My freshman year at Southern University began amazingly. I enjoyed the southern hospitality and was convinced that Louisiana was the place I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
Then a week later, I had the dishonor of seeing the catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina. Having the week off from school and gaining a roommate from New Orleans in my dorm, explaining how he lost everything made me realize that maybe I should stay in California…or at least move to Canada, because nothing is “popping off” around there.
Fast-forward three years. It’s the fall semester and I’m still at Southern waiting to graduate in December. Two weeks into the fall semester I’m packing a few supplies to go with the Queen (my girlfriend) to her relative’s house in rural Jackson, Mississippi to run away from Hurricane Gustav.
While in Jackson, it didn’t bother me that I was in a crowed house with nothing to do; it was the fact that I didn’t know what was going to happen to my things and my friends in Baton Rouge.
With those thoughts in mind I wondered, how can people of the Gulf Coast live with the fear that they could not only potentially lose their homes every time a hurricane hits, but the fact that once a year they have to flee to another state? I ask: Why deal with that?
This is when I realized; it’s not safe in the Gulf Coast because between all these hurricanes, Klansmen and crazy negroes, I fear for my safety—especially since my healthcare benefits are pretty crappy (that’s why once I get the degree I’m heading for Canada).
Then I tell the Queen that maybe I should go back to the hood and she asked me, “Do you really want to deal with the Bloods, Crips, earthquakes and LAPD?”
I replied with, “Not really. I don’t go out much,” and that, “Earthquakes don’t hit Inglewood hard enough to destroy stuff.”
Call me lazy, but I refuse to move out of Louisiana every year or so just to get out of the way of a hurricane.
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