How I Almost Got My Ass Kicked (Again)

In the almost two years of writing this blog I’ve only had a couple of frightening encounters. I wrote about the first time here. Well, in getting the material for this blog I generally walk between 10-15 miles over the weekends. During those walks I’ve pretty much gotten to “know” most of the corner boys along my usual routes. So I was stunned when in broad daylight I was accosted by some corner boys. It was in an area between Columbia Heights and Petworth but one that I’ve walked hundreds of times. So, I notice a house that I thought might make a “good deal or not?” post. I take out my note pad and write down the address. Simple enough. Well, apparently, a corner boy thought I was a narc or something because he comes flying over to me yelling “what are you writing!?! what do you got in that book!?!”. I’m happy to say I didn’t shit myself. I was surprisingly quite calm given that there were about 6 other corner boys a few steps behind the “leader” questioning me. Anyway, I calmly say, “you see that house over there for sale? I’m writing down the address so I can look it up when I go home.” The corner boy looks at the book that I’m holding and sees the address I had just written was indeed the address of a house for sale. Then the funniest thing in the world happened. He became nice as hell, no, he practically became a real estate agent. I guess once he realized I wasn’t a threat, he says “oh that’s a great house, you should check it out, go knock on the door…”. It was quite the change of tone I can assure you. I guess there is a lesson in here somewhere…