A man had two sons. However, this man was their illegitimate father
and refused to pay child support so the two sons lived with their
mother in a small apartment in an inner city neighborhood of Los
Angeles. Though the family barely survived day to day, the boys’
mother had managed to, from her job managing a Laundromat, scrape
together an inheritance for her boys so they would be able to get
along after she died.
The younger son said to his mother one day, “Yo! Mama. Why
don’t you give me my share now so I don’t have wait till
you die? Me and my girl got things goin’ on- you know?”
So the mother decided to divide her savings between her two sons.
Several days later, the younger son realized he didn’t need his
mama anymore now that he had her money, so the son moved in with his
girlfriend in an apartment a few blocks away. Moving in with this
friend was a bad idea because they spent most of their days sleeping
and their nights drinking and doing drugs with his friends. The crowd
he hung out with became worse and worse and before long he found
himself spending all his money on drugs.
Then, the son ran out of money. He hadn’t thought about the
consequences of his spending. For a few days he toyed with the idea
of getting a job but was unwilling to work honestly and could not
find a job that would hire a man like him. With nothing to live on,
and finally evicted from his low rent apartment, he went to his
friend who was the local gang leader. It was the one thing he’d
promised himself and his mother he’d never do, but he found
himself in a desperate situation. He soon found himself a part of the
gang community but still not able to make ends meet. He would sleep
on a different persons floor every night and spent his days peddling
drugs to children. Of course no one has pity on a gang member who
deals drugs to children, so no one helped him out at all. Even if he
couldn’t escape from doing his job, he longed to be able to
keep the drug money to buy food and clothing for himself.
One day after a particularly wild night of drug use, he woke up and
had no idea where he was. He hadn’t seen his girlfriend for
several days and was too cold and hungry to care. At this point he
came to his senses. He said to him self, “Yo, this ain’t
very tiggidy1 wid’ me. Why do my mama’s
Laundromat girls at least have food to eat while I’m goin’
hungry?” I’ll go back to my mother and say, “Mama,
I dissed God and I dissed you. You should disown me. Let me work in
the Laundromat and earn my own dough.”
He immediately got up and walked to the Laundromat where he knew his
mother would be. When he turned the corner and peered through the
glass to see her, she saw him and took pity on him. She threw down
her load of clothes and ran to him, embracing him and kissing him
while he gratefully, if a little embarrassed, hugged her back
longingly. He then said to his mother, “Mama, I dissed God and
I dissed you. You should disown me. Let me work in the Laundromat and
earn my own dough.”
H
1Tiggidy
– adjective, a term currently used by young people in the
urban west to refer to something that they like or enjoy
is mother turned to the Laundromat girls, “This is my
boy! Clean him up!” She pulled the gang bandana from his head
and tucked in his shirt. “Bring a warm jacket, get the gang
jewelry off him and find his class ring. Someone go to the market and
buy the biggest bag of Doritos you can find, tonight, we’re
gonna party! My boy was lost to me, but now he has returned. He’d
taken a new family with the gang but has found his way
back!” The group began to party right there in the Laundromat,
turning the gansta rap up and dancing.
As the older son was coming by the Laundromat to pick up his mother
after work, he heard loud bass beats coming from the storefront. He
gestured to one of the employees from the window and called her out
to ask her what was going on.
The girl said to him, “That bad brother of yours came to her
and yo mama took him back. She told me to go get the biggest bag of
Doritos the store had”
He refused to go into the Laundromat because he was so angry with
his mother. His mother came outside the store and told him he
shouldn’t diss his family by not joining in the party. He
answered his mother, “All these years I’ve been a good
mama’s boy. I learned to cook, mended my own clothes, and put
the toilet seat down every time. I’ve never disobeyed you,
mama, yet you’ve never even bought a box of Twinkies for me to
eat with my homeboys. This man you call “your boy” spent
all your money on drugs and alcohol, and when he comes home, you buy
name brand chips for him!”
The mother, in all her ghetto wisdom, replied, “Listen up,
boy. You’ve never let go of my apron strings, you depend on me.
Everything I have is yours. We’ve never had a legit reason to
party before, but today we’re going to get down because we have
a reason to! Your brother dissed us and joined a family that was no
his own, he was dead to us, but today he has come back to our family
and is alive! He was lost to us, but now he is found!”
The preceding retelling of the parable of the Prodigal Son attempts
to come to the same conclusion Jesus did in Luke 15:11-32 by using a
modern day situation. A loving mother has both a son that loves her
and is faithful, and a son that turns away from her. She continues to
love him and when the son realizes he needs her, he returns to his
mother and she rejoices over his return as she has never rejoiced in
all the time spent with her older son. The older son becomes angry at
the way the younger son is accepted back into the family but the
mother tells him that he has always been a part of the family, but he
should welcome back this part of the family that was dead. Jesus told
this parable to illustrate how God will accept anyone who has
betrayed, dishonored, or walked away from their relationship with
Him. In Luke 15:11-32 The son, who believed he “deserved”
the father’s love, was angered by the rejoicing due to the
return of the son, just as the Pharisees were angered by the mere
thought that their Messiah would eat with sinners. This parable was
told to illustrate the amount of God’s joy and his offered
acceptance when just one of His children returns to Him.
