My Name is Jade

You ever wonder why no one in this ‘business’ seems to have or go by a real name? I mean think about it, throughout history the most popular gangsters were never called by their birth names. People like Scarface, Bugsy, Hit-man, Lucky and several in the hood carry other names that I’m sure you’ve heard of. Here are a few that comes to mind, Black, Boo, Baby, Murder, King, Jay, D.J and several other names that can always be heard in any hood. So why is it that the nickname becomes the new name for the individual? I mean most nicknames are assigned, meaning they are given to an individual by someone else. I remember receiving one of my nicknames after committing an act of what I like to call ‘understanding’. I don’t remember how old I was but I was definitely under 15.

My parents had 2 cars and one was usually accessible during the hours of 8-5. I know what you’re thinking and all I can say is, can you blame me? I knew where the keys were and my brothers would never tell on me, so joy riding is what I did best! Sorry kids, you can’t do this type of crap now, because as much as gas cost, trust me your parents will know. For the most part, every day after school me and my friends would hop in the car and go for joy rides throughout the neighborhood. Shoot we even went through some areas that we had no business rolling through. OMG, what if the car had gotten shot up. I mean we were kids, and we had nothing better to do. We never worried about the police because the only time you’d see a cop was during a home raid or something. They simply did not come to our hood. One particular day, after returning the car to my garage we sat in the car listening to the radio. I was revving the engine like an Indy Stock car driver or something. There we were, all 5 of us having a blast with me at the wheel bumping NWA. I decided to up the fun and put the car into drive and play with the gas and break pedal to make the car jump as if it had hydraulics. I’m not sure if my foot slipped or what but next thing I knew the car hit the garage. All you could hear was the sound of 3 car doors shutting and Nike to pavement. I slowly backed the car back into its proper spot and got out to see that there was no way I would be able to fix the damage. Seeing the ass whipping that lay ahead, I tracked down each friend that was in the car and told each of them that if they said anything to anyone, I’d burn their house down! Now they knew me. I mean they grew up with me and knew that they really couldn’t put it past me. The only part that I hadn’t calculated was my brother. I didn’t factor in the fact that my parents would blame him and that he would find out what truly happened and confront the people that were in the car and demand that they speak up. Either way, I didn’t care. I didn’t care if my brother threatened to beat their ass, it was better to take that then lose your house. Oh I was dead ass serious. So when I found out that Tyrone was about to snitch, I went to his house that night with matches and a bottle of alcohol. I was about to climb underneath his home and do my thing when Anthony (next door neighbor and my brothers friend) called my name. He said, “Boy what the hell are you doing?” Of course word travels fast in the hood so he knew what I was up too and thankfully talked me out of it. I remember him saying, “dang nigga you like a Jade. Cross yo ass and there will be hell to pay”. With that my name was born, Jade.

Tyrone never knew how close he came to having his house set a blaze and he never snitched because my brother got to me and made me tell my parents what truly happened. We laugh about it to this day, as I never got in trouble for it. All they said was, “you could’ve been hurt and don’t do it again”. Man my brother was pissed because he’d gotten his ass whipped over it lol. You have to remember I was youngest which means I always got away with things that my brothers would’ve been killed for.