Scenario #1
Here comes Tyrone. All of your life, he’s been that asshole brother that’s treated you like used toilet paper. Whenever there was a family reunion, family dinner, or a birthday party, he always made it his duty to make a complete spectacle out of you. You used to hate seeing him coming because he walked around thinking that he was “the exalted one” just because he finished high school and had a degree from Morehouse. Every time you turned around, he was always reminding you of his accomplishments, his big-paying job, his house on the hill, his large bank account, and his trophy wife with the fake tits.
Anytime that you’ve talked about your promising career as a music producer and how hard you’re working to make things happen, your oh-so-wonderful brother always felt the need to brush off your hard work as “just playing around” and didn’t hesitate to tell you that “you need to get to reality and find a real job.” He doesn’t know that you spend hours working on your craft and that you take your dream very serious. He doesn’t know that there are days when you go without sleeping because you’re working hard to do what you’ve always wanted to do since you were a kid. So as far as he’s concerned, you’re a loser.
But wait! Something happens: This so-called big paying job that Mr. Tyrone has is now forced to make cuts because the corporation was caught up in several lawsuits for fraud, which cost them a shitload of money. The first person that they let go of is your brother, Tyrone. Of course, this makes complete sense to the corporation because if they’re gonna make cuts, they believe that they might as well start with the people that get paid the most money.
Like a domino effect, everything crumbles in Tyrone’s life. He loses his job, his fancy house, the money in his bank account is quickly dissolving, and his straight-from-the-valley-with-fake-tits wife is seeking a divorce on the ground of “irreconcilable difference.” He’s tried to find another job but due to the severe competition, he can’t find one and so he now has to live back home with his mama and take a job as a cashier at a chicken joint so that he can help her with the bills.
Meanwhile, your hard work has paid off and you’ve finally got your break as a music producer for a major record label and you’re traveling all over the world, going places that you’ve never been, meeting influential people, working with various celebrities, and you can afford to live the most lavish life that you’ve always wanted to live. Gone are the days when you lived off of fried bologna sandwiches and stayed in a one-bedroom apartment, sleeping on a air mattress that had a pin hole in it. Things are truly working out for you and you are truly living the life that you’ve worked so hard to live.
Christmas comes around and you decided to invite your entire family over to your three-level house for Christmas dinner. They are all excited…except for Tyrone. He decides to go but instead of heading to your house in the stretch limo that you provided for your family, he tries to hold on to his pride by choosing to drive his own car to your house. However, on the way to your house, his used Honda Accord that someone gave to him starts to overheat and so his car shuts off while he’s on the interstate. So you send the same limo driver to go pick him up.
When he arrives to your house, he doesn’t thank you for sending someone out to pick him up. Istead he spends the whole evening trying to find something wrong with your house and with your life. But since he can’t find anything wrong, he chooses to bring up the past and crack jokes about how your life used to be. Instead of him being proud of how well you’re doing in life, he chooses to simply to say god-awful things such as “No matter what you have, you’re still a piece of shit. You’ll never be better than me, no matter how hard you try.”
One of your family members come to your defense and say, “Well, he seems to be doing just fine while you have a broken-down Honda sitting on the side of the road with blowed gaskets.” Everyone starts laughing and this causes Tyrone to get angry. So he walks over to you in a fit of rage and punches you in the face. The family jumps in and makes Tyrone sit his stupid ass down and your mom gives Tyrone a good talkin’-to in front of the whole family. After checking his ass, he sits in a corner for the rest of the night, fuming with anger. He couldn’t handle the fact that his brother was doing better than him and so instead of working on getting his life back together, he decided to be disrespectful towards you and embarrass himself in the process. And why? Because he couldn’t handle your success.
Scenario #2
All thru your young adult life, you had been trying to make Shaquita your girlfriend but she continued to not pay you any attention. She was the chick that grew up in your neighborhood and all the dudes wanted her. In your mind, she was the most beautiful girl that you’ve ever seen and you were willing to do anything to be with her. But time and time again, she rejected you very harshly and when you asked her to go to prom with you, she laughed in your face and told you, “Get the hell away from me. I don’t deal with losers.”
She was the one that tried desperately to get with your brother Tyrone but he quickly told her to exit stage left because he only liked white girls with money. She used to talk about you like a damn dog to all of her friends, clowning you about your outdated clothes and the fact that you had to take the public bus to get to where you were going. She thought that you would never make it and that you were completely wasting your time trying to be a music producer.
But wait! Something happens: Ms. Thang thought that she would strike it rich if she married a football player and had his baby. But unfortunately, she never got pregnant, Mr. Football Player never married her and in fact, he dropped her like a hot potato and married a model with long hair all the way down to her ass. So she ended up having to move back to her old neighborhood with the little money that she had left and take a job in a grocery store just to make ends meet.
She found out that you were nominated for the Producer of the Year award and she’s remembering the times when you wanted to be with her. A month later, you decide to go to your mother’s house for a visit and Shaquita sees that you arrived in a black Range Rover. Now all of a sudden, you don’t look like a piece of shit to her anymore. She quickly skips her funky ass across the street to greet you with a big smile. When you see her, you’re actually kinda turned off by her because she gained over one-hundred pounds and her hair looked like it’s been combed by a blind rat.
She’s talking all kinds of sweet nothings in your ear and telling you that she really wants to be with you. But you’re smart enough to know that she just wanna be with you because your financial status has changed. But you continue to listen to her crap simply because it amuses you. Although you haven’t thought about Ms. Thang in a long time and you’re no longer interested in her, that doesn’t stop you from coming over to her house and getting some ass that you didn’t have to work hard for. So that’s exactly what you did.
Afterwards, you never call her or take time to see her again because as far as you’re concerned, ignoring her like she doesn’t exist is payback for how she treated you back in the day. Meanwhile, you didn’t know that Shaquita is a crazy bitch that will call your phone at all times of the day and leave a series of messages, pleading to be with you. But you don’t pay it no mind…until you turn on the entertainment news and see that this heffa has decided to write a tell-all book that is full of more lies than Satan himself. And why? Because she can’t take the fact that you don’t want her like you used to back in the day.
So here’s my point…
Although both of these scenarios are fictional, they do show you what happens when someone becomes successful. Be aware that there will be certain individuals that you’ve known all of your life that’s gonna throw ten pounds of shade at you when you become famous. Certain people that you thought were always your homie, will want to chop your head off when you make it big. Certain girls that wouldn’t give you the time of day will be willing to sell their own mama into slavery just to get next to you and if they have ANY kind of dirt on you, they will spill it.
And ladies, please take heed to what I’m saying because the same thing is gonna happen to you when you become successful. That sexy guy that broke your heart back in the day because he wanted to be with a bitch with a homemade weave, is gonna try to do whatever he can to win your heart back when you become a shot-caller. Some of your female friends from back in the day are gonna turn on you quickly and throw all kinds of dirt on your name by saying things like, “She thinks she’s all that now but I remember back in the day when she had an abortion and her mom didn’t know about it. I oughta tell her mom what she did.”
Whether you think so or not, money is gonna change your circumstances and some of the people around you. They’re gonna say that you’re “going Hollywood” on them and that you forgot where you come from. But here’s the kicker: I don’t know anybody who wants to remember the dark times in their lives. Most people wanna work to live the good life so that they can put their past behind them. So do just that and don’t worry about what anyone has to say about it.
Sonica
