5) When People Ask You For Cigarettes

Everyone loves those goddamn cancer sticks. I’ve been smoking cigarettes since I was probably 13, and before I could buy packs I used to have to ask people to buy them for me. At that time I had no realization whatsoever that I was annoying the hell out everyone who happened to cross my path at 7/11 or Citgo whenever I was in need of some nicotine. I was also broke as a little kid and couldn’t afford packs anyways, so I would bum cigarettes off of everyone. Now much older, I buy a pack of Newports and go to class from 2pm to 8pm and the pack is devoured. Between every single goddamn poor college kid or all the little kids wandering the campus from the high school a block away, I go crazy. They literally ask me for a cigarette every time I pull one out, scavengers who scope out the entire campus for the first person they see reach into their pocket. My friends are even worse as I’ll be hanging out with a big group of my friends who all smoke and most of the time nobody will have a pack except for me. I’m cutting you grimeballs off, cigarettes are $7.15 in Queens, times are hard.

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I grew up in Bayside, a small town of Northeast Queens, NYC. I live in a pretty good middle-class neighborhood, but since I still after all live in Queens, there are many characters. Here are some of the craziest people I have grew up with and my encounters with them.

When you talk about Bayside, Queens, most people know and think of Tyrone. He’s a middle aged black guy who’s lived here probably most of his life. He used to smoke dust and did a whole bunch of other drugs back in the day. His mind is fucked up and you can obviously notice he’s had a crazy past. He’s a little fucked in the head nowerdays, but he’s still a cool ass guy who for the most part understands what’s going on around him. I’ve known Tyrone since I was a little kid, and he’s a very nice guy. He’s the one person who would buy beers for EVERYONE, no matter how young you are. Supposedly, he studies ninja and samurai philosophy and claims to be a black belt. We call him the “shadowlord” because one minute he’s hanging out with you, and the next minute he’s disappeared into the thin air. He’s known by everyone in the neighborhood, and does jobs for everyone to make a quick buck whether it’s lawn work or building your stoop. This guy drinks so much Old English and Colt 45, i swear that he probably eats his cereal with malt liquor. What most people do not know, is this guy will beat the shit out of anyone in a split second. I have seen him drop kick people, knock people out with one hit, and otherwise make people like Chuck Norris and Van Damme look like pussy’s.

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Over the course of my life, I have experienced some of the funniest and most outlandish shit you can possibly put your mind to. Growing up in Bayside, Queens, I’ve lived amongst a handful of characters. These are the stories of my childhood, the people I grew up with and the town which has bred me.

My friends and I were typically very bad children. One time when I was ten years old, me and a couple of my friends had some how gotten access to an arsenal of mortars and other numerous fireworks. This was my first experience with fireworks, and it felt so good knowing how much illegal contraband we had, and how much shit I could blow up. We took them to a nearby park a couple blocks away from my house, which is huge and full of trees and woods. Knowing we’d get our cache taken away from us if anyone saw three little kids with the amount of shit we had, we walked into the woods. We set up the tube and loaded our first mortar…it shot into the sky and immediately all the trees caught fire. We ran back to my block and looked as four or five fire trucks came rushing into the park to extinguish the fire before the whole park engulfed. That was the last time I touched fireworks for a while.

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