buss first or buss back

Over the recent days with the current economic crisis, I have revisited in my head conversations and discussions I have had with a number of my folk over the years. Many on the future of America especially since it is real in the field again. I first left Memphis at age 17 heading off to Morehouse. Getting there, I learned ATL was a whole lot different than Memphis. Morehouse was the shit and what I learned there was like something from Mr. Rodgers. You know, make believe. It was like folks could leave where they were from, go to a new place and have a whole new persona – like make believe. You know they get to college and could play rich, they could play tough or like they were from the streets, or gangster and stuff like that. All I noticed that an A was 90 to 100 unlike the 96 to 100 I had been used to in the Memphis public school system, so was up for taking advantage of that caused the grading system meant I could make believe I was smart.

Being from flip town, also know as the Bluff city, it was simply amazing, I mean I met black folks from Portland for example, who could hoop – amazing as well as some basically smart cats that were some generally trill folk. I mean folk who had read Hegel, Diop and Frantz Fanon before they got to college as I had which made me feel at home. Cats who know the books as well as the streets. But there were only a hand full though and out of all them folk, two folk I remember in particular outside my homeboys and some others [ yawl know who yawl are] were my folk Mike Green and V-Hall. They were from South Carolina, Charleston South Carolina, and off the bat folk recognized folk. V-Hall and Mike were different folk being from where they were. They had keloid knobs on their wrist where they had cut them and stopped the bleeding to show their allegiance to they folk. Being from Memphis, all we acknowledged were gold safety pins in our left ears and all my folk who attended the house with me [Cadillac, Storming Norman and those who were AMB] had the same experiences and beliefs.

A many nights we would sit, as if Hegel and Hume, we talked about our local home fronts as well as our local commandments of existence. Many were the same but some were different. One that I recall vividly was the philosophical discussion of “buss first or buss back.”

They were of the belief that if one pulled a pistol, they should be the ones to bust first. Unlike me and mine who acknowledged accountability and believed in Bussing’ back after being fired upon. For us it would be a case of self defense and plausible deniability. Their argument was strong, but ours was too. I just wonder with the way things are today: folks stealing beer and can goods from grocery stores and fighting in gas lines, and loosing jobs at a rate of about 100k a month, and everything going up in price and the dollar shrinking in value, will I change my position from bussing back to bussing first?