Jokes on you

Is it still funny when the jokes on you? I mean not too much can go wrong when you are young, athletic, and popular. You get the girls you want, you always get picked first, and most importantly you feel power. Power. That’s such an annulling term, does power make you strong, or give others the opportunity to take it all away? We didn’t think there was anything anybody could do to take away the power we had, all we did was stay in our lane. There were three of us. We quickly became known as the three musketeers, always together no matter what the circumstances. We followed a daily routine: go to school, play basketball, and hangout until we had to go home. One of our favorite places to play basketball was the neighborhood PAL, or police athletic league. All the kids from around the neighborhood would come with their squads to see who was the best. It gave you the rush of a game 7 NBA finals, so of course sometimes the games got chippy. One day the games got a little overboard, seeing that our community was tight knit. Everybody knew everybody, and most people knew the parents too. Every now and then we had our little petty arguments and even fights, but it was always a means to an end; or so we thought. This day was different though, you remember what I said about power? See power is corruption, power gives you a false sense of superiority and control. Some of the greatest heroes in our history books, died in the pursuit of power, or because they already had it. What most people don’t understand though is power is the goal in most black communities, and the quickest way to gain power is FEAR. Fear is never felt by those who are perceived to have the most power, maybe that’s what made this story funny to me, but what if I was on the other side of the fence, or the barrel. After school me and my two friends decided to meet at the PAL at 4 o'clock, and at four o’clock we were all waiting outside. Shortly after we were let in the gym, one of our friends ran off, but they came back in time before the first game. As the games start it gets chippy as usual, one of the musketeers begins arguing with another friend to the point beyond redemption. Instead of the regular old trash talk, this conversation elevated to the promise of a fist fight outside. We had to pull them away inside just to finish the games, but there was hidden knowledge you only knew if you were a part of the musketeers. We knew that before he walked inside the gym he had to find a place outside to hide a 9mm he just showed off to us before stepping in the gym. “Watch when we leave” Those words echoed in my ears, as he shouted past my shoulders. Fear. They were both my friends, on one hand I couldn’t let one friend die, on the other I couldn’t let my other friend throw his life away. I was in a lose lose situation, and the only thing I knew at that moment was that I had about an hour to change his mind. We lost that game, and that gave me the perfect opportunity to bring it up. “Bro, don’t throw your life away over a petty argument”. He responded with “Bro I already know, I’m just going to scare him the gun isn’t loaded”. An anchor was lifted off of my chest, compared to the alternative this was a blessing from heaven. That was probably the quickest hour of my life, what was once fear was now anticipation, the third member of the musketeers was also aware of what was supposed to go down outside. As everything wraps up and people are leaving the gym, a crowd of the neighborhood kids move in a group ready to watch a fight like it was WWE or Professional boxing. As they finally found the ally they were going to handle their differences, the crowd organized into a circle, with two former friends standing a few feet apart. Suddenly, the member of the musketeer pulled out the gun that he hid earlier, and everybody dispersed like wind to a flame. The musketeers all started laughing, as everybody ran in fear afraid that a bullet had their name on it. It was like being behind the scenes of a magic trick. The fact that nobody understood the joke made it that much funnier, but what was funny? To us it was funny because we understood there was no real threat, but just as the crowd's ignorance created a joke. Then I began to question the motives for his actions. Would there have been a discussion of fighting if my friend didn’t feel a sense of power from his gun. See power is a weird phenomenon when you presume you have it, you feel the need to show it. We laughed for a solid week about the events that happened, but 1 in 4 black men in America deaths are through the use of firearms, so little did we understand the joke was on us.