He was awake that night too, but the perception of a 1 year old in nothing more than objects and facial expressions. It’s odd because Calvin gave me my only smile amidst all the chaos in the apartment. Stumbling around in his diaper, his curiosity drew him to one of the officer’s batons and it made me smile knowing that this man thought he was consoling a baby but I knew that Calvin cared about nothing but that baton at the moment. We were split from him after that night so he wasn’t with us on our way back to Michigan. There was not much to say during this particular trip, because we’ve taken this drive with my dad more than once, unless it was me and my dad rapping “The monkey ain’t no joke! So you wanna mess wit the dope!! boy o boy o boy o boy THAT MONKEY AIN’T NO JOKE” I would never have ever been able to listen to Public Enemy let alone rap those explicit lyrics even if I had no clue what the monkey represented in the 90’s.
From the outside-in, seeing a six year old boy, whose mother was brutally murdered by her husband, would cause the average person to feel extremely compassionate towards a child who has to be feeling a great deal of sadness. But in all actuality, sadness was the only emotion that was foreign to me for many years after mom was killed.
This was a whole different world my brother’s and I were entering. My dad had been remarried since I was born and he had my little sister a year and nine months later. In one day his family went from three to six. This family wasn’t founded by responsibility, gifts were abundant, and there was no more Kingdom Hall. From this day forward, I had the green light to just be a kid. My sister had ALL the movies and ALL the videogames. She wasn’t used to sharing and I wasn’t used to having much to share so it didn’t take long for us to become brother and sister. In this new world the magnifying glass was on me. Because I am one of Tanya’s boys, my brothers and I had all hands on deck towards our success. We all handled our Mother’s death differently. They literally beat up the world and I played sports with the anger and passion of an entire army. With age, my foundation began to crack and I began living life like I was privileged. Sports had taken over, so much that all my favorite colors can be sourced back to my various school teams’ colors. I was extremely good so no one dared try to stop me from playing. The partying came next and by the time I reached high school my home life could be classified as disfunctional. The only thing that kept me moving forward were the pieces of responsibility instilled in me from birth. Graduating high school wasn’t. personal achievement but rather an obligation I needed to fulfill for my family. Going to College wasn’t an opportunity to explore and further my education but it was more years to play football. I always tell myself that I’ve been doing the right things but it took too long to realize that they were for the wrong reasons. TO BE CONTINUED……

KYLE MULLER
DOC #A614-480