BBC – Part II

I was like low key infactuated with Romeo. He was always givin the light skinned face, squinting his eyes and licking his lips all crazy. Man listen, it’s gettin real and we moving on from middle school so you already knowwww what’s bout to go down 😏

Let me tell you something. Ain’t shit ever go down wit Romeo. We kissed in the back of the school bus one time but that was it. It was honestly nothing more than that though, just crushing. I was too shy to have a conversation with the boy half the time. I didn’t even know how to flirt. People was really flirting in middle school though and I just wasn’t there yet lol. Couldn’t get it right. It was no point really, my mind was made up that I would wait until marriage to lose my virginity. What did I know, I’m 14 going to high school thinking marriage would be in the next 5 years or so. Another rude awakening lol.

Before I take y’all into high school, allow me to give a quick run down about where I come from. It’s always important to understand the history of a person to know who they are and where they’re going. We’ll take these lil visits from time to time. Keep scrolling 🤘🏾

In the picture up top is my grandmother and her sisters. My grandmother is the young lady to the right. Lil petite thing just like me. But if you look closely you’ll notice one thing. LEGS. Ain’t no lackin. Y’all know the sayin: Thick Thighs Saves Lives. Not saying that to insinuate anything nasty about my grandma or her sisters but I heard they used to be live. My Aunt Ruth always talking about how my grandmother had a pair of big and sexy legs and that my legs are just like hers. Everything else on her was small but you couldn’t miss them legs. 

Next up, is the lioness I referred to in part 1. Just call her Ma cause that’s what everybody called her round the way. She gave birth to me at 18, unexpectedly. You heard of that show “I didn’t know I was pregnant”. She should’ve been on it. While I was in middle and high school, the guys was checking for her. ALL ages, it didn’t matter lol. She had them LEGS though. And she, my grandmother, and my great aunts passed it on to me. So I guess I can agree with those who say I am blessed. But everything that glitters ain’t gold. There’s pros and cons to everything.

I remember some of the most important things mother taught me. Yes, it was about boys. My mommy told me “Make sure you don’t be giving out your number to a whole bunch of boys. Boys talk. They’ll be having a conversation with they friends and next thing you know they both talkin bout how they got your number.” Lol. I laugh at that now because I’m famous for saying no, no thanks. 

Side Note: that outfit that she has on in that picture was supposed to be mine, it was mine actually. I could never fit it. Back to the story:

“I don’t even want to waste your time” is my favorite line. Me and my homegirl, I’ll call her Chris Brown wife and CB wife for short, used to stay joking about giving dudes our emails instead. Ha. My Ma also gave me another vital piece of advice: “DON’T EVER LET A GROUP OF BOYS BE ABLE TO SIT AROUND AND TALK ABOUT YOU.” Know this: My Momma Ain’t Raise No Hoe lol (a song by future for those who aren’t hip ☔️). Please remember that I said this. 📝 The special thing about my Ma is that she was always one of the guys. Just like me. 

She always reminded me of the around the way kind of girl, she has two brothers and two male best friends.  My Ma has been working as a sheet metal mechanic for over 15years (hence the pic to the right-thorough / unapologetic). Often times she would share some of her stories about the conversations had at work with me.  It would be general conversation, but as the only woman on her job site 95% of the time they pretty much always talked sports and women. She just vicious like that. From the way men would talk about women and she’d always say, “I’m never getting married.” Sounding just like me. Every time I hear some of my guys or my brothers talk about girls I say the same thing or say “I’m never getting a boyfriend”. And it’s because of her, along with some of life’s experiences, that I adopted a certain kind of attitude in my later high school and college years. Some might’ve caught the heat, some might not have. But we will revisit that conversation later. In so many ways I wanted to be like her. All of the guys, they respected her. People respected her. They knew not to f*ck with her. She spoke her mind when needed and didn’t care what people thought. It wasn’t always good but it was always real.  The last piece of advice that I know stuck with me was “Girls will not like you, you’re smart, you got a nice body, a big butt, you’re light skinned and you’re pretty. Girls will not like you for no reason and you gotta be okay with that. No matter how nice and sweet you are, everybody is not gonna be your friend. Some girls will be jealous of you” . My Ma was a lover but she wasn’t scared to throw her shit up either and still will. I love listening to her stories about how she used to be rumbling in her younger days. While some grew up living, my Ma grew up a survivor and she always strived to make sure my brother and I didn’t have to go through the things she went through in her adolescent years.

