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My friend, who's half-black was warned by his mother
not to come over because he kept complaining to her
that the police profiled him every time. Then police
killed a black man as he reached to take off his seat
belt during a routine traffic stop. This worried my
friend and much more so his mother, but still he brought
over his computer. It was having issues and was in danger
of giving him an aneurysm.
I helped him with it, and networked our computers together
to test it with one of the best games of all time—Half-Life.
More specifically we played a module of the game called
Day of Defeat which is a World War II simulation. This
is a first person shooter game, which means you are
as close to the violence as computers can take you.
We kill each other and other real people through our
computers again and again in this very gory very fast
paced medium.
But at the height of our play, just as the sun set,
something like firecrackers sounded. It was a drive
by shooting, a half block away at my corner—the
corner of N Haight Ave and Failing St across from Unthank
Park. We paused in disbelief, crossed ourselves and
kept playing.
Four days later I followed my neighbor down to Unthank
Park to shoot some hoops. We discovered John Kerry,
the Presidential candidate, happened to be speaking
at the community center there.
He came out and we walked over as he walked over. He
shook my hand and griped my shoulder like he really
cared. Failing Street is a step away and I wanted to
warn him, but he stepped on for a photo opportunity
before I could.
I wondered what he'd say about the drive by, but then
I remembered that he's a war hero—or was that
a war technically? He seemed like such a normal guy.
My neighbor kept commenting on his olive tan, while
I tried to beat into my head that this was somebody
important, special, a real hero, but I was failing.
Maybe that isn't a bad thing—Kerry failing, but
hate—I do hate Bush. It's a cross roads. As a
normal man I could vote for John—it is a normal
name.
I was thinking Nader, but John cared enough to come
to my corner, my home—not that Nader wouldn't,
he just happened not to. Yes, I will vote for John and
hope he doesn't fail us so we don't have to hate him
too.
My thoughts go back to the look in his eyes as he looked
at me as if he was imagining himself as me, or himself
at what he thought my age to be. I'm sure he thought
I was between eighteen and twenty six. I'm twenty seven
so when my neighbor, who's twenty, commented on the
potential for another draft I jokingly said it didn't
matter to me. But it does, my brother's only sixteen.
So somehow all these things have tied together in my
mind using names as string and knots of irony. World
War II, Vietnam, and Iraq swirling together. The place
and street names about my home conflicting with the
name John Kerry. Profiling, police shootings, and drive
bys waring with my idealistic perception of my neighborhood.
Without a steady job I feel like I'm living half a
life and play Half-Life as I ponder this. Oregon, led
by Portland, still seems to be the forerunner of the
bad economy. Is this part of why Kerry cared enough
to come here? He was accessible to me because I live
in the worst part of the worst economy of the largest
economy of the world—not that I'm unthankful.
All this seems to be focused with planetary alignment-like
weirdness on my street corner.
So with this article I hope I've fulfilled my duty
to share the oddness, the irony, and maybe even a hidden
lesson.
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