If It Looks & Walks Like A Duck...

This saying has always scared me. Pretty silly, right? Take a peek from my eyes. I grew up in the same neighborhood in which my father lived (most of the time). The people I idolized most, the hood drug dealers, often told me about the similarities between my father and me. Let me clear up the comment regarding who I idolized. Drug dealers, at least in the 80's, appeared to be respected (or feared, which equates to hood respect) by everyone through the eyes of a child. Think about it. Drug users respected, or acted as if they did, the suppliers of their poison. Law abiding citizens often feared drug dealers because of their apparent disregard for authority and human life in general. Young children and immature adults often idolized drug dealers because of the glamor, glitz, and chicks with tight clothes that almost always accompanied these characters. Now do you understand what I meant? Oh well, I get it. So, back to why the "Duck" saying always scared me. I often heard "You look just like your father", "That is the way your daddy walks", and unfortunately "Keep this up and you'll end up just like your father." It was easy to ignore the first fifty times I heard any of those comments. However, I reached a point that made me question whether these people were right. As the saying goes...If It Looks & Walks Like A Duck...

I spent much of my adolescent years planning how I could be everything my father wasn't. I decided at the age of 15 that I didn't want children. There was no way I wanted to chance having a child of mine feel what I was feeling. That quote stayed in my head though. How would you act if you thought, even if just for a moment, you would become one of the two people you hated? What if you actually thought it was inevitable? Well, I now better understand the role I play in my destiny. Whew!