The Stories That Stopped

It always starts off with a great story.

An elder recounts some great tale from their past.

And if that was all it was, that would be good enough. Great even.

Because the most important thing I’ve learned in my journey to become a better writer is that the best stories are told by those who have a clear interest in what they are talking about.

The stories themselves are not unusual, strange or exciting. But there’s something about watching a grandmother smell the air as if she could still smell the apple pie her mother used to bake.

It fills me with joy watching an uncle move his arms like a locomotive while telling stories about him and his friends going to the skating rink on Friday evenings.

The stories are great because you see the joy in the storyteller.

Those are the stories that have me on the edge of my seat, hanging on every word.

But then there’s another type of story. A story that tends to feel exaggerated. It almost feels like a forced recollection. A grandiose story meant to capture my attention but ironically signals my ears to close.

This story is not meant to tell me a fond memory. It’s meant to tell me how the past was better and that those from my generation and later have ruined everything.

If you think closely, you’ve probably heard the difference. Sometimes there are very straightforward clues such as phrases that are thrown in that have nothing to do with the story.

“You see…we didn’t worry about pronouns back then…”

Or…

“That’s when men were men…”

That’s when I know that what they’re actually trying to tell me is that they were at the height of civilization and that we’ve been busy tearing it down ever since.

It’s these types of stories that widen the gap between young and old, especially in the black community.

What I’ve noticed over the years is that most of these stories, the good and bad ones, mostly come from the 60s and 70s. Very few from the 80s and almost none from the 90s.

And the stories that remained took a shift. They weren’t about innocent joy anymore because they were now coming from a generation that had to grow up too quickly.

But what’s puzzling is that elders have been telling stories for generations.

Regardless of how busy the youth claim to be, the elders press on. Not just out of joy, but responsibility.

A Paw Paw’s story adds a much-needed touch of humanity in ways that a history book could never.

But now, after all this time, there seems to be a gap.

And I think I have an explanation for it.

The 80s and 90s saw a surge in drugs within the Black communities across the U.S. And as the surge grew, Black people began to disappear. Especially Black men.

These men were fathers, uncles, mentors, older brothers. And they were gone as if Thanos himself had snapped his fingers.

The how and why or who’s at fault is not important to this article. Only that it happened.

For two decades, stories of apple pies and skating rinks were replaced with silence.

And today the memory of their absence lingers.

There’s not a lot of fresh-baked pies cooling on windowsills anymore. Skating rinks are almost extinct.

And the biggest slap in the face for me, is when the elders resume those stories as if those two decades never happened.

Maybe it would be different if they came back humble.

But they didn’t. They came back ashamed and disguised it with entitlement.

They come back and scoff because we had to learn how to change a tire from YouTube…but they weren’t there to teach us.

They tell us we smother our kids too much…but we had to raise ourselves in their absence.

They criticize every method we use to survive without them.

And then they demand respect. They want to be an elder. Or in my community, we use the term OG.

But if you want me to respect you as an OG, then you have to do what OG’s do.

I was one of a couple of students in my elementary school class that had a full-time father. And he did everything in his power to make up for my mother disappearing when I was 5.

He volunteered at school, became a member of the local school council and eventually got hired as a security guard.

Years after retirement he would see students whose lives he touched at the grocery store or just walking around the neighborhood.

Watching grown people still refer to him as “Mr. Meadors” is a clear sign of the respect he’d put the work in for.

It filled me with great pride. And the funny part is that I don’t remember him ever doing anything extraordinary, yet the results were.

At the risk of sounding biased, he was a man that earned his OG status. And the thought of someone, who was missing for years, assuming that they should be entitled to that same status infuriates me.

And what’s incredibly sad is that all those missing elders have wisdom. They have something real to offer. Their experiences are useful to our communities.

But until they realize that those experiences need to come from a place of humbleness as opposed to entitlement, I fear that many of us will never receive the gift of that wisdom.

And that’s the real reason I write this. We need you.

I know the stories aren’t about apple pies and skating rinks anymore.

I know the stories are embarrassing and make you feel ashamed.

I know the stories highlight a moment in history where you weren’t present and that makes us feel a certain kind of way.

But in the words of a true OG, my dad, “Good advice is good advice, no matter where it comes from.”

Because no matter how angry we are, or how ashamed you are, we still need those stories.

Those stories are your way back to us.