Sometimes I Test Myself To See If I Still Got It

In the tenth grade there was this punk rock girl who sat behind me, her name was Lila. The first time I saw this girl was on the school bus. That year my bus decided to take another route and started picking up some kids from the other side of this hill. I got on one day and noticed some girl with some hairy legs and an old yellow tin lunch box. I thought she was busted as hell. That same day I saw her again in my World History class. I paid her no mind cause I was a rap kid and she was hairy.

I had no idea that I'd actually become friends with this girl and at some point actually develop a crush on her. Through the course of the semester we ended up becoming decent friends and unbeknownst to my dumb ass I had no idea she had a crush on me. Some other girl who sat behind us use to kick some bullshit to me about how Lila and me would make a cute couple. I was like whatever, that girl is too punk rock for me, which basically meant I couldn't get over them hairy legs I saw 4 months ago. She had since shaved them legs but I was still bugging out over them. I was also still caught up in the bullshit that a rap kid like me could never fuck with a girl who listened to guitars. It was me against THEM.

One day we get some group project bullshit pitched at us so Lila and I end up working together on it. We decide to meet up at the library and get our bullshit on. Most of the time Lila is asking me shit like who do I like and the whole time I'm trying to think about this motherfucking project. I was a swift kid like that, clueless too this girl trying drill me with questions. To get her to shut up about who I liked in class I told her Alisha, this fucking 6 foot black girl who could destroy me with her legs. She was hot as shit but I knew she wasn't fucking with some loud mouth Mexican kid.

Anyways after our dumb history project at Mesquite Library we broke the fuck out in my mom's 87 nissan stanza wagon that was a fucking glass house on wheels. While I'm driving Lila starts grilling me with questions again but I'm not paying attention and finally I tell her to just listen to this tape cause I think it's awesome. I throw in Hell On Earth and bump that shit in this busted out AudioVox pull out. Lila's next question is "why do you like this song" so I tell her "because it's fucking dope." She wasn't really satisfied with that answer so I tried to explain to her how Mobb Deep relates so much to my 16 year old ass. The only real point I could come up with was that my favorite line is "sometimes I test myself to see if I still got it." Which translates to I still do stupid shit because Mobb Deep told me to keep doing it. You want to know why I get drunk and throw up? It's because Mobb Deep told me to test myself to see if I still could and I wasn't about to disappoint Prodigy.

Over the years I stayed friends with Lila. She transfered to another school but used to come by my house and kick it but I never hooked up with her. I lost contact with her for a few years but the last time I saw her was right after I'd moved back to Arizona and she was back in Tempe after riding trains around the country. She was on her way to catch a free meal and I was going to some dumbass class. I think she is married and lives in Tucson these days but who knows.

"Regard shit or forget the essence, from which I emerged"