Why God Don't Own A Car

I've gone green, at least in my commute. I take a bus to the law school where I'm doing the Bar Prep high colonic. Every day I stand at a bus stop and watch the world go by. I'm usually the only white person there: the other white people hang across the street on the campus side of the street until they see their bus coming. I wouldn't stand over there with them for a 258 on the bar.

Today, a young black man, still a child to my eye, approached the crowd and was encouraging them to register for the upcoming general election. All visible parts of his body - sans face - where covered in tats, most of them gang related. He was nervous in approaching me but I offered to fill out a card. As we talked about his criminal career and how he got into this gig, I was amazed by him. He'd done juvy time for drugs and attempted murder and here he was out there trying to change the world, one voter at a time. And sweet. Oh, this child was gentle, soft-spoken and by his admission, broken but recovering. Some of the other folks at the bus station were giving me grief that there was no way a whitey Nancy Northshore was going to vote for a black man, that the only reason I was talking to the kid was because I was afraid I was going to get mugged, etc., etc., etc. I told them I had planned on voting for Barack since the keynote at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

Sometimes the world comes in snap shots. As the young man talked to me about his belief in change and hope for his life, I could see an elderly white man was rummaging in the street side garbage can for food over the boy's shoulder. I broke off the conversation with the young man for a moment to give the elderly man my lunch. When I came back to the young man, he was shaking his head from side to side.

"All this carrying on these folks doing about you being white and monied and whatever they think about you, and you just upped and gave up your lunch. None of them would do that and they all gots more than he does. Hell, I got more than he does. And that ain't right. It just ain't right."

And off he went, clip board and voter registration cards in one hand, the other guiding the old white man down the street to get some food. And that's why God don't own a car.