I'm from the other side of the 'hood

I'm not going to lie. Things are a little different where I come from. We listened to a different type of music than you did. In my fifth grade class, when you were at school dances saying, "Kris Kross is gonna make you jump", we were on the corner saying, "Fuck tha Police". You catch my drift. The funny thing about it is that we were in Connecticut. I love that state. You'd never expect it.

You see, if you're like most people, you read Connecticut and said, "What the fuck is this guy on? Wasn't he getting the silver spoon treatment?" The funny thing about states like that is that there are a lot of rich people. Of course, wherever money goes, people follow. The more money there is in an area, the more of the "seedier" elements of society will pile up, trying to get a piece.

Norwalk isn't a pretty town. It's big. And all the "As Seen on TV" product advertisements you see after 4pm until about 6 in the morning come from the area about 3 blocks away from where I lived. I visited a few years ago, and things looked the same, except that most of the people I knew moved out and the neighbors dog was dead. And the street got smaller.

Well, not really smaller, but there were a lot more cars there now, than when I was growing up. You could barely walk down the middle of the street, and when we drove down it, there may have been 4 inches between mirrors on both sides. We left that neighborhood about a year after the first murder on the block. He was sixteen, and it was a drug deal. I don't have to tell you it went badly, but, I suppose I just did. I tell you all this because I want you to understand where I'm coming from.

Violence is always around us, in one form or another. We grow up with it in cartoons, TV shows, cereal commercials, music, comic books, and even our history books. When I tell you that you yourself are desensitized to all but the most extreme forms of violence, and maybe even then you enjoy movies like Saw or Hostel, it may take a couple of minutes to fully grasp that understanding if you don't meditate on that often.

My wife, on the other hand, is the opposite of that spectrum. There have been instances where she gives me a heart attack from her reaction to violence in a movie. Don't get me started on blood.

It's really very delicate, she is like a flower... or a butterfly. Untouched by the ugly reality, or illusion as it were, of violence that influences our actions or even speech.

Which is why it was a complete surprise when she kicked me in the back last night.

"Sorry, it was an accident." *ZZzzzzzzzz*

I love you, sweety. Happy Birthday.