AB.com Guest Post - Gut Check Time.

[Editor's Note: EbonyGentleman is trying to kick the KFC before he kicks the proverbial "other bucket".]

In the weeks leading up to A.V.N. Week II, I had initially planned to do a piece on my obsession with the ladies' butt and thighs. Instead, a personal experience I had last month inspired me to do something a little less vulgar and more appropriate.

"Why I Love Chicken": My Infatuation With The Female Posterior, will have to wait for now.

This year's cold and flu season has been a tough one for me. During the normal course of a year, I usually deal with dry eyes, runny nose and a cough. I can count on being really sick twice a year, in the Spring and around December. Dust, pollen and grass molds are my enemy. I don't complain much, so I just accept that reality of my allergies.

In April of this year, my wife and I planned a weekend escape to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We try to go at least once a year, and enjoy some shopping, seafood, sun and sex--I mean, companionship.

*Ahem*

Anyway, a few days before we departed, I awoke to find a strange phenomenon on my way to work. My entire neighborhood was engulfed in a yellow storm. Pollen that normally settled on everything not nailed down, was gusting around like a dust storm. I'd never seen anything like it. In hindsight, maybe I should have covered my mouth with a cloth or something, but I just trucked along to my car and went on to work.

The beach that weekend was pristine, with the pure salt air opening up all of my normally congested breathing passages. Things were going well until an unfortunate incident happened. The hotel elevator conked out. No big deal, unless your room is seven floors up.

Now I'm a husky dude...well...in a Pooh Bear sorta way.

*sigh*

Let me stop lying, ya'll. I'm fat (for my size). *tissues*

OH, LAWD I can't put down that fried chicken! I just cain't. *whoo*

It be callin' me. My mouth waters, my toes tingle and my heart skips. My Wife's fried chicken is better than sex! I--

*****PLEASE STAND BY. E.G. must take his meds.*****

So I figure, I can hit the ol' stairwell and do this thang. I was going well until the fifth floor. My body came to a complete stop and my muscles started cramping. I was sweating like a diabetic in a KrispyKreme doughnut shop. By the time I limped back to the room, I collapsed on the bed and gasped for air. I was pitiful.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an episode that scared me to death. I was having trouble breathing. I was walking around the house gasping like Sherman Klump. My reathing was erratic, and I couldn't take a full breath. Just short raspy huffs and a VERY dry cough. I had to call out of work twice in that span, because my health was so poor. On top of that I was having chest pains. I continued to work, and postpone a doctor's visit, because I wasn't insured (another topic for later).

In the end, I visited a local doctor and got checked out. I was diagnosed as having an inflamed respiratory system and was put on some medication. I also got an inhaler to help, which was strange to me because I have never beenasthmatic.

It cost a bit without the proper medical insurance, but the medicines have been helping. In spite of my current allergic condition, I have been scared straight into changing my lifestyle a bit. Sodas are out, Water (Sobe LifeWateris LOVE) is in. Fried stuff is out mostly, and I'm crock potting more. My wifey and I are starting our walking regimen this week. I've actually lost some weight since I started working on a better me.

These are just a few things I'm doing to erase the old lifestyle of grease, pork, Snicker bars, hot sauce and other things. There's only one of me, and I don't want you all to put up a memorial page on my Myspace page just yet. Your local egghead has more to give before that happens.

Now if I could do something about that fried chicken....

EG

Question: Have you had a health scare recently? What are you doing to change bad habits into good ones? How has the cold/flu season affected you (if at all)? What tips do you have to share for a better lifestyle?

AB.com Guest Post - Blame It On The Al-Al-Al-Alcohol.

[Editor's Note: My girl Ciara has the mic today. Peep what happened on a recent late night excursion.]

This past Saturday, my best friend and I went out for a night on the town. 21 year-olds, liquor and lack of self-control can apparently bring problems that I wasn’t ready for.

As we were walking down the street waiting for the next empty cab, four young, Black, Philly-esque (see State Property circa ’06) dudes start walking towards us. Now, on any other day, I wouldn’t pay these dudes any mind (I live in the city, so I see these same types all the time) and I was planning on it until I heard this:

"You’re the thickest b***h I have ever seen in my life. Gottdamn!"

I FLIPPED out. I can’t even repeat half the words that were coming out of my mouth; flying webdings in the air and all that. In typical reactionary fashion, the fellas spewed some of the same stuff back. As I’m standing on the edge of the curb talking reckless, one of the dudes starts to walk towards me. At that point, I took my shoes off, back-pedaled and proceeded to jog. As soon as we saw a cab, we wave it down and breathed the biggest sigh of relief since OJ in ’96.

Now, why talk about this? Here on AB last week, a discussion about being young and making dumb decisions came up in the post related to the whole Cassie/Rihanna photo-fiasco. I was one of the people who used the “being young means making mistakes” card in defense of the girls. We all did things in our younger years that, in retrospect, make us cringe but that’s called growing up. After Saturday night’s escapade, I changed my mind.

I knew better than to cuss those dudes out. Three hours earlier, I was talking to similar types on the street as if they were my friends. Everyone is out, having fun … no drama around here. Here I go having one too many drinks and now I’m spewing language out of my mouth that would make Lil’ Kim join a convent in protest. The situation could have been worse. I was lucky that cab rolled up when it did.

Yet, everyone has had one of those “Blame it on the Alcohol” moments, right? I’m having a hard time looking at that as an excuse for my behavior but I can’t lie, it does help me feel better.