I’m movin up in the world. It’s summer 03 now. Lil Wayne and Jigga are my favorite rappers. And my sister, I’ll call her Juicy J cause only she would be hip to that name, was steady putting me on to TCB. Every time she got a new CD she was coming over to let me burn a copy. No PA Palace for me and Jeffro, we got all our shit off of other people and limewire. 

On to high school.

I’m 14 now, a freshman and a size bigger. Coming out of middle school I was in a size 8. And by the middle of 9th grade I was in a 9. I went to Largo Senior High School. At the time when I attended, the school was widely known for their go-gos. “That butterrrrrfly makes me go crazyyy!”, CCB used to crank that joint heavy lol. MOB used to play up there too, the first band I ever heard use gunshots in their songs. This was back when Tinko was the lead mic, they had everybody feelin gangsta lol. The gym used to be hot and everywhere you went dudes was either beating they feet or battling and girls was doin some wild dance lol. Them gogos made my freshmen year so memorable. And while I had it up in the gogos yet in still, I experienced some things that I can’t ever forget. Like this one situation. You can be minding your own business sometimes and trouble will just come and find you. Once again, the advice I received was a direct reflection of what I was about to experience and all I can say, is that my Ma really was and is my protector.

While I was in 9th grade, there was a guy that had a huge crush on me. I think his name was Joseph so let’s just call him Joe because there’s a 65.25930% chance that that might not have been his real name. Anyways, Joe liked me a lot. I don’t know why, doesn’t really matter. I just wanted to be cool. I remember he had a big nose, he wore glasses, and had a egg shaped head. I promise I’m not joanin, this is just what I remember. Joe was cool but I wasn’t really liking boys like that. I mean I had crushes here and there but not enough to like actually want to talk to you everyday. Or at all for that matter. I was a late bloomer, shy and intimidated. Well, some girl liked Joe. She was taller than me and bigger than I was, not super big but she was bigger. I don’t know the history behind the girl, I don’t even remember her name. She and her sister didn’t like me because of Joe. Going back to what my Ma said right. My Ma said, “Girls will not like you, you’re smart, you got a nice body, a big butt, you’re light skinned and you’re pretty. Girls will not like you for no reason and you gotta be okay with that. No matter how nice and sweet you are, everybody ain’t gonna be your friend. Some girls will be jealous of you”. They ain’t like me for no reason. Her dislike for me was so bad that she and her sister wanted to jump me. I remember they followed me to class one day and waited for me outside the classroom. So guess who I call, my mother. Yeah I was scared, I’m no fighter. I had liked to think I got along with everybody. But it wasn’t like that at that time. My mother always had me and my brother back no matter what. And I faintly remember me and this girl arguing in the hallway one day and she wanted to fight after school. Man my mother pulled up to that school so fast. She popped off on any and every girl who looked at me wrong. I’m dead serious. My mother was up there and outside wit her sneakers on like “where she at Brit point her out.” So I’m lookin for the girl and I pointed her out, Ma goes up to the girl real aggressive and hype, finger in her face and all like “You and your sister tried to jump my daughter?!” The girl responded like “No it wasn’t me, I don’t even know your daughter!”. Ma like “Yes you do! You know who my fuckin daughter is, you and your sister tried to jump my daughter!” The girl go “I swear I don’t know who your daughter is”, she’s scared as hell and I’m scared too lol. I noticed that that wasn’t evennn the girl whole time lol! So I had to grab Ma real quick like Ma that’s not her lol! What I say earlier, unapologetic. She always protected me. I have NO regrets about calling my mother that day, I never bothered anybody. Saying this to say that we see videos of kids killing themselves online and even some people crying out for help when you never know what those kids are dealing with behind closed doors and what they don’t speak up about. Bullying is a real thing man. I never saw the girl in school after that day. I never found out what happened to her either. What I do know is that that was my first experience of feeling unliked for no reason at all. Some might call it punking out or me being scary or whatever, but if you’d ask my mother she would tell you, I’m just no fighter. I was never the aggressive kind of girl. I was a tomboy but I never liked being mean to people and I didn’t like when people were mean to me. I’ve always been a I want world peace, let’s just hold hands and hug, kumbaya kind of girl lol. I always self reflect and think about how we subconsciously say things to or about other people or try to present ourselves as a threat to people to make them have a certain perspective of us. We don’t think about how words can really fuck up a person’s mentality and/or way of how they view themselves. You never know what they’ve experienced in their childhood that’s made them who they are today. Just think about that when speaking in reference to adults. A child would take it even harder than an adult would. Honestly, I was a sensitive child, I never wanted to have to pretend to be something that I wasn’t. It’s true when they say you go through situations and those situations build you up and make you stronger. And I did learn eventually not to let anybody take advantage of my kindness, in other words I learned how to bite back. This is just part of me staying true to myself. 

