1669

1669.

If ever there were a number that brings back old and fond memories, it’s 1669. That number represents the numerical address where 3 of my closest male friends lived during my last 2 years at Michigan State. It was an off-campus townhouse and these three bachelors (who me and my roommate had gotten cool with when we all live on the same floor in our dorm) were awesome and turned out to be three of my best friends.

We all met in 1989 when (sidenote: DAMN THAT WAS A LONG TIME AGO!!!!) we lived on the brother and sister floors in Aker’s Hall at MSU. It was the year we all were finding out what it was really like to be independent and though all but me were freshman, we enjoyed each other’s comraderie and became lifelong friends.

We have been through so much together and are STILL very good friends. Many people couldn’t see how 3 guys and 2 girls could be “just friends”. Well, it was very simple for us. Melvin and Jay were roommates in the dorm and went to high school together and Steve folded into the group somewhere along the line. Me and Rashidah were roommates and had become good friends.

Since they lived off campus, on the weekends we’d try to escape to their crib because they were KNOWN for having the 1669 parties! And though they ALL had women at one time or another they knew we were their true road dawgs and vice versa. We were like their sisters and they treated us as such. Head mashes, cursory cursing out-fests, and fued’s if they refused to come pick us up to hang with them for the weekend were all commonplace. We always knew we could count on them and since all three fo them had cars, the only rule was “if we come & get ya’ll….pack a bag cuz we AIN’T playing taxi service and taking ya’ll back and forth!”. We’d be like “yeah, yeah nigga’s…come and get us!!!!”

Now, the boys were like 3 shades of “crazee” as I like to call them. Melvin (who is married to my good friend Samantha….actually, that’s how me & Sam became friends…..when he married her! J ) was always the super-neat studious (not nerdy, but just about his business), cool, down to earth, jokester one of the bunch. Jay, well….let’s just say that pimpin ain't e-z and SOMEBODY’S gotta do it LOL He was the one that was always , always, ALWAYS on super-hype mode (actually he STILL IS, no lie!) out of the bunch and was ALWAYS ready to get sum shit JUMPIN’! Steve, was the mellow-pimp of the group. By that I mean, he was not arrogant, but he didn’t sweat no hoes either. He was calmer, but had (and still has) THEE ABSOLUTE funniest and quickest wit outta EVERYONE! No one can make me laugh like his ass! Now me & my roomie were like two shades of each other too. Shida was the one who was qu-ick to cuss a mothafucka O.U.T in 10 seconds flat and was a basically funny and fun person to be around and me…well…. I’m me, what can I say ? *poppin colla*

If we could catch them at home on a weekend, me & Shida would chill with one, two or all three of them when we could. We would come over Mel would usually cook for our little “family” and we’d either go to a movie or a gig or just hang around the crib. Me & Shida would tell otha muthafucka’s that meandered by “Hey, WE got the pull-out couch…..you betta find you a spot on the flo!” LOL

We had many funny and bonding incidents such as when Jay and Mel were playing around and wrestling and Mel broke/cracked Jay’s waterbed frame by mistake (“it’s all fun & games until somebody put’s out an eye”) and when we went to this party and the shit turned ROW-DEE and the Lansing police decided that they needed to MACE some people for supposed Crowd control. That shit was crazee. This was the time of Chuck D, KRS-One, X-Clan and anything else afrocentric. So you know we were all heated. My boy Steve (who was the DJ at this party) got mace sprayed in his eyes as he was trying to protect/remove his 12’s and get the hell outta dodge. Nigga’s were throwing table and chairs and it was all out mayhem. Once we all got back to 1669, the mood was solemn. Everyone was accounted for, but our spirits felt like they’d been raped and decimated. Steve sat, silently, enraged. He all of a sudden decided that he was going to go BACK up there to get shit “crunk”. We stopped him and he fought back tears and until that night, I had never seen a black man’s spirit after it had been crushed by the weight of oppression and it was then that I truly felt his rage at the injustices at the “hands of the police”. We were all emotionally spent.

We've shared in joys and sorrows, given advice and given tough love and we've grown through it all. It is so wnderful to have friends like these, because they are few and truly hard to find. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was fate, but I am thankful that whatever forces brought us together, we've stayed in each other's lives as we have.

We all are now beginning to start families and are embarking on new phases of our lives and I am glad that I have them to depend on and grow with.

All in all I had some of my most treasured and memorable college moments were with the “1669 Crew” as we referred to ourselves. We still remain tight to THIS day and I can’t imagine my life without them. It was one of the best times of my life.