I saw Erykah Badu’s video for Other Side of the Game on VH1 Soul this morning. Every time I watch this video, I’m reminded of how this was my life at one time. From my senior year of high school until my sophomore year of college, I dated a drug dealer. And at the time, it wasn’t a big deal to me…………until fate stepped in.

My boyfriend, Rod (not his real name), was a very bright young man. He was valedictorian of his class with a scholarship to an Ivy League school, but chose to follow me to an HBCU instead. We had it all planned out, how we were going to get married, have children and become entrepreneurs. But his idea of entrepreneurialship differed from mine.

His cousin introduced him to the game. Rod had a taste for fast money and used his smarts to branch out on his own and deal. He had his own condo and a Benz at age 19. We would travel to various places and always stayed in expensive hotels. I can’t front, I liked the way he pampered me, but I wanted him to use his smarts to live a more honest life. Why go to college if you’re dealing? I couldn’t grasp that concept. The irony of it.

During the winter break of my sophomore year of college, that part of my life with Rod changed. While at home during the holidays, I got ill. Turns out that I had a cyst the size of a grapefruit attached to my left ovary and left fallopian tube. So surgery was in my immediate future.

The night before my surgery, Rod was supposed to pick me up for a date, but my mother thought that I should stay home and rest for the impending surgery that was to occur the next day. Out of all of the years that my mom had known Rod, she had no idea that he sold drugs. And I’d never told her.

Anyway, upon my mother’s wishes, I stayed home that night. Rod never showed, which was unlike him. I kept calling him all night, but no answer. The next day, my mother and brother accompanied me to the hospital for surgery. Still no Rod.

When I got out of recovery, still no Rod. When I woke up in my hospital room, I asked my mother if Rod had shown up and she replied, “No, sweetie. He hasn’t been here.” So I’m now lying in my hospital bed, in pain from surgery, and my mom is reading the newspaper. She sees a blurb in the paper about a young man shot in his car in an apparent drug deal gone bad. Rod was that young man.

I was devastated by the news and my mother was in a state of shock, because again, she’d never known about that part of his life. And had it not been for my mother making me stay home that night before surgery, I probably would have been in that car with Rod. As I stated earlier, fate stepped in.

After Rod’s death, I didn’t talk about him much with family or friends. But whenever I hear the song and/or see the video for Other Side of the Game, I think about Rod and I also think about how when God shows up, He shows out. It was not my time.

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If you’re a regular visitor to my blog, you already know by now that I suffer from insomnia. I woke up at like 4am the other morning. Since I was awake, I turned on the television. I don’t have digital cable in my bedroom, but I have it in other parts of the house. And there’s not a whole helluva lot on at 4am on basic cable except for infomercials, so I decided to watch one. It turned out to be one of those Time Life CD collections.

Last year I blogged about how I bought the soft rock collection after watching the infomercial. But this particular infomercial was about Time Life’s Midnight Soul collection. Oooooh, slow jams. So out walks this couple who are hawking the Midnight Soul box set of cds, and it’s Dondre Whitfield and Salli Richardson-Whitfield.

When did this happen? Is work that scarce in Hollywood? I know damn near every television show that Dondre winds up on gets canceled. He’s like the Bokeem Woodbine of television. Every show Dondre signs on as a regular flops, so I understand his need for the hustle, but I kinda expected a little bit more from Salli. Were Kenny Lattimore and Chanté Moore busy? *insert sarcasm* Not hardly.

30 minutes of Salli and Dondre talking about love songs. They were so boring, I drifted back off to sleep. Their level of enthusiasm (or should I say lack of) was better than taking Nyquil. Knocked me out for the rest of the night.

Okay, I wimped out. I couldn’t go through with letting the barber cut it all off. I started crying in the chair while he was cutting it, and then he finally broke down and said, “I can’t do. I can’t do it, Nikki. ”

But let me start by telling you why I was really getting it cut in the first place….

One of my locs in the top of my head had gotten extremely brittle and broke off, leaving a gap in the top. Well, nobody noticed it, but it troubled me. I liken it to wearing all white and getting a drop of spaghetti on your clothing. Nobody may even notice it, but I’ll know it’s there.

It was really irking me to see that gap in my hair, so I went through the tedious process of unlocking it. I thought by cutting my hair, I could have it evened up and start anew. I thought I wanted the barber to cut it to the point that I was damn near bald, but both the barber and I wimped out.

Instead, he left enough on my head for me to retwist, and that was the perfect compromise. So here’s the before and after.

Before & After

On last week, I took my locs down after wearing them for a year. That only lasted a couple of days, because I ended up retwisting them again. Well, guess what? Last night, my mother helped me take them down again. I think I’m ready to do the big chop once more. I scheduled an appointment to see a barber in the morning.

I feel the need for another change. So here’s one last look at my freshly picked out ‘fro before the cut. As you can tell, it’s grown out quite a bit since the last time you’ve seen it. Just as I’d gotten my Cindy Blackman ‘fro the perfect length for me, dang!

Before the cut