THE FRUIT DON’T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE

I’m sure you have heard it said at some time or another that the fruit don’t fall far from the tree.  This maxim is often used to describe the relationship between the parent’s character and deeds, be they positive or negative, to the children’s character and deeds.  It’s a saying I used to hear a lot from the grey and silver hairs as they sat on their porche swings or rockers and watched young children in the neighborhood after having lived long enough to have also watched their parents grow up in the same locale.  I think it is true today as it has been in past times.

Perhaps the saying has to be modified somewhat to be qualified to fit into this millennial age where there is so much technology (i.e., phones, tablets, p.c.’s). What’s trending is negativity, death, decay, destruction, and degeneration through various media streams and they are aimed at gaining access of our children’s minds through their ear and eye holes.

The fruit don’t fall far from the tree, true, but fruit that falls on a slope does roll downhill.  And also animals that love to devour fruit peruse the tree daily in hopes of carrying the sweet fruits away. The fruits that are being carried away are our children.  The predatory animals are many and widespread and although many are easily identifiable many are obscure and innocuous in appearance, still their final goal is take your child from right under your nose.  It could be an ad campaigns selling skin tight desirable clothing aimed at your 14 year old girl, or a rap cd from cash money records equipped with demonic hooks, and references to the illuminati and devil worship, or perhaps another rap artist talking about selling bricks of cocaine and blazing the pistol.  Children’s ear holes and eye holes are sensitive;  once they have experienced corruption they cannot go back into a state of innocence or unknowing.

These days we find ourselves talking negatively so much about the youth mainly because the youth are into so many things that we never participated or engaged in.  Their actions, behaviors, and attitudes baffle us and leave us scratching our heads, wondering where these children learned the ways of being and doing from. It just can’t be the case that it was always the parents.  Families with strong role models and with educated God fearing parents, are experiencing loss and decline in their children.  The fruit don’t fall far from the tree doesn’t seem to suffice for the parents who did all the right things and elevated their class and economic status for themselves and their children.  Today a kid who’s provided every amenity for life will forsake it out to go and hang down in the neighborhood with the homeboys, sell dope and get drunk and high all day.  It only makes sense that either the fruit hit the slope and rolled downhill or an animal came and stole it away the moment it fell from the tree.

One behavior exhibited by our young males that we have come to detest as a whole society is the phenomenon of sagging.  Of course you know this is where young men wear their pants so that their buttocks are exposed.  “Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, looking like a fool with your pants on the ground,” that’s what the song said and it seemed to accurately convey our feelings of wonder and amazement. As if we would ask, “are you really showing us your behind?” This is shameful, yet and still they are proud of this way of dressing even though a shameful part of their body is exposed.  What is fitting is that it remains hidden.  I’ve seen a massive social media campaign launched by Facebook, you tube, and twitter, users to explain the origins of sagging as a sexual advertisement from homosexuals to other males in prison signifying their willingness to have homosexual sex.  Seemingly, it appears to have occurred with little or no effect.  The kids used to only sag the top quadrant of the buttocks, whereas now they have all of their buns out, for all to see. It looks so nasty; their cracks looking akin to the bread slot on a toaster oven.  We try to tell them, “This is supposed to look cool, but it looks disgusting.”  Still the young men don’t care and don’t care to listen to it.

Our young women have fell  victim to madness as well.  A cute outfit for a young lady these days is a pair of skin tight leggings or jeans usually with a skin tight t- shirt that has dubious and/or provocative slogans written on them.  When we try to tell our young women that dressing so provocatively will make the opposite sex view them as a sex object, they say that we are old, old fashioned, or out of touch with the times.  The thing we know and are trying to get them to internalize is: there is only one thing you can catch with raw meat and that is a dog.  They want to be loved and admired and I get that sentiment, but they want to be admired for all the wrong reasons.  They want validation of their own self worth, but they will never get it going about things that way.  Common sense tells us what inspires wonder is not that which is seen, but that which remains hidden.

As youths the worst things we did was sneak a little alcohol or perhaps the more adventurous of us smoked a little weed.  But children these days take designer drugs, life altering substances pioneered in labs, drugs like: spice, ecstasy, molly, and bath salts. Extasy and molly pills are like consuming cocaine, heroine, and marijuana all combined.  Our kids are higher than California redwoods, no wonder they can’t dress themselves, they’re zooted!  Watching our young people today is like watching a train wreck in slow motion, you see its coming, and you know it’s going to happen and you are cringing, seemingly feeling the impact, it is going to occur at any moment.

