Character Round-up Part II: BIN LADEN

One thing I know.

I cannot stand Bin Laden!!!



Oh, I don’t mean that menace of a dude hiding off in a cave over in the Middle East somewhere. Well, I don’t like him either. (Yo Bush, you know where he is! Nuke those mountains and let’s blow that joint. Time for them soldiers to come home!)

No I mean a crackhead vagrant in my hood that goes by the name of “Bin Laden”.

They call him Bin Laden because he looks like Bin Laden: tall, thin, same facial shape, a thick beard, minus the Arabic head wrap and gear.

I knew I was in trouble when one day, my neighbor and coworker, the Infamous Hen-Dog announced:

“LadyLee got a boyfriend.”

“Who??” the general audience asked.

“Bin Laden!”

*LadyLee kicking the HARD eyeroll*



I remember the day I first met Bin Laden. It was a cool autumn afternoon. I was cleaning out my garage, and pondering raking my leaves. I’d talked to the Mayor of my Hood, Snake, about coming over and helping me with these chores. He was washing cars at his bootleg car wash a couple of houses down the street from my house, and had promised to help me. But I think after he made his car wash money, he disappeared into thin air… He went to get a hit, I suppose.

Oh well.

I was dumping trash into my herbie curbie, when I spotted this tall lanky darkskinned dude walking up the street.

“Miss Lady!” he yelled.

I ignored him.

“Miss Lady!”

I gave him a head nod. Didn’t think it was a great idea to speak to him.

“I bet you think I’m a criminal, don’t you?”

I shrugged. I’ve been trained (brainwashed) by Hen-Dog to be nice to everybody. It cuts down on the chance that I would be properly "welcomed to the neighborhood", i.e., get my house targeted and robbed.

Then Bin Laden started walking towards me. I remember thinking to myself “Dude, my angels will tare you up if you bother me.”

I continued doing what I was doing.

“Ma’am, I just want a little work, that’s all. I see you got a lot of leaves…

“Yeah.”

“Can I rake your leaves?”

Now the “can I rake your leaves” request brought back crazy memories of Charles, and the look on my face told the whole story. I was not pleased.

He pointed at the leaves. “Ma’am, just need a little work, that’s all. I can have these leaves raked in no time.”

Well, I looked down the street for Snake. He was nowhere in site.

“Alright,” I finally said.

He went ahead on and raked the leaves and bagged them up in refuse bags. In the midst of these chores, Snake came strolling up the street. He stopped and looked at me like I had just snatched his crack pipe.

“LadyLee, I can’t believe you are lettin' Bin Laden rake the leaves! I was 'spose to do that!”

“Dude, you disappeared,” was my simple answer. “Besides, you can still help me with the garage."

Snake and I cleaned out my garage, stacked a few books, and laid down some spare linoleum and carpet to catch the oil that drips from my car.

Bin Laden raked the leaves and bagged them up, but didn’t take them out to the street corner. He just left the bags to lean against the house.

That was alright. That just meant that he would not be raking my leaves ever again. You can’t do a complete job, you’re out for the future. You just lost a customer, man.

After this, some craziness began happening.

Bin Laden started knocking on my door at ten and eleven o’clock at night. When I would ask who it was, he would say, “It’s Snake!”

I never believed this, because Snake rarely knocked on my door, unless we had an appointment for some yard work or a car wash. (Okay, I know that sounds funny, but Mayor Snake prides himself on being of high character and integrity. Read this post to see what I mean).

This happened several times.

I finally found Snake and went off about this ordeal. Something to the effect of…

“Snake! You better talk to your boy Bin Laden and tell him to stop knocking on my door all late at night, or I’m gonna call Zone 3 [the police] and tell them that he stole something.”

Snake yelled back...

“That’s what you get for letting that n**** rake your leaves, LadyLee!”

Well Snake talked to him.

Bin Laden decided to knock on my door anyway at an earlier time.

Now, I have a rectangular window above my front door. Kay and I figured out a long time ago that if we were upstairs, we could easily look over the upstairs banister and see through that window who was standing at the door without that person noticing.

Well, that day, on a Saturday afternoon, around four o’clock, Bin Laden was at the door.
I wasn’t going to answer the door, until he did something crazy…

He had the NERVE to pull out a brush, and quickly try to brush and tidy up his beard.

“Ohhhh noooo!” I yelled.

I almost broke my freakin’ neck running down those stairs to the front door. I snatched the door open.

“What, man!!??”

“Just wanted to rake your leaves, LadyLee.”

“No! And don’t come back!”

I closed the door in his face. I REALLY was hoping dude was NOT tidying himself up for me. I get the heebie-jeebies every time I think about it!

He did this a couple of more times. I didn’t even bother to answer the door.

The last time he came back was a month ago.

“Dude, I told you not to knock on my door!” I became highly upset when I saw him lounging on the brick steps of my front porch.

“I know, I know,” he said, his hands raised in surrender. “I just wanted to pull some of the weeds around the stone steps up there by the mailbox.”

“NO!”

“Well sister, can I get a quarter?”

“NO!”

“Come on sister, please. I'm just asking for a damn quarter!”

Personally, I have no idea what anyone would do with a quarter. I had a dollar on the table. I threw it at him. “If you come back, you going to jail. I swear I will call the police.”

I haven’t seen him since.

I told the Infamous Hen-Dog about it, who urged me to just send Bin laden on down the street to his house, the blue house down the street.

Part of me was quite interested in the whooping a bunch of Que Dogs would give Bin Laden.

But that would be wrong. No need for all of us to come up on oharges for putting the stomp down on a crackhead.

But like I said, he hasn’t come back.

Maybe I should’ve threatened him earlier!