Sooooooooo, Anyway....
Last night, I'm hanging out at the pool hall having a few drinks with a friend of mine I'd burned some cds for and brought to him when this black guy who looked slightly older than both of us but vaguely familiar comes up and asks to borrow my friends' cell phone. I think nothing of it, light a cigarette and continue nursing my beer trying to tune out this obvious drug deal that's being set up via my friend's phone when the guy hands it back to him and stuffs what I assume is a bag of weed back in his pocket. He turns to ask me if he can bum a smoke and before I can tell him I only have one left in my pack he is all shaking with excitement and goes "I know who the fuck you are! Ted Jenkins!"(Sweet christ, he mispronounced my name in the second most common and therefor annoying way possible)
It is then that I realize that I went to elementary school with this cat, and also around this time that he embraces me and calls me his "nigga" for the first time. This guy is flying on something, but I'm not sure what it might be. I am sure, however, that it's not a drug I've encountered before and I just blank on it. The next thing I know, this guy has snatched my cigarette out of my hand and asked if I smoke weed. Before I can even say that I do occassionally, he has a baggie out and up to my nose to smell except this bag he has to my nose doesn't smell like any weed I've ever taken a whiff of before. Keep in mind that we're right up at the bar with the owner right behind me and people all around including several people I've been told are undercover cops.
The next thing I know, we're outside and he's embraced me three more times and called me his "nigga" several more times, and whenever anyone walked by he'd go "I haven't seen this muthafucka' in like, fifteen years....fourteen years..........eighteen years," the amount of years changing nearly each time he said it. He tries to talk me into going to smoke with him, and I mumble some bullshit story about having to meet someone in a few minutes and the next thing I know he's embraced me again, called me his "nigga" and climbed into a cab and sped off. It's funny how my past is constantly leaping at me from the shadows like a mugger eager for anything worthwhile, then makes a break for it just as fast once it realizes I'm not going to play it's little games.
After a few minutes spent standing around outside, dazed on the icey sidewalks of downtown Statesville with the usual goons walking by me, I head back inside to find my friend. I locate him sitting on the bench that's right by the very last pool table in the right hand corner of the pool hall and go join him. I tell him all about the little episode which he hadn't really witnessed, and about how it was weird but pretty cool to see someone after all that time and have them actually remember you. I also mention how this kid once looked my number up in the phone book and would call me randomly all the time, and that even though it slightly irritated me because I knew this kid was a troublemaker and I didn't want to get into shit I talked to him everytime because I thought maybe I could help him out, give him a dose of reality or something in my little kid mindset of the time. After telling a slightly abridged version of this tale to my friend, he mentions that when the guy dialed the number (and it took him three times to dial it) on his cell, that he had glanced over and noticed the guy had three crack rocks in his hand.
It was then that I remembered the violent and paranoid nature this guy had about him, how he was visibly shaking and smelled and looked awful. How he was skinnier than me, and that the whites of his eyes were a piss yellow color and his pupils were like gunshots in his sockets. I shook my head in disbelief and mild disappointment, hoping that wherever this guy was heading that he wasn't too lost to one day find his way back. Then I realized this guy was always falling, even as a kid, and that if he had been falling for that long he probably hit bottom a long time ago. With this, I lit another cigarette and me and my friend got another beer and didn't speak of this again for the remainder of the night.