Excerpt from "My Life Sucked..." by A. Dacosta Brathway

As many an adventure as I've had, in high school, and as much fun as I had having those adventures, my high school days finally ended. The years blitzed by so fast... Probably because I did not live in the moment when things were happening. i was called into the Academic Dean's office and was warned that a letter was being to my house to advise my mother that she had to come to the school to sign me out! I was not going to officially graduate. SHIT!I knew that when my mother read that letter it would not matter that I did not graduate because she was going to kill me!/ My mother was a hard working single mother who did not attend any PTA meetings because she was wat too tired when she got home from work. Besides, there was no way she was going to ride a bus for an hour to go to my school. Oh hell no! I can remember always being nervous around my mother. I can also remember never being constipated and having to take a laxative because my mother was my laxative! My bowels were always loose. When my mother came home from work, my room always smelled like shit because the flatulence was overwhelming. I was quick, as a kid, because I was literally jet propelled!/ ...She read the letter and went off on me. Back then there was no such thing as a kid knowing the number to Child Support Services. If I did, know the number, they would have probably advised my mother to continue to kick my ass until I got it right./ Finally, the day came when my mother trekked up to my school and signed me out. The process did not last long... In fact, it was quite informal. It was sort of like "business as usual" for the black kids because all the kids that got signed out that day were black. It was sterile, surgical...therapeutic! I, to this day, cannot describe how relieved I was knowing that I did not have to return there after I mother put her John Hancock on that paper! So what if I did not graduate, had no high school diploma, and no future, I was free! Free from all the racial tension, the racial slurs, the race riots... I was not sure of what was ahead, but there was one thing that I thought of, in the moment of my joy, that I thought I would never have to go through again... I thought that I would never have to take another order from a white person for the rest of my life. And, whomever said "Be careful what you ask for!" Well, there were no truer words spoken!