. It is something you pick up from somebody. I say this because when I was younger, I did not fear anything until someone told me to be afraid of it. I would go into any neighborhood and befriend any child, unless I was told that I should not play with them due to where they lived. Often, I would hear “They live in Barrington Oaks, you don’t want to play with them.”

I did not really bother to ask what those children did to be feared, I just went along with whatever was said based on how forcefully the message came across. 

I was not familiar with all the local drug dealers and thugs and villains of the neighborhood. I learned about them as I went along with my day-to-day living. One day, I had the pleasure of meeting two drug dealers who I would soon learn were not fans of people standing up to them. These two bullies came into the gym, demanding the basketball, the way most drug dealers behave when they go to the basketball court. For some reason, all drug dealers believe they could have gone pro if they were not drug dealers. Ironically, most of the drug dealers have a jump shot. They like to play their own style of defense, which means there are no rules when they are defending, but you cannot touch them at all when they are dribbling. You can try to steal the ball from them, but you run the risk of getting beat up or worse, shot. 

Drug dealers normally get mad when you embarrass them or they decide to blame their lack of ability to play basketball on everyone else at the basketball court. This usually ends with them kicking the basketball as far as they can and walking off, pouting, but not before letting everyone know how much money they make selling drugs. I feel sorry for them as it is happening, but I have no clue as to how to communicate or point out they are dealing with a deeper pain that has nothing to do with basketball. 

When the bullies walked onto the basketball court, all the kids exited immediately. I did not understand why the other kids vacated the gym so easily.  I refused to give in to whatever this was they were doing. Now, when the bullies noticed that I did not leave, it made them upset, because they were so used to kids jumping when they said jump. I did not think it through when I took my stand, I just knew I wanted to play basketball and I was not about to give up my right to play to some thugs. When they realized I was not going to leave the gym, they countered by locking the doors so I could not leave. I did not know what they were going to do at this point. I picked up on their plan when they started chasing me around the gym. I ran as long as I could until. I zig zagged as long as I could until I eventually ran out of breath. They cornered me and begin to beat me for challenging them and making them have to chase me I believe. They kicked and punched me as if they were loan sharks collecting a debt from a deadbeat. 

The beating lasted a few minutes, even though it felt like a lifetime. I finally managed to break free and remove the pool stick they had used to barricade the door. That made them even madder. They chased me down the hallway of the Boys and Girls Club until they caught up with me and picked up right where they had left off. Nobody bothered to jump in. I am sure someone probably wanted to but the risk was not worth the reward. They might have finished me off if the program director of the club had not intervened. He was a tall, slender man who favored Bill Russell and went by the name of Milton. You could tell by the anguish on his face that he was ready to retire from life, but for some reason, he just could not do it.  Milton did the best he could to pull the thugs off of me without crossing a line that would result in them coming back later for retribution. Milton turned to me and asked if I was all right. I replied, “I’m fine, but that was uncalled for.”

A part of me was mad that I did not do a better job of handling the bullies. Eddie Murphy is my favorite entertainer of all time. Every movie he’s in, he is able to get out of any predicament and I felt as though I had studied enough of his films that I should have been able to handle that situation a little better. I kept wondering where did all of my Eddie Murphy training go. I had all the smart witty replies but I didn’t consider that maybe they didn’t see the same movie I had seen and was not aware that I was supposed to get out of the jam I was in.  

I’m not sure who it was, but somebody called the police to the Boys and Girls Club. I did not have a problem with someone calling the police. That is what you are supposed to do when something like what I had just gone through happens. Looking back, I probably would have done things differently. A lot of steps were overlooked in the process of calling the police. For one, my mother was not present to help me decide whether or not I wanted to press charges against neighborhood drug dealers that I would have to come across again. However, it was too late. 

The police encouraged me to file a report, despite my mother not being present. If I was thinking clearly, I would have asked them if they had any plans of providing me with 24-hour protection after I file the charges. Sadly, I was not street smart enough to think about all of the possible ramifications of pressing charges against guys like these. The WIRE had not been made yet.  It is easy for people who do not live in these sorts of neighborhoods to say, “It’s good you pressed charges. They deserve whatever they get.” 

These people do not have to live where I lived. There are unwritten rules you must abide by if you want to coexist with savages. I went home and told my mother that some kids had jumped me. She did what any loving mother would do. She checked me out completely to make sure I was okay, scanning my face and spinning me around, looking for bruises and scratches on my body. Then she asked me all the questions a concerned mother would ask. “Who was it, where are they now, what did anybody do, and are you okay?” 

I let her know that I was fine. (But what about the police?) 

A few weeks later, I had to appear in court to testify against the guys who jumped me. I should have been scared, but for some reason I wasn’t. I did not know I was supposed to be scared. Outside of the kids in the neighborhood saying to me, “Be careful, they are looking for you.”

I sat in the courtroom with my mother feeling okay until these two kids, who looked as though they could easily be in their late 30s, stared at me with gazes of death. The judge asked me if the two people who assaulted me were in the courtroom and if I could point them out. I told the judge they were in the court room and pointed them out. Some lady said, “Let the record show that the

plaintiff has pointed out…” 

She stated their names. Once I identified the bullies, I was allowed to leave.

Days later, I heard they received some probation and jail time. I did not think anything else of it after that. I was not sure how long they were going to be in jail, so I decided to enjoy them being off the streets for as long as I could before I went back in the house for the rest of my life. There was no way I would be able to enjoy playing outdoors when there are angry drug dealers waiting for me to come outside. 

