This story stems back to my freshman year in college, spring semester. The hot movie out at the time was Romeo Must Die, starring Jet Li, and Aaliyah. It also featured a teriffic cameo from rapper DMX, how compelling his performance really was, I will relay to you now.

Ok, so the setting is Freshman year. The main players in this story were myself, Pelkey, and Andy. It was a friday night, and we had nothing to do. So we decided to go to see a midnight showing of Romeo Must Die at the Mall of America. So we go there, and we pay for the tickets, and go into a packed theater. Let me describe the demographics of this theater. First off, let me say this. I am a white boy. I have even been called a “sorry ass white boy” before (in 8th grade traveling basketball, a kid called me that).

Now, while I am of the caucasian persuasion, pretty much everyone else in the theater was not. This didn’t really bother me, because I’m down with the 411, so I know not to diss the homies while I’m in da neck of da woodz. Anyway, all was calm in MoA theater 3, up until the point where DMX came out and said “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. So if your ass ain’t black, I suggest you get the f*** out of my club.” Now this statement in itself seemed to be harmless, but the ensuing activities scared the crap out of us. Several of the audience members at the movie literally got up and cheered.

Here we were, three white boys were in a packed theater, and the crowd was going wild. I am about 84% sure that at some point, a person actually screamed out “Get out of here whitey.” Now I realize that the person who yelled that line was actually me, in a desperate attempt to fit in.