My grandfather has always been an interesting character to me. When I was younger, I always thought he was just a grumpy old cab driver. He reminded me of Uncle Pete from the movie Soul Food [insert relational reference here]. He and my grandma lived together, but in separate rooms; if he wasn't working, he was in his room watching the one channel the rabbit ears on his TV would get, which was like NBC or whatever. He didn't say much, but he always called me or my cousin to come in his room to cut the lamp off cause the long johns were on, and he was under the covers.

As I got older and heard more stories about him, I realized he was more interesting than the old white dude on the Dos Equis commercials.  My grandfather was born in 1920 something (he recently found out he was a year older than he thought, so the exact year slips me) in Edgefield, South Carolina, which is about the same size of your neighborhood shopping center. He was the oldest of 13, born to a sharecropper. Due to the Great Depression, he had to drop out of the 3rd grade to work on the farm. My man…dropped out of elementary school…he said eff these crayons and eff your compound words; I gotta do some plowing for the culture. When he turned 18, he joined the military and served in the Korean War. Once he finished serving his country, he settled in D.C. He worked different various factory jobs and bragged to us about working AAWWWLLLL the overtime and showing up to work two hours early. Can't say I blame him; he had 3 daughters at home he had to support, the middle one being my mama. He worked as a tailor, and there's also a story that gets teary eyed repetition at family events about how he walked miles and miles during a snowstorm to the grocery store, and returned covered in more ice than Cash Money Records in the early 2000s. 

Eventually, he started driving a cab in D.C., which is a very impressive feat since he couldn't read having left school so early. I often wondered how he did it, but my mom said when she was younger, he drove her around D.C. and made a game out of continuously asking her the names of street signs as he memorized them. The man knows D.C. like the back of his hand which, in my opinion, is the highest level of "G shit" that someone can ever obtain.

My grandfather worked hard, and in the '70s he did the unthinkable: he sent my mama off to college. In fact, he sent her to one of THE most eggshell colored colleges around—Gettysburg College. In four years, she became the first person in the family to go to and finish college, which started the trend of his siblings sending  kids to college. This blew his mind. He went from dropping out of elementary school to having a daughter and multiple nieces and nephews graduate college. That's something to brag about. But it didn't stop there.

See, this daughter and these nieces and nephews had kids of their own—AND THESE KIDS WENT TO COLLEGE AND GRADUATED. He was feeling himself at this point. He was to black families sending kids to college what Cam'Ron was to dudes being comfortable with wearing pink. If he didn't test those waters y'all, sharecroppers would be out here raising more sharecroppers (in his mind).

But it didn't stop there. His daughter, nieces and nephews started getting these nice houses in nice neighborhoods and he's sitting there on his high horse that probably still has a plow strapped to the back of it thinking, "If YO black ass came from a sharecropper, then where's your college degree and nice house?"

After my cousins and I all got degrees, he would always ask any black kid that he bumped into, "Do/Did they go to college round here or somewhere else?" You could walk around with the old school "I Got It 4 Cheap" shirts and tell him it's a Shakespeare quote and he wouldn't know the difference, but ya black ass BETTER be in college or already be degree'd up. When my Grandpa met my niece from my other side of the family, he leaned over and asked me "She uhh…she go to college around here or somewhere else?" Grandpa, she still in high school; let her graduate before you go all blue suit Django on her.

At first I thought it was just a pride thing. My older cousin finished college in the summer of 2011 and I finished the winter after. The family reunion after that, he was sitting on stage cause he's the oldest male in the family. They asked for any recent college grads and we stood up, you could see him pointing to us and leaning in to people sitting next to him. Then I overheard this. He was talking to his sister and she said, "Yeeaah, my grandson just got outta jail and had a baby, but he's working at Popeyes now so he's doing really good." "Oh yea? Good. My grandsons just finished college." The amount of sharecropper stuntin' in that conversation made me cringe.

We could be driving somewhere that neither one of us have EVER been to and come across some nice neighborhoods and he'll ask, "Mostly black people live around here?" I just always responded with an I don't know and he wouldn't push the issue. 

One day he asked me the question again and I asked him why is he always so curious. His response made so much sense, but it still blew my mind. "When I was coming up I couldn't get an education 'cause I had to work. Never had the chance to think about college. And black folk never had the chance to have a big house in the same neighborhood as the white folk, so when I see people in my family doing so good after I came from nothing, I think there's more black folk doing just as good, and I never thought I would see that."

I got teary eyed, bruh. Hands down, the best monologue I've ever heard. Denzel couldn't have done it better. He bragged about us 'cause growing up, he could NEVER imagine saying that to ANYONE. So go 'head, black man. Live your dream. Have your expectations. Black excellence will continue to happen and you won't be disappointed. My grandfather is the son of a sharecropper with high expectations for black folks. He's sharecropper bougie. I'm sure he isn't the only one.