I never bothered to tell my mother that there was a bounty on my head because I did not want her to worry. I honestly did not worry about it as much as I should have. I did not see the point in it when I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I suppose I developed the mindset of I was going play as long as I could until my time was up. 

Months later, as I was walking home from the Boys and Girls Club. (Yes, I went back to the Boys and Girls Club to play basketball. Yes, I’m extremely hardheaded, but not only that, I refuse to be run off by anybody. That is why I am still in Los Angeles, pursuing a career in a world where authenticity is not appreciated, but I still try nonetheless.) I saw a Nissan 280 parked at the top of the corner near our apartment. I saw that the driver was talking to my neighbor Bruce, who was the neighborhood gossip column. If you wanted to know anything about anything that was going on, you went to Bruce.

As I ran toward my apartment, in my usual loud attention-getting voice, I yelled, “What up, Bruce?” 

Bruce looked up at me and then said something to the driver of the car. Whatever he said activated the passenger in the car, because before I realized what was going on, this guy had hopped out, pulled a TEC-9 out of his jacket, and started charging at me. All I heard was, “You had my cousin locked up!” 

Next thing I know this person is shooting at me. I did not t bother to stop and ask him what the problem was. My survival instincts kicked in and I turned into The Flash as I kicked it into high speed. Normally, I would run to my front door because my brother would always forget to lock it, but for some reason, on this day, something inside told me to run around the back and go through the back door, which is what I did. As I was running for my life, the slippery grass was not on my side as I slipped trying to turn the corner. I must have had angels with me because just as fast as I fell on my ass, I was able to get back up even faster. I managed to make it to the back door, hoping it was not locked. Thankfully my brother had a death wish because the back door was unlocked. I burst in, locking the door behind and yelled at my brother “get down!” 

I guess the back door was a deterrent for the shooter, like a blanket is to the boogeyman, because he stopped pursuing me once I went into the house.

My heart was beating so fast. It felt like it was trying to escape out of my chest.  I am going to assume if my heart did jump out of my chest, it would have ended up next to me under my bed. That is where I wanted to go. I couldn’t calm my heart down but I also had to stay present enough to make sure I survived. 

I think he just wanted to scare me. If he really wanted to kill me, he would have shot into my house. I say that because I knew of so many incidents where people had their homes shot up. I saw the guy run pass our living room window as he was going back to the car. He and the driver took off. I went outside to question Bruce about who was shooting at me. Bruce explained to me that the guy with the gun was related to one of the guys I had testified against. As I was outside, I saw bullets that were stuck in a tree, where the guy barely missed me. A few weeks later, I found out that the guy who had shot at me was murdered. I also found out that he had killed three other people prior to trying to kill me. I just caught him on a bad day.

Sidebar

“As I’m writing this, I’m scrolling through Twitter, looking at how people are handling the

Kanye West situation. Once again, I say this from the outside looking in, but I don’t believe he grieved properly after his mother’s passing. I believe that if you don’t grieve properly, it can lead to mental distress. Talking about mental health in the Black community is looked down upon. Although we are doing better with it now, it never should have been an issue. I have a problem with Black people who think seeing a therapist is a sign of weakness. I also don’t buy into the idea that someone having a mental illness is due to not having a good relationship with church and God. Those reasons are bullshit in my eyes. I don’t know if everything Kanye is doing is calculated or complete chaos, but he needs to be dealt with compassionately and with understanding, regardless of what it is. Back to the blog.” 

I do not blame my mother for not taking me to a therapist so I could talk to somebody about being jumped or shot at or to discuss the fact that somebody who tried to kill me was now dead. Therapy in the Black community is not something that is encouraged or even considered. Quite honestly, my mother had her hands too full to think of therapy as an option. Plus, I can’t look back and reflect upon not doing something that really wasn’t available nor use it as a scapegoat to deal with my trauma. I honestly don’t know how I should address the things I’ve been through.  

 I know the trauma of both of those incidents still linger in me because I am overprotective of people when they are harmed or in danger. My way of showing somebody I love them is by trying to do everything I can to keep them safe. It has been one of the biggest struggles of my entire life. I tend to care about other people more than I care about myself. The downside is I tend to let things with myself fall by the wayside when I get in a relationship, and when itis pointed out to me that I am not on top of things, I am never given the chance to pull myself together.

 Maybe, if I had gone to therapy to work out my trauma, I would not feel the need to put my all into protecting somebody while neglecting myself in the process, just so I can feel appreciated. I wish I could see a doctor who had a machine that could scan my body to see how much trauma I have inside of me, so that we could address it one issue at a time. I am curious to know what I would be like if I had not gone through any of the unfortunate things I have had to endure. I really would like to know what a trauma-free body feels like. Some days I believe I am tired from carrying around unaddressed trauma.

From time to time, I sit and reflect upon what happened and I still cannot believe that I was beaten up for standing up for myself. I cannot believe someone wanted to murder me because I stood up against people who were trying to bully me. I go even deeper down the rabbit hole and think about what would have happened if I was not fast enough to escape the bullets that were meant for me. When I go back home to Charlotte, I sometimes drive by my old apartment and I look at the tree that caught the bullets that were meant for me. I joke about it but trees provide oxygen that allows you to breathe but sometimes they catch bullets so you can live.

-EAT

I write as a form of healing for myself and others. If you enjoyed what you read, “tip the writer” by donating to Venmo or zelle @maronziovance or Cashapp $Gift2MaronzioVance