Character Round-Up Part III: TINY...The Blood Ride

Continued from Prelude to a Ride.

“Hen-Dog, I bet I can tell you what kind of car he [Tiny] drives.”

“What kind?” he asked.

“A candy apple red Mustang.”

“He sure does. How you know?”

“Because you can look at his pretty ass and tell.”


Tiny has a car that he absolutely loves… A 1994 candy apple red Ford Mustang.



It is a very nice car, all candy apple red, and never has one spec of dust on it. I swear, dude must clean it every other day. I mean, I can’t recall even seeing pollen on his car during pollen season.



He’d probably scream if he walked outside and found his car covered with the nasty yellow dust.

Yeah, Tiny loves his car. And he likes it loud, loud, LOUD. It almost sounds like a jet that is flying a bit too low, about to crash land right up side your head. You can hear him approaching from a few blocks away. No matter how slow he goes, he can’t sneak up on anyone, that’s for sure.

I have been awaken from my sweet dreams many a time by the thunderous rumbling of his mustang cruising down the street. There have even been a couple of times where my house would shake if he drove by too fast.



During these times, I usually just reach over to my nightstand and quietly grab my cellphone and dial Hen-Dog’s house or cell phone number, with the general intent of telling Hen-Dog to kindly step out on his porch and quietly tell Tiny to, um, stop revving up his engine and to cut it off because I am trying to rest. But since I have been awaken from a peaceful sleep, I politely open up my Book of Cuss, and it usually comes out just a wee bit different, something akin to …

“Shawty, reach yo head out that door and tell that n**** to cut that damn car off before I call Zone three [police] on his a$$!!!”

The next day, or whenever I see Tiny again, the words I have for him are not nearly as kind. I even got violent and punched him one time, but it was like hitting a rock. I think I hurt my fist more than I hurt him.

He pays me no attention, though.

One day, in the middle of one of my rants, he said, "LadyLee I just got my car windows tinted. How you like it?"



I frowned up at the blood-red tinted windows. "Red tinted windows? Man, you crazy in the head! Don't noboby get their windows tinted red!"

I am perplexed, but I continue threatening and snapping on him about revving up his engine too late at night.

Anyway, on to my story.

“The Blood Ride”

I live across the street and three houses up from Hen-Dog, so we carpool, and ride the five miles to work together everyday. (More like he drives, and I ride with him. I play the Diva, and sit in the passenger seat and either whine, sing, read, sleep, or eat my breakfast. I pitch a total divafied conniption fit the 1% of the time that I DO drive.)

Anyway, we come home from work one day, and we see Tiny slowly backing out of the driveway, and then his car just stops in the middle of the street. He opens his door and sticks his foot out.

Hen slows down in front of my house. We both squint hard, looking down the street at Tiny jumping out of his car.

“What the hell is he doing?” I asked, as I opened the door.
“I don’t know," Hen-Dog answered.

I get out of the car and check my mail. I look down the street and notice that Hen-Dog has parked his car on the street in front of Tiny’s car.

“What are ya’ll negroes doing?!” I yelled.

“My battery is dead!” Tiny yelled back.

Oh… you know I had to march down the street and talk much MUCH trash. I stomped down there, backpack and laptop in tow, waving my mail, laughing all the way, feverishly reaching for my digital camera.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! HA! HA! HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

He paid me no mind.

“That’s what you get! That’s what you get!! THAT’S WHAT YOU GET!!!!” I screamed, as I bunny-hop all around the car.
He paid me no attention, and went on to explain what was wrong. “See, what happened was, I left my headlights on, and-“

I put my index finger to my lip. “Shut up, be quiet!”
He froze.
We both stood there quiet for a few seconds, listening to the silence, save for the tweeting of birds.
“Yeah, yeah!” I yelled. “That’s the way that car is suppose to sound!”
I continued laughing hard and running around his car.

He again paid me no mind. I watched as he lifted the hood of Hen’s car.


“Lee, you got any jumper cables?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I use them?”
“NO!!”
“I had some, but I left them up in Chicago the last time I was there. Let me use yours!”
“Hell NO!”

I wanted that car with the engine as loud as a 747 airplane silenced forever, you see. I was enjoying the quiet sounds of my hood in the afternoon.

Well, after a bit more protest, we ended up walking up the street to my house. I went inside and let up the garage door. We fumbled through my car trunk and found the jumper cables. We walked back down the street to his car, me talking MUCH trash the whole time…

…him paying me no mind.

Then he went into some looonnng convoluted explanation about how the jumper cables that he left up in Chicago cost seventy dollars, and were actually better for jump starting his car since his car engine was sooooo powerful.

*crickets*

I looked at him like he was crazy. “Dude, cheap ten dollar jumper cables are better than some seventy dollar jumper cables up in Chicago!”

Geez.

