My gown was white. The dress I wore underneath was off white with a lace trim and a silk lining that made me feel rather sexy for an eighteen year old. My hair was at my shoulders and I curled it that day so that it could fall into loose rings under the cap. I wore red lipstick and my mother let me wear her pearls. Pearls that I now have as my own. They aren’t real, but I don’t care. The only real thing in this lifetime is love. Everything else is negotiable.  Well, maybe not death?

I remember walking across that stage to shake the hand of the principal thinking, Damn, I did it. I did it; I was officially an adult and soon I’d be off to college to experience things I might have never even dreamed of. This time was going to be a time of discovery. A time of change.

Oh, it was a time of change all right.

My cousin Mike and I after Graduation

Throughout high school I was this straight and narrow girl. I didn’t have boyfriends, I didn’t do any experimentation and I didn’t defy my parents’ rules; I was a good girl.

The worst I did was smoke a couple cigarettes. Alcohol was never an issue because it was something that was offered to me, in moderation, by my parents. You know, like a glass of wine with Sunday dinner. Or a little glass of beer. Alcohol wasn’t taboo in our family, and I think that’s why I didn’t crave it. Kinda like the candy dish. My mom always kept a candy dish out. For certain I would eat the candy it held, but I never scavenged. Often times I didn’t even think about the sweet goodness in the crystal bowl. On-the-other-hand, I had a little playmate that would come over to play. Her mother was a big ‘no sugar for my kid because my kid will get a sugar high and that’s just a no, no, no’ proponent. When this little friend would come over the candy dish would be polished off.  In record time, at that.

Now I was a college student. No matter how I got to this point, I was there. It was time to find myself. It was time to define myself. It was time to make mistakes and learn from them. This was the time. Yes, this was the time.

It took a few months, but I found myself changing. The straight laced girl was no more. She was replaced with this Newport 100 smokin’, black leather Nike kickin’, Cross Color wearin’, hat-to-the-back sportin’, gangsta-rap listenin’, hardcore mother fuckin’ bitch.  WORD.  I rolled in the most stylin’ of hoopties (my Ford Ranger, fool) and I even walked with a little switch. I smoked blunts with my homies and didn’t give a shit about nuthin’. This change was dramatic. I still wonder if my parents wondered what the hell was going on.

This phase of my life lasted about four months. Four. Long. Months. Four months of talking like this, “Yo, yo, yo wazz da dizzle fo’ shizzle?”  I didn’t even have the internet to look up these phrases.

I am totally being serious. Without meaning any offense… I was a wigga!

1993 was a very strange year.  I partied in some strange houses that year where the Crazy Horse malt liquor and Philly blunts were in great abundance. I did some not-so-safe things that year, like rollin’ in my hooptie down in the  “fruit belt” with NWA blaring from my (not so) awesome  factory speakers.

1993 was the year I discovered what it was like to be a gangsta and it was also the year that I realized I was not cut out to be one.

I can still remember the moment.  I was at a friend’s house watching MTV.  This came on:

I fell in love with this guy named Kurt.  He was grungy and his music had these lyrics that just reached inside of me and shook my still forming soul.

And I forget
Just what it takes
And yet I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard
Its hard to find
Oh well, whatever, nevermind

I said goodbye to Gangsta Mishi and welcomed Grunge Mishi.  1993 was a year of discovery.

I made friends. I lost friends. I smoked. I burned. I laughed. I cried. I was out-there. I was serious. I was happy. I was sad. I was not myself. I was totally myself.

There was a lot of good that came out of that year. And that year led to 1994, which was probably the best year of my life. That was the year I fell in love with my own grunged out dude. That was the year I gave a big fuck you to what people wanted me to be. That was the year I told myself that I was really in charge. And it may have taken more than that year, but that was the start. It started with a little gangsta-rap rebellion and it’s led me to here. To this place where I know who I am and what I want. I still mess up and find myself in these odd situations. But I know that I can get through them all, *yo.

[S]he’s the one who like all our pretty songs
And [s]he likes to sing along and [s]he likes to shoot [her] gun
But [s]he knows not what it means
Knows not what it means, knows not what it means
Knows not what it means and I say yeah

*yo: I’ve been saying this since early 1993. Granted it was accompanied by two other yo’s, I’ve been saying it for a long time. When Gansta Mishi was transforming into Grunge Mishi I had a friend look at me and say, “Yo, yo, yo? Seriously? You need to stop saying that!” And I replied, “Dude, I will never stop saying that. Got it, yo?”  And I haven’t.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Me Myself and I, Music. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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