Life lesson: Being young does not give you the right to ill-behave. My father raised me better than that. Alcohol isn’t an excuse, even if you want it to be.

Question: Is there ever an excuse to make unwise decisions? What is your worst alcohol-related moment? On the gender-tip, why do (some) males proceed to sexually-demonize a woman on the street? Am I the only one that wants a new State Property or Young Chris album?

AB.com Guest Post - Black Boy Swagger, Black Mom Fear.

[Long, But Reverent Editor's Note: Denene Millner is one of my favorite authors, and a friend of AB.com. I first heard of her years ago when I read the book What Brothers Think, What Sistahs Know, which she co-authored with her husband, Nick Chiles. Since then, she's gone on to pen novels, relationship books, and more recently, completely wrote contributed to Steve Harvey's Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Next up: Never Make the Same Mistake Twice : Lessons on Love and Life from a Real Housewife ghostwritten for by Nene Leakes. Yeah, that NeNe Leakes. Needless to say, Denene is a talented writer and it's an honor to have her contribute today's guest post, which is something any parent can relate to. Show our guest some love, you know where.]

He’s 6 ft., 250-plus lbs—quite imposing next to my 5’ 2” frame—and can bench just shy of 300, which means that if he felt like it, he could flick me like a flea. Lucky for me, I’m his stepmother, and at the very least, he withholds his laughter when I crane my neck, fold my arms, put on my mean mug, and tell him, “I can still take you.”

Out on the football field, though, my 16-year-old son takes no shorts; as a nose tackle, he’s charged with taking on two, sometimes three opposing players at a time. This requires an incredible amount of mental fortitude and swagger—both of which my 16-year-old son has in abundance, especially when he’s making his way to the line of scrimmage. Take a good hard look at him on the 50-yard line, and it’s easy to get it twisted: He looks like an angry, aggressive, big, black jock—a guy who crushes the opponent on the field, and off the field, probably doesn’t put much effort into much more than football, girls, and black boy shenanigans.

I don’t know if this is what one of his team’s assistant coaches had on his mind recently when he called the boy over to take a look at his class schedule. He handed it to him and shifted nervously from foot to foot, his mind on who knows what. I can only guess what he expected to find, but when that coach looked at his’s schedule and then back up at him, I could see in his eyes that his perception of who my boy is was completely, forever changed.

See, what that coach wasn’t expecting to see is this.

That’s Honors Physics. Honors Algebra. Advanced Placement Psychology. Honors Language Arts. And Mechanical Drafting—the first in a series of courses that’ll put him on firm footing toward becoming an architect. Peep the grades: All A’s, and one B. He’s number 44 in a class of 546—and still climbing.

The boy is bad—smart as hell, incredibly sweet, helpful when he wants to be, and pretty easy to get along with. We argue the musical merits of Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, and Rakim, reminisce over our favorite scenes in Biker Boyz, discuss on the regular whether he’s going to Yale, Harvard, or Princeton, and sometimes he even comes to me in confidence to discuss how to negotiate his tenuous relationships with the cute but fickle little girls he dates.

He is a normal boy.

A brilliant boy.

A college-bound boy.

A sweet boy.

A black boy.

And every time that child leaves this house, I fear that someone will look at him, his size, his skin color, his swagger, and see what they want to see, and not who he is. Not a day goes by without us warning him to be respectful, to watch his tone, to be extra vigilant when approaching people in his path. And last week he got his license and bought himself a car with the cash he makes as a lifeguard, which of course means that now when he snatches his keys and heads for the door, I'm a nervous wreck thinking that he's going to get stopped by the cops.

[Editor's Note: This post was written earlier in the year.]

I have good reason to be nervous for him, you know. In just the past week, three—THREE!—black men have been shot, two killed, by the police. Adolph Grimes, III, 23, was shot 12 times in his back, 14 times total, on New Year’s Day as he made his way to a family party in New Orleans; Oscar Grant, 22, was shot by a transit officer while he lay face down and handcuffed on a train platform; Robbie Tolan, 23, is recovering from gunshot wounds to his liver and lung after being shot in his own driveway by a Houston police officer who accused him of stealing his own car. Of course, stories about the shootings abound, and in Oakland, more than 100 protesters were arrested as they took to the streets to demand justice for Grant. Organizations like The Color of Change are speaking up on behalf of the victims, and demanding we do the same, while radio personalities like Warren Ballentine are using their syndicated radio shows to keep the stories fresh on the minds of black folks.

Still, after the roar dies down, after the police officers get off (they almost always do), after we commit the victims’ names to the long list of young black men who’ve died or been abused at the opposite end of a police officer’s gun/night stick/bathroom plunger (Sean Bell. Amadou Diallo. Abner Louima. Patrick Dorismond. Michael Carpenter. I could go on and on and on), who will stop the same from happening to my stepson?

How do I protect my normal, brilliant, college-bound, sweet, black boy?

The urge to protect him will never leave me, this is the unfortunate rite of passage of every parent of a black boy. Once they are big enough and old enough to move out into the world without us holding their hands or watching over them, they are going to be vulnerable to the biases and misperceptions and stereotypes and downright hatred of an overwhelming number of cops, transit officers, sheriff’s deputies, and other law enforcement officials who will cross our children's paths over the next 40/50 years of their lives. I suppose the best we can do is hope that one day he will put in enough years so that he can have the same worry about his own child as we have for him.

And agitate.

And pray.

Question: Can you relate to the anxiety of sending your child out into a world that might sometimes not respect him? How as a parent do you best prepare your child for such situations?

More From Denene Millner [MBB Blog]