Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the hospital has witnessed the varying levels of compassion and incompetence inherent in all hospital staff. Because I have several good friends who work in the nursing and medical fields, I make it a point to treat my caregivers with utmost respect and cordiality. I mean, […]
Take a good look at this face. LOOK.AT. IT! Does it offend you? Well it ought to. It offends me…and that’s my mug painted over in black-face, scratching my head in apparent confusion. The source offense is not in the paint itself, but rather from the folks that make me feel this way every time […]
Retta’s DEETS So: I woke up on May 21st ready for my date with Drama to ensue around 1:15pm, the scheduled time of my daughter’s event. What happened instead was quite unexpected and quite the opposite of my expectations. I prepared myself for a rather mundane morning. What I got was every mother’s worse fear […]
Silly me for thinking that this summer was going to start off on a positive and drama-free note. I drove my daughter up to school today, excited that she had gotten through the year with relatively few set backs. Tomorrow is the last day of school, and my mind was filled with all the possible […]
I wanted to do a happy-happy post today; I did. But this is the second day in a row I’ve been called into my daughter’s school to discuss her “attitude” since she got back from her douche bag sire’s house this weekend. I swear, it’s like going back to 2007 all over again. Until recently, […]
An old co-worker of mine has a friend named Barbara who has a 30 year old son with Down’s Syndrome. His name is LT. One day, Barbara left for work as usual and left LT at home to his own devices. It was a typical day. Around noon, she got a frantic call from her […]
It’s been a while since I’ve had to bitch about my douche-bag-baby-daddy, Courtney the Platypus; but in true form, he’s back after 3-4 weeks, like a bad case of herpes. First, let me explain why he is now being referred to as a platypus. My brother, in his infinite wisdom, pointed out that this “man” […]
My little brother Sami recently went to Chicago for a bachelor party/dude’s night out. Being a first time tourist in the city, he said he had his head tilted backward looking up at the immense downtown from below. “We ate a lot,” he said. “It was a good time.” He told me about the club […]
It was the day he had been waiting for since they broke up in 2005. Adj was finally getting married, and he was free to release all the woe and regret that had been building up and twisting in his heart for these last few years. Some people had never forgiven him for dumping her; […]
Have you ever had a person in your life that just lied their way through their daily existence? I mean like every other sentence is just a straight up falsehood? We’ve all told our share of fibs, Lord knows I have; but I never knew there class of people roaming the planet that told lies […]
Maybe I’m not a “for real” Christian: I’m willing to concede that; but there are fewer phrases that make me cringe than “God told me to blah, blah, blah.” Whenever I hear anybody, Christian or not, utter the words “God told me”, my first thought is “You’re lying”. The second, depending on the person making […]
Fact: 71% of all Black American babies are born to unwed mothers and will most likely grow up without the presence of their biological father. A quick polling of my top five friends confirmed this. 3 of those ladies grew up with a step-father, one with no dad at all, and the other was the […]
My sister Adwoa’s boyfriend has proclaimed her the second worst stripper/dancer on the planet. He has identified me as the first. The details as to why he would think my younger sibling is such a horror in the art of seduction via dance have not been made clear to me. Therefore, I can only assume […]
This Wednesday I was summoned to court on contempt charges by my daughter’s douche bag sire. I can’t assign him the title “biological father” or “baby daddy”, because even those monikers carry more respect than he deserves. Anyhow, the charges read: Refusing visitation and Illegally changing my daughters name! (He is too illiterate to know […]
I’m really hoping to go to Ghana this summer with the girls. I’m in the midst of looking for a Twi teacher to help them assimilate a little bit better, and have been plying them with plantain and stew so that they can appreciate good Ghanaian cooking when it comes across their plates. Their immersion […]
Poor Marshall. When we were still dating back in 1997, I spent a summer with an “uncle” and his wife who lived in Columbus, Ohio. Uncle Elliot was a Ga and a family friend who’d known my dad from their secondary school days, so we shared no blood relation at all. However, Ghanaians rarely let […]
When I say I hate my baby daddy, I’m talking about pure, unadulterated hate. I’m not talking about that cute high school to age 20 something garbage that can be soothed over with an apology, a few tears and some chocolates. I’m talking about the kind of hate that has burned in my soul for […]
I have spent the last 2 weeks calling 404-679-5200 to find out what’s been going on with my money. Some of you may know this number well. It’s the number to the North Fulton Unemployment Office..err…Career Center. No matter what time of day it is, the line is always busy. Now that we’re in our […]
In Ghana everybody has a maid, and it’s not because we’re a country of balers. Everyone has a ‘domestic servant’, ‘house girl’ or ‘garden boy’ because no matter how poor you are, there is someone else who is poorer. Even the poorest of people can hire someone to sweep their compound in exchange for a […]
Anyone who has spent any amount of time in Ghana knows that it is a land of great contradiction. The locals scrub their white fête attire with Omo and bleach until it glistens whiter than the driven snow, and then hang the clothing to dry with the ground littered with rubbish just below. It is […]