The fruit don’t fall far from the tree, or another proverb from the Holy bible, the fathers ate sour grapes, now the children’s teeth are set on edge.  Fathers and mothers the nation across have passed a psychic heritage to our children, the same as we have passed them a physical and spiritual heritage.  The tide of our lives, the pathways we have had to traverse, has ushered our children in to this world when we weren’t mentally stable ourselves and now when their fruit falls it doesn’t settle, but is already on a roll downhill.  Our children’s minds are all messed up, because our minds were all messed up, as our parents and great grandparents continuous to a definite point in our lineage.  Many of our progenitors had to lose their “natural minds” in order to cope with an unnatural mind-blowing experience like the North Atlantic slave trade and the rigors of slavery, Jim Crow, lynching violence and the civil rights struggle in America.  We have been infused with fear, inferiority, color complexes, and uncertainty about who we are and our value and worth as a people. Not many of us know who we really are.  We are lost.  Who could possibly arrive at a place that they desire to be, geographically, logistically speaking, when they did not know first where they were.  The route to anywhere is always determined by knowing where you are first, then and only then can you chart a course to your chosen destination.

Exacerbating the problems we are having with our children are the Jay z’s, Lil Wayne, Baby’s, and Kanye wests, of the music world who have contracted with the devil to make satanic music to lure Gods children away.  Literally the pied-piper came along and danced our kids away with a tune.  Shame on us if we continue to let it occur again after we knew the truth.  This year all over the country innocent babies and young girls will be killed by stray bullets from automatic weapons like the Kalashnikov ak47, or “the chopper “as it is affectionately known in the street and hip hop world.  This loss of these youth will be heart and soul breaking and for this blogger the whole scenario is mind boggling, because choppers are manufactured and sold out of Russia.  How did a gun from Russia that will shoot through 3 brick houses continuously, before the bullet loses velocity, find our city streets U.S.A.?  So many young men will be murdered over trivial things like cocaine that keeps arriving here from Colombia.  We can find Osama, but we can’t seem to find the origin of all these various kinds of dope that are stupefying our youth and turning them into criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes, prisoners, and victims of early death.  They just keep right on arriving. The unseen hand is always moving.  That hand is like the wind, you cant see which way it flows, but you can see the trees swaying and see for definite sure that it blows.  The unseen hand is busy!

This year many unfortunate children are going to die from abuse of designer drugs like molly, ecstasy, spice, and bath salts.  This very year prescription drugs like Lortab, Percocet’s, and Xanax will cut the lives of beautiful talented young folks off before they ever have the opportunity to grow and flourish.  We have seen it and it is heartbreaking.  A portion of our kids will die and another portion will go on into the ever growing and already colossal prison system.  Did you know that the U.S. ,alone now has more prisoners than all the rest of the 194 nations of the world… combined!  Approximately 75% of those nearly 3 million men and young men are African-American males who only comprise about 6% of the total U.S. Population…WOW!

The fruit don’t fall far from the tree as I stated earlier but if it falls on a slope it does roll downhill. Do you know what the 13^th amendment to the United States constitution says?  It expressly states, “Slavery is hereby abolished, except, where a person is duly convicted of a crime.” The prison industrial complex is going to get our fruit and deliver them to the plantation.  I don’t want to seem presumptuous, but if you will consider all the economic incentives such as the seizure of property from drug sales like homes, cars, and other property; fees, fines, and court costs associated with the court system.  Lawyer fees, bails, bonds, jail phone calls, commissary, survival packages, and the entire like. You can then see how this is trending. The state will require a hefty bill from the consumer and tax payer in taxes to feed and house these “criminals.”  All the while the same kid who would never get a job in freedom will now work in prison for a private corporation who has contracted to use the prison labor pool for .17 to .50 cents an hour.  It may be hard to get a job out here, but it’s no struggle in the joint.

The fruit don’t fall far from the tree.  Is that an indictment against us the parents?  Or are we today willing to make an acknowledgement that unseen hands have orchestrated a plan and are executing it to make off with our precious fruits.  Our fruit contains our seeds, how can our heritage go on without a seed?  Think about it.