Saturday night, Jun 6: I found myself in the presence of a guy--seemingly intoxicated but perhaps naturally inebriated--like--who was "tryna holla" as we say. ("We" being me, my homegirl, and my cousin, who were also with me.) So, he's talking. I'm standing there attempting to maintain my personal space--which he was unashamedly claiming as his own--and keep the light red substance in his plastic cup off my person as he swayed too and fro. (The substance filled cup being a further sign of his likely intoxication.) The monologue progressed, and I waded through words to form sentences to ultimately gather the essence. Noticing his particular dialect, I asked where he was from. "New Orleans," was the reply. I had suspected that much seeing as how the way of speech that I find to be commonplace in many New Orleans brothas is easily recognizable . Next question, "Whatchu doin' up here?" (In Grambling, where I was visiting my people.) Him: "In school. Gone be a doctor one day."
Saturday, June 13: I'm recapping the previous Saturday's event with my cousin--who thought the sight of me and said inebriated male quite funny. Once she and I had finished our assessment of all that had gone down the week before, it hit me. I had been in the presence of a future trailblazer in the medical field. The traditionally trained and educated medical doctor who would somehow manage to remove the negative mainstream stigma from the practice of natural healing once and for all while simultaneously making normal the concept that a faulty and unnatural diet is a primary cause of the plethora of diseases that plague people and makes necessary the endless flow of drugs and medical procedures that leave us physically, mentally, and financially out of balance.
Or, simply another medical doctor in the field doing what medical doctors traditionally do. But the point, as it suddenly came to me, wasn't about whether he'd go on to actualize my personal fantasies about health and healing or whether he'd continue on the traditional path (which I'm by no means downplaying here). More relevant than that was the notion that this person, in all his drunken, gansta-fied glory--regardless of what box society may have built for him based on his way of dress, speech, and current exploitation of worldly gratifications (all which I have no problem accepting as who he is), and regardless of what my initial thoughts might have been when he first came up to me--has aspirations to and will be a doctor. And I'll take his word for that.
peace and prosperity!
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