Earlonne Woods:
Number one. I think I was probably like eight years old when it came to me that one day I have to die. I used to sit there and ask God, “Like, why am I living if I have to die?” And I think at that age I was questioning God. I was questioning everything. I think my mother told me she loved Jesus more than she loved me. And I'm like, you love Jesus more than you love me? I'm real. We don't know if that was real. You know, that's a story. We don't know if that was true. That could be a story. You in love with a story more than you love me.
Number two. Tight wool sweater with syrup inside of it.
Number three. Thirty-five millimeter negatives. When I was a kid, I had this dream, this dream I was the only one that was in color. Everybody else was a negative. My mother, she had an afro, like one of those Angela Davis afros, back in the day. Her whole afro was this see-through thing. Her eyes were see-through. Everything about her was see-through. Everything about everybody else was see-through. I was the only person that was an actual picture, that was in color, so they were all coming at me, and, oh man...
Number four. Being pulled over by the police on a dark street scares the shit out of me. The night I was arrested I was shot by the police. We were about to carjack this dude, and everything we was about to do, we didn't do. We left. We jumped back in the car and left, and we got maybe about a good mile or two away and we got pulled over, and when we pulled over, the guy that was driving crashed. So now it's time to get out and run. So as soon as we exited the vehicle to run, the Manhattan Beach Police Department fired forty-one shots at us. I was shot in the chest. My friend Ferman Little, he was shot five times in the back and he died about an hour later.
Number five. Active shooter in a prison gun tower.
Number six. The California three strikes law. I feel the law itself needs to be repealed.
Number seven. Drowning during prison transport. So, you're handcuffed to your waist, your ankles are shackled, and you're in the back of this van. Inside the van in the back is a cage. I always describe it as, it's a tuna can inside of a tuna can. And you’re saying to yourself like, damn if this van crashes and falls into the water, this officer is not going to rescue me. And then, this van being so heavy, it’s just going to float to the bottom. Houdini couldn’t get out of this.
Number eight. Being stabbed or killed in prison. I did a total of twenty-seven years all together, so I've seen a lot of people die in prison, you know, and I just never wanted that to be the end of my story.
Number nine. Falling in the alligator’s pit. I used to watch Faces of Death and me and my partners we used to always talk about certain things in Faces of Death, and this is maybe some shit I shouldn't have been watching. In one, was a guy was parachuting and the wind started blowing, and it blew him into the middle of an alligator’s pit. They tore that dude up.
Number ten. You get out of prison, and you’re oblivious to a lot of stuff that’s going on out here. I had went down to L.A. when I first got out, and I talked to one of my partners, and he had always been talking about hooking me up with this rapper, Nipsey Hussle, which he tried to do when I was in prison. A week later it stunned me when I heard he was killed. So that was like the first time I really paid attention that it’s real out here still. Mind you I’d been gone twenty-one years. So just getting out and hearing that was kind of, damn, it’s real out here.
My name is Earlonne Woods and these are 10 things that scare me.