Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Street Knowledge (formerly) Pt. 1

One thing I like to tell people is that everything I learned growing up, I could have figured out on my own without people telling me what's what.
Sure, I wouldn't know that the sun is a big ball of burning hydrogen or something, but I bet I'd be able to tell you it comes up everyday.
Some scientist might say "What do you mean by up?"
And I'd be like "Up your butt, jerk."
That's the kinda thing you learn on the street. I call it "Street Knowledge".
Here's some more street knowledge – a double cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke at Jack n the Box is about six bucks or so.
They don't tell you THAT in school.
They don't tell you a lot of things in elementary school. They'll tell you that World War 2 was won by the allies, but they won't tell you that a light beer generally has less alcohol than a regular one.
Sure, some people will tell you that burger prices and beer alcohol content won't get you by in life. But goddarnit, I've gotten by.
Because I'm from the streets.
I went to the school of hard knocks, where you learn things like if you flush lint from your lint trap down your toilet, it's going to get backed up and you'll find yourself using every towel in the house to clean up your bathroom floors one Saturday night.
That's from the street.
They don't teach you that. You can't learn it. It just happens.
Like you bring candied apples to work and a coworker wrenches out her teeth with one of them and blames you and everyone gets pissed and you wish you never brought candied apples for everyone.
That's some street for you.
I watch a lot of movies about the street and they don't talk about how if you don't take your trash out you get rats, or how you can't Tivo your front window to see what the squirrels have been up to while you were at work, or how you can't pay your rent with coupons.
Stuff like that they just leave out.
Like that movie Out for Justice where the guy goes out and tries to get some street justice for something or another.
It would have a been a lot better of a movie if it was about my letter writing campaign to make it legal to make on the sidewalk like dogs as long as you pick up after yourself.
I had even fixed the whole plastic bag problem at grocery stores – you reuse the bags to pick up your own waste and then turn the bag of waste over to the recycling companies where you get a carbon credit for it - but let me tell you something I learned on the street: that kind of idea gets you locked up.
But here's the thing – how many of you would pay to see a movie about one man's crusade to turn public sidewalks into public toilets? I bet a lot of you would. It'd be just like that movie Milk, but it's not about being gay and stuff, it's about wanting to shit on the sidewalk. I'd call it Shit. Or Out for Shit. Either way, we can all agree it'd be a good movie.
People talk a lot about street logic. But normally they mean some kind of ends to a mean or means to an end thing that involves Mario Van Peebles.
But that's just not "street" if you ask me.

No comments: