Living Proof

So here's the deal. Uncle Tony (my mama's sister's husband) who is 80 sumptin' years of age, asks my mother for my phone number. She gives it to him, knowing that I may get 1,2.3, or perhaps, 453 calls in one day. Soon enough, I get a call and I see the name on it. I couldn't answer it because I was on a Skype conference call at the time. I thought, well he'll leave a message or something. But no. He kept calling and calling again and again. On the 5th try, he finally did leave a message for me. When I called him back, he wanted to know what kind of computer I gave my mom. "It's a Macbook, Uncle Tony. You have to go to the Apple Store or Best Buy to purchase it." "I only want it so dat' your aunt can call ya' mutha up - so they can see one anutha' on dat' ding dare'." "You mean, Skype?" "I don't know. Can't they see each other on video and talk at the same time?" "Yes, but she d...

Have you ever heard someone talk about their past with such enthusiasm that their eyes light up? I love seeing that each time my mom talks about her childhood years growing up in Brooklyn, NY. From her playing Jax in an alley with her friends to meeting my father at a church dance when they were only seventeen years old. All of her stories are so entertaining, even when she told me she used to use two tin cans attached to a string, sending one over a clothes line in the courtyard of her mom's tenement building to reach her best friend in the apartment over on the other side. They would have conversations at night using this ancient method. Back then, creativity was forced upon you. There were no cell phones, texting, computers or social networking sites to see what your friends were doing every single second of the day. You had to literally walk a few blocks to “check their statuses”. There was no such thing as an “obesity epidemic” - people actually walked to communicate, because ...