There’s book smarts and there’s street smarts. But underlying the thing they call street smarts is plain ass common sense. But it ain’t that common, and Roshawn’s dumb ass sure don’t have it. I know I should not call my only child a dumbass, because it’s all my fault. I spent so much time trying to keep her safe, but I always kick myself for not letting her figure some things out earlier on in life. Then again, with the chance to figure things out earlier, she would have come home pregnant after just starting high school instead of when she first started college.

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I say this proud that I wasn’t brought up in a church with the Bible shoved down my throat, and I didn’t raise Roshawn that way, either. You want to see the snakes and predators of the world, look in the religious places. That’s what my father always said. But, still, there’s the thing called common sense, and it also dictates that you should bring your child up on a straight and narrow path and they will stay on it. I had them girls so straight that they both got full-ride scholarships to college. So what happened to Ro?

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Book smart people debate ‘nature versus nurture’ when individuals go off their given paths. When a person does some shit, is it because of something hereditary that determined they were destined to do that shit? Or did they do the shit because of something that happened while they were growing up? Back when I went to college, we learned that it’s not either-or, nature or nurture, but it’s both and then some. My questions since having to raise Roshawn’s dumb ass are: How long can you outrun genetics? And, will the past always catch up?