Day 1

This G.E.D. program is something else. This is down in South Baltimore [the author surmises that this is a program run through Digital Harbor High school]. I’m the only person that drives to this thing so the parking is kind of complicated. They worked out a voucher for me so I wouldn’t have to spend $45 a week parking.

There is drug whore who might be twenty-five but looked seventy, with one foot rotting off. There are a bunch of dindus there for their court ordered attendance and me. Miss Johnson is a fine looking woman, paid a lot of attention to me, her arm across my back, helping me out. She said I could probably just test out but that I should stay and work on my punctuation. I’m thinking of staying for the sake of getting together with Miss Johnson—she’s a fine figure of a woman.

They have such problems as a time zone map, across which the imaginary person flies back and forth, so that these idiots can learn addition and subtraction, and all this one dindu would say, was, “Miss Johnson, dis nigga don’ make no sense.”

She says, “Devontrius, we don’t talk like that here.”

He says, “But Miss Johnson, dis nigga hea’ is doin’ some shit dat don’ make no sense!”

She says, “Devontrius, we don’t use that word here!”

And this idiot says, “Dis nigga—”

And she’s on him, “That word, Devontius, we don’t say that word here!”

He finally got the message, still shaking his head.

[If LaFond was writing this as fiction Devontius would have turned to his friends and said, “Now dis fine-ass bitch not makin’ no sense neetha!” But alas.]

Day 6

I go back there and about walked out because Miss Johnson wasn’t there and she was most of the appeal of this idiot class. We had this Malcolm X-looking dude, who is the principal of the whole place, teaching. He’s doing this problem about finger nail growth to illustrate metrics, so many millimeters of growth per week, etc. As he illustrates this problem up front this older dindu interrupts him—this old fucker who has taken this class who knows how many times—and says, “You’re wrong, finganails don’ grow dat slow!”

The principal turns around and snaps, “Nigga, even yo finganails don’t grow like weeds!”

So, after that waist of a day I’m at the traffic light at Montebello behind this car with a husband and wife and their grandson and this young dindu—probably on his cell phone, doing, 45-50 miles per hour, comew busting down the ill behid me from Chesterfield. and I see this idiot and braced up on the wheel, figuring I’m headed through the windshield and he slams into me, driving my head into the wheel and windshield and back into the head rest, crushed both ends of my car at I drove into the people in front.

The old man was able to drive off after the police let us go, but his grandson had a fractured ankle. I had a torn shoulder muscle, a concussion and bruised cervical vertebrae. I drove the car home—the engine clicking the whole way—and went to the hospital the next day. They cat-scanned me to make sure the plates and rods in my back hadn’t shifted and it all held.

The dindu kid, was a nice, respectful young guy who was very apologetic and had insurance, so everything should be okay. I kind of feel sorry for him—20 –year-old kid driving his new car and it’s gone, a total loss. But he was unhurt. If you can walk away with your life and limbs from such a thing it’s a good outcome.

Big Ron's Baltimore: A Working Man's View of Urban Blight