So on with life after that and knowing that girls will really not like me for no reason or over a boy that I ain’t even want were lessons in itself. I do remember my Ma and I having a talk, and her telling me how I needed to stand up for myself. Just because she wouldn’t always be there to fight my battles. I took it in and I understood that. I just got along with everybody. If you waved or smiled at me, I waved and smiled back. Still the same ol Brit.

I’m making strides to find myself. All I knew was that I loved sneakers and never willingly wore dresses to school. By this time, people associated my butt to my name. How do you distinguish me from everybody else? “Britany with the big butt”. It’s so many different trends going on in high school, people were wearing tank tops and t-shirts over polo collared shirts and rubber bands cuffed at the bottom of their jeans lol.  I’m getting lost in the hallways with 2 minutes to get to class before the bell ring. Fights every single day. Even though 9th grade was extremely fun with the older classes, it was also kinda miserable too.

The other semi traumatic experience I had began from a rumor. Boys never called me beautiful in school, never called me pretty. I was just cute. I was always just cute. And that was okay I mean I wasn’t thinkin about compliments honestly. I was focused on my grades. My mind was wrapped around staying a good girl and making my family proud. But this rumor shook my whole world up. It made me question myself, my appearance, and how I was already made fun of in my past. BET Uncut was popular at this time and people were watching endless ass shaking videos. Well Nelly came out with “Tip Drill”; “It must be your ass cause it ain’t your face I need a tip drill”. Someone went around saying that song was about me. Go figure. I never found out who, but after that for a very long time, I didn’t believe I was pretty, beautiful, cute or anything. I let that haunt me for many many years. I took pictures but I low key hated looking at my own self. I had already struggled with self-esteem and self-confidence from when I was younger. I got made fun of in elementary and middle school. And now this. As a result of that rumor, I just didn’t see anything pretty. I didn’t feel pretty. I couldn’t look past the acne and my thick eyebrows. I had a unibrow too. I hated my overbite. I hated my thick hair. And my butt used to be annoying. I just consistently found things I didn’t like about myself because of that one rumor. I still think of it sometimes, of that experience rather. People thought it was funny. I don’t know if it showed on the outside but inside I was always beating myself up all because of that. Ma wanted to have my back and tell me I was beautiful and I was pretty but I wasn’t believing it for myself. It’s because of that I struggled for a long time with accepting compliments. I didn’t know if people were being genuine or not so I persisted in believing that whenever people said nice things to me, they didn’t really mean it. It’s sad, I was really my own worst enemy for a very long time. All because of the lack of self love and my concern about other people’s opinions. 

Things didn’t stay all bad though, it was some good. I had good grades with the exception of math lol. I was making friends and not being so much of a loner like I was in elementary and middle school. Dem Franchize Boyz “In my White Tee” made everybody go out and cop fresh white t-shirts and Crime Mobs “Knuck If You Buck” had us punching our fist every time the song came on. I remember wearing kinky twist like the girl Diamond cause I really wanted dreads lol. And the all time classic “No Better Love” by Young Gunz was hittin the radio crazy. Can’t forget “1,2 Step” by Ciara and “Lovers & Friends” by Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz. Remember making mixed cds? 

I turned 16 in the 10th grade. I’m in between a size 9/10 now. Shit was getting real for the girl now. I’m getting perms again (lol), I got my eyebrows waxed for the first time and I’m slowlyyyyy learning how to flirt. I was still awkward as fuck wit it tho lmao. I got a new lil boo I’m infatuated with now. My bestie learning how to drive now and she done transferred schools so she coming to Largo with me.  You put two and two together and take a guess at how lit the summer was for us. I’ll give y’all a lil hint: the gogo was our world, y’all was just living in it 😜
See y’all in Part III 🌹