A Tale of Three Grannys

This is the tale of several grandmothers living on the same street less than a mile apart. It is also the story of two twelve-year-olds who are out of control. As I juxtapose their stories, I’ll let you be the judge.

Corliss Holland is a 50-year-old grandmother who I can tell comes from my school of being “no nonsense.” We don’t know the reason why she has her grandson under her tutelage. But like many black parents, her word is law and she runs a dictatorship and not a democracy.

At some point she told her 12-year-old grandson to not leave off the 8200 block of South Coles where they live. The stubborn and willful child who has decided that his decisions outweigh his grandmother’s warning opted to leave the block. Grandma Corliss on September 25, 2010 rewarded his decision with an introduction of her ironing cord to his hardheaded butt.

“I’m not messing around anymore and this is what he needed,” she allegedly told the police. Ms. Corliss’ reward; she was arrested, charged with aggravated battery of a child and has a bond amount of $50,000.

Now fast-forward to a different grandmother. Margaret Matthews is a woman in her 70’s who come home to the 7600 block of south Coles to find several 12-year-olds running away from her home and her windows broken by bricks. She goes inside only to have the hardheaded young thugs return with profanity laced mouths and additional bricks to threaten/scare her. She like the other grandmother is also a “no nonsense” woman. She doesn’t back down from the young punks and when they continue to threaten her, she pulls out her pistol and shoots one of them. Her aim is even good enough so that the one she shoots is wounded in the arm and not dead.

Of course we gotta’ have a third grandmother come into the fray. She is the grandmother of the alleged perpetrator. She has quickly appeared on television with the perennial “my grandbaby is a good boy” story as well as claiming the boy was just walking down the street when the woman with the broken windows came out of her house shooting at her “sweet, little, innocent choirboy.”

Of course Grandma Virges’ story carries very little weight when neighbors of Ms. Matthews are willing to go on camera and call Dion a “little monster.” The woman’s windows didn’t get broken by being so old that they fell apart. And Dion who is not the brightest star but more appropriately entitled the “baddest” star in the sky has no idea that his DNA is all over the bricks he picked up to toss. Or that climbing over a locked fence and standing on the woman’s shed as he tortures her with profanity and bricks are criminal behavior of the juvenile detention ilk.

We are living in a very rough time here in Chicago. A granny tries to keep her grandson from being another young thug and her reward is jail and bond. Another granny refuses to see the behavior of her grandson and he ends up with a bullet in his arm. The granny in the middle has to suffer because as a society we are sending the message to our children that they can do what they want to whom they want without consequences.

I gotta’ ask. Where’s the outrage?