“I’m just saying,” he said.

“Whatever!”

I watched and snapped pictures as he attached the jumper cables to his car…

Got real sad all of a sudden as I heard his car start up… Got a bit down when I heard my own teeth rattle when he revved up the engine.




My time of peace was quickly over.

“Tiny, give me my jumper cables back, man.”

He removed the cables and gave them back to me. I started heading back up the street towards my house.

“What are you about to do, LadyLee?” he asked.

“I’m going to Kroger.”

“I need to go too,” he said. “I’ma catch a ride with you.”

I all of a sudden had a fascinating idea. “No, I’ma catch a ride with you Tiny… I want to ride in your car!”

“That’ll work! Just give it a minute to charge up, and we can go.”

I went back up the street to my house, got my wallet, and then walked back down to their house ten minutes later. We got in his car…

I immediately knew things were strange.

First of all, my seat was waaaay back in a gangster lean or something. I have no idea why people (men in particular) ride like that. I need to see what’s going on, i.e., I need to sit up straight.

Then I looked out of the window. Everything was red through the red tint… the trees, the houses, the cars… EVERYTHING was blood red.

“Dude, can you see through this dark red tint? I mean, it looks like your windows are covered with blood.”

“Yeah, it don’t bother me. I can see just fine.”

“Uh, okay,” I said.

Anyway, we head off down the street. Funny, his car doesn’t sound as loud from the inside. Just a slow low rumble. Maybe he doesn’t know that his car sounds like an out of control freight train.
We get up to the stoplight, which is red. When it turns green, he throws the car into gear and screeches out of control to the left. My head whips back and hits the headrest hard.

I couldn’t yell or talk trash. I was too busy trying to hold on to my seat, the window, the dashboard, something!

“Dude, slow down!”

“Oh it’s alright. We’re not going that fast.”

The hell you say, I thought silently to myself.

“I have to get some gas, LadyLee,” he said as he drove like a bat out of hell down Pryor Road. I was doing my best just to hold on. He came to a screeching halt in front of a pump at the gas station. We stopped so fast that my head went forward. Thank God for seatbelts. I thought I was gonna eat the dashboard.

I was a bit speechless as I watched him jump out of the car. He closed the door, and grabbed the gas pump.

All I could think is “Damn, he is red through all this red tint. He looks like he is covered in blood!”

He got his gas and leaped back in the car. I was still looking at him. He is tall, but it seemed as if the driver’s seat was pulled up just a bit too far.

Let’s just say that it looked as if he moved that seat up another half an inch, he would be eating the stirring wheel, and his knees would be touching his ears.

“Um, excuse me Tiny,” I said. “Don’t you think you should pull that seat back just a tad?”

“No, this is the way I drive, I’m alright,” he replied.

*crickets*

We exited the gas station, the back wheels burning out as we screeched back on to Pryor road. I looked behind us to see if I could see smoke from the burning of rubber, but all I saw was the red blood like tint of the back window.

We made it to the highway, and got on I-75/85 south from University Avenue.

“Tiny, you are going the wrong way. We should have taken I-75/85 north towards I-20."

“I’m going the right way. We are going to Kroger.”

I looked out of the window and noticed that the sun had gone down and it was starting to get dark. I don’t know if it was me or not, but damn, it felt like we were going a hundred miles an hour. The streetlights had a strange eerie reddish glow to them.

Like they were bathed in blood.

“Tiny, we are going the wrong way. And dude, can you see? It looks like we are looking through blood!”

“Lee, we are NOT going the wrong way. We are going to the Kroger up on Cleveland.”

“What??????!!!!”

“The Kroger on Cleveland,” he said, as he leaned forward, shifted into a higher gear, and hit the gas harder. My head snapped back against the headrest.

“We’re going to the black peoples Kroger?”

He frowned. “Yeah, I go there all the time.”

“Oh hell no! I shop at the white peoples Kroger on Moreland! I never go to the Black people Kroger!”

For some reason, in the midst of my Diva-like wailing, I thought he would get off the highway and jump back on and go back towards the white people’s Kroger, but he kept barreling along.

(Sidenote: I don’t care to shop at the Kroger that all the negroes in Atlanta frequent, the Kroger Citi-Center on the southside on the corner of Cleveland and Metropolitan (Stewart Ave). The lines are too long. They run out of stuff. It’s too loud, too damn ghetto. There is just too much going on up in there.

Now one thing I understand with this whole inner city gentrification/revitalization process: when white people move into these areas, all kinds of new stores show up, right there in the middle of the hood, just to appease them (in my opinion). So as a result, we have what is known as the White people’s stores.

