Collect Free

It's midnight. Almost exactly. My house phone rings and when I look at my clock it says 11:59 pm. Too late for anyone to be calling my damn house. All of us have cell phones, if you need to reach any of the older folks in the house, you call the mobile. So I figure this person who called has either got to really need something or be ready for a good verbal lashing. So I pick up the phone and hear - "This call originates from a Correctional Facility in Misso-". CLICK. It was my crackhead uncle - literally. I have absolutely NO tolerance for him as a human being. His life means nothing to me. He has failed to be a husband to his wife, a brother to his siblings, an honorable son to his mother, an uncle to his nieces and nephews and most importantly - a father to his kids. So, by now you may be thinking , "this is another black male swept up and consumed by the prison system." Right? HELL NO. Wrong as wrong can be. My uncle had everything going for himself - intelligence to spare, good looks, a family that loved him to death, an education and a cunning business sense. So what went wrong? Instead of looking to his family and other positive things to fulfill his needs, he found solace in a needle. And, as Lorraine Hansberry so eloquently put it in "A Raisin in the Sun" - "It is dangerous when a man goes outside of his home to look for peace". It makes me sick to see what was once a good black man reduced to a fucking junkie from his own decisions and wrongdoing. And for that man, I have no sympathy or tolerance. It's like that.