Suburban Gangster

Sometimes I interact with people at work and my thought process changes. These people don't effect my life nor do they change me as a person but they definitely make me think.

I've grown up in a small Bay Area town. People who are from the Bay Area don't know about this town. It is a very quiet and safe place where you almost beg for something interesting and newsworthy to happen. Unfortunately not all news is good news and when my town is hit with bad news, everyones world is rocked. You would think that living so close to America's third most dangerous city, the citizens of the town wouldn't blink when they hear about another senseless murder. It's different when it happens in our town, no one believes it should happen in our town.

There was a murder of a boy my age a few years ago. There are a lot of stories surrounding his death but the gist of it is that it was over a girl. I didn't know the boy personally but from my knowledge he was a white guy who was greatly influenced by Hip-Hop culture in regards to the way he spoke and dressed. He was apparently killed over an argument with a guy who was dating a girl he liked. The only thing I heard about it was summed up with a simple phrase; If you pretend to be a gangster, you'll get gangster consequences.

Because I didn't know him I wasn't really effected by it, it was definitely sad but I was still getting up to work and go to school every day. It finally became real to me during December 2008.

The copy station at the office supply store made calendars during the holiday season. It was always a big hit and a great, easy Christmas gift. Due to the fact that they were so popular we always were busy. Though business was good, organization wasn't. People were getting their calendars randomly. Some people waited 2 days and some people waited 2 weeks. My manager was really stressed out about it and most of her stress came from one customer. This woman wanted three separate calendars made and 2 copies of each calendar. She had been waiting and stressing. My manager finally finished making the calendars only to find that they were made for the wrong year. This made the customer wait even longer and made her extremely upset.

My manager got off work and I was left to fix the calendar. That same day, the customer came in. She was very nice but visibly stressed out. She had been waiting for the calendars for three weeks and therefore her family pictures, the only pictures she had, were in our hands.

Side Note: To make a calendar, we needed pictures. It's easier to make a calendar when the pictures are all digital and come on a flash drive but the best calendars are always real pictures that have to be scanned and therefore, have to be left with us. Leaving precious family mementos with strangers can be stressful for anyone.

Woman: I came to check on my calendars.
Working Girl: I am almost done. I am just binding them now.
Woman: Okay. Do you mind if I wait here?
Working Girl: Not at all.

She waits for another five minutes for me to finish up. I finish and bring the calendars and her pictures over to her. She immediately becomes emotional.

Woman (with a knot in her throat): They are beautiful. Thank you so much. I was so afraid.
Working Girl: No problem but afraid of what?
Woman: Well the manager had said that it was taking longer than expected and I thought that maybe the pictures had gotten misplaced and no one wanted to tell me that. I don't know what I would have done if I lost any of these pictures.
Working Girl: They are very nice pictures. And each of your calendars seem to have a central theme surrounding this guy.
Woman: Oh that's my son. It's been so hard and I thought that maybe these calendars would be good to give to the family to help us grieve. These are the pictures of what and who he truly was. Not what he became and not what people think they knew about him.

I had done hundreds of calendars at that point and not once did I ever truly look at them. I of course checked them for quality control but I never thought about the contents. It dawned on me that this woman had just lost her son. The boy who had been killed months earlier who I knew nothing about and was told that he was a suburban gangster who "got what he deserved," was her son. He was someones son. He was someones brother. He was someones friend.

I spent the next 30 minutes talking to this woman about her son. I got to know him without ever meeting him and my opinion was changed about him. It is rare that an interaction that I have at work resonates with me for years afterwards.

I'll never forget that conversation and the opinions I had after it. I'll especially remember when she told me "I wish my son could've met you. You're working and going to school and he was getting his life on track to do the same." I often think about this woman and her family and hope that time has helped to heal that wound.