I myself adore the “White People’s Kroger” on Moreland Avenue down near Little Five Points on the East side of town, about two miles from my house. It is NEVER crowded. ALL of the checkout lines are open. They have all kinds of wonderful gourmet ish. I can get my prescriptions filled in 3 to 5 minutes. And they play a good selection of old school music over the speakers. I like shopping to a little Barry White, Al Green, and Chaka Khan.

Let’s just say that my predudice ass only shops at the white people’s Kroger. I haven’t been in the black people’s Kroger on Cleveland in years!)

I was a bit pissed to say the least. It was eight o’clock in the evening, and I knew every negro in the state of Georgia was going to be up in that place doing the Hustle and the Electric Slide.

DAMN!

“Come on, Tiny, why we gotta go to the black people’s Kroger, man!!?? We gonna be up in that camp all night long!!”

“You will be alright, girl,” he said as he started fumbling with the radio.

Now barreling down the highway like we were, at damn near 90 miles an hour, like we in the remake of the Fast and the Furious, or on an episode of World’s best police chases… viewing the world through blood red tinted windows, I thought he would put in some heavy metal or some Hardcore gangsta rap, like some NWA or something.

This negro puts on some D’Angelo.

I looked at the radio, then looked back at him. He is sitting there, grooving to the music. I am sitting there, my heart beating fast and hard, just trying my best to hold on.

"Um, Tiny, does D'Angelo have a new CD or something?"
"No," he replied, "This is his old stuff."
"Uh, oh, okay."

He swerved hard around a group of cars. I thought it was best to stop talking, and just to concentrate on bracing myself.

He leans forward, shifts to a higher gear, and hits the gas… My head bams the headrest, and I again reach for something, anything to hold on to.

I was moving around so much that my headscarf came undone.

We get off of the highway, and turn onto Metropolitan, back wheels screaming and screeching hard. All of the stores look as if they are covered in blood. It is really creeping me out and I can't wait to get out of the car. We get to the black peoples Kroger and he parks as far away from the store as possible.

“Um, Tiny, why are we parked so far from the store?”

“Ladylee, I don’t park near other cars.”

Figures. I bet he would scream like a woman if something scratched his car. Damn.

“We gotta walk, LadyLee!”

I am mad, but I am thankful that we made it to the store in one piece.

So we get out and walk what feels like a mile, slightly uphill, to the grocery store. He is tall, and has a long stride. I am fighting to keep up with him.

We walk into the store. And I spot something.

A chick, let’s just call her “Quita”, is looking Tiny up and down, and giving me a hard scowl too, like, “I’ma take your man.”

I’m thinking to myself, now, I am just trying to go to the grocery store and get a few things… Why can’t a broad go to the store and shop peacefully? Do I have to whoop some tail tonight? Not to defend a dude, but just out of principle?

I wanted to yell, “Yo, he ain’t my man, and I ain’t after him! You can have him! Take him!”

Tiny, of course, was oblivious to what was going on. He grabbed a cart and kept it moving. I grabbed a basket and said, “Tiny, I will meet you at the cash register.”

You see, I started thinking that Quita might have a thick crew of her girls with her. I am in the hood, and my road dog LadyTee was not with me. Best for me and Tiny to go our separate way.

We do our shopping and we meet up at the front of the store and find a check-out line. Of course each line is ten people deep.

~Sigh~

The cashier laughs and says “Ya’ll, this is a good day. It’s not all that crowded today. This is real light.”

~Double sigh~

We leave, and Tiny decides to stop in the dollar store. I told him that that was some craziness, because that meant that we would have to walk a country mile to the car, put the groceries in the car, then hike back up to the dollar store.

He said no. Instead we did something totally ghetto: we pushed the full shopping cart right into the dollar store. I thought we would get yelled at, but no one said a word.

He got what he needed and we wheeled everything back out to the car.

We drove the few miles back home…

Tires screeching and screaming.

Going real fast, some 100 miles per hour, weaving in and out of traffic.

My scarf coming undone.

Listening to that ancient D’Angelo CD.

Everything red through that doggone crazy red tint!

We came to a screeching halt in front of my house. I snatched up my bags. I was all too happy to get out of that car.

Nice to see the world clearly again.

Lesson learned. I won't be riding with him. Never. Again.



A while ago, I needed a new CD player for my car (future post)…Tiny wanted to take me up to Best Buy so that we could peruse the CD players.

I immediately screamed “Hell nawl, that’s alright! I ain’t fooling with you no more, man!!”

My brother, "Milk and Cookies", loves fast cars, and was itching to ride somewhere with Tiny, despite my warnings.

He came back and said, "Lee, that's kinda wierd seeing everything through red tint, everything looking like a bucket of blood has been thrown on it. I felt kind of strange."

"I told you, man! I won't be riding with the dude ever again!"

Riding with him was the scariest ride of my life.

They say that some folks view the world through rose colored glasses.

Heck...

They should flip the script...

...And view the world through blood tinted windows.

LOL!!!