Let me take you way back for a moment
remember way back before Lionel Richie got burnt by the fire of a sister
scorned?
Lionel had a song entitled "Easy" by a group named "The Commodores".
Allow me to paint a picture...

Remember way back before every other song was a remake and you could
actually
sing all your song lyrics without cussing?
....back when you couldn't  say dag, shoot or psyche in front
of your mother?
....back when your world was only as big as the block you lived on
and your family included cousins who wasn't really cousins,
you just called each other cousins because you knew each other
since first grade
...back when you had a best friend and a best, best friend.

Remember way back when streetlights were like warning shots-telling you to
get your butt in the house?
...back when kids called their mothers mam and the meanest dog in the
neighborhood
was a German shepherd named King
...back when none of your friends knew anything sex
...back when  EVIL KENEVIL used to break a bone a weekend?
Do you remember that?

COME WITH ME...

I'm sitting by the window seal watching everybody do their thing.  I can't
go outside.  I'm on punishment.
I told my mom I was sick so I could skip church, but since I said that she
said stay your tail in this house all day.

Dag, so I'm sitting in the window looking pathetic.
It's a warm Sunday afternoon and the streets are filled with folks
venturing out for a loaf
of bread, a newspaper, a bag of flour or an ice cream bar.
And if the air was a liquid it would be a flat beer sitting in the sun next
to worn grass and a
discarded Hot Fries, potato chip package.
The humidity is so thick you could bounce a basketball on
it and score two points off of sheer luck alone.
...meanwhile older folks sit stretched out on porches sipping on iced teas
and lemonades; resigned, relaxed; reclined.

You have the Dad's washing up their cars, changing tires and working under
the hood.  The cars were so big entire families could fit in them.  My
step-dad had a '77 Cutlass Supreme with a bad muffler.
I could tell he was turning the corner half a mile back. Today that car
would be considered a hooptie, but back then that 77 was all right.

The ladies in the neighborhood return from Sunday service looking like
royalty,
beautiful queens with their heads up high; stepping all regal like as they
spoke to everybody and paid their respects.  Even my best friend Terry
would be dressed up on the way home from church.  He had a thick tie with a
knot big enough to choke a German Shepherd, a pair of black dress shoes
with a thick heel.  I used to call em' "Roach Killers".


All the girls my age ignored me making jokes cause they know I'm on
punishment.
They were way too sophisticated for us boys anyway, foreheads sweating like
a coke bottle at a barbecue,
brushing that fake baby hair down trying to look cute, while their mama's
grit their teeth and call them fast tails.

Okay, so we've got the dads washing the cars, the mothers dressed sharp,
the grandma's and grandpa's sipping on something cold, the boys dressed in
huge ties with huge knots and shoes with heels that could hammer nails into
steel, the girls too sophisticated for the boys; and all this is happening,
but still nothings happening.

It's an "Easy Sunday", I'm 11 years old, I'm staring out my window with my
lip stuck out and I didn't know it then, but right then was the best time
of my life.

If  you could take a moment, remember pass your mama whipping your butt,
pass some white person calling you a nigger, pass being poor or whatever,
you were lucky, we were all lucky.

The new generation may have their music videos, their "Nintendo 64's, their
Sony Playstations", their "Gameboy's", and their "CD Players", but they'll
never, ever have what we had; "Easy Sundays" baby "Easy Sundays".