Hey There, High There, Ho There! You're as Welcome as Can Be.

Seventeen year old Tasha Cole left the Narcissist Apartment building to sling some crack, three babies ended up in the hospital, her own child, a 2 year old, would end up having seizures from ingesting crack cocaine. The story caught some attention on Crime Scene KC and Tony Rizzo reported it on the Star as well. The local News stations did a few sound bites on it, and now that story and countless others like it are all but forgotten. If you happen to drive along 31st street the building where these kids were poisoned is one block west of troost. One block away stands the building where a young Walt Disney created the much beloved Mickey Mouse, travel another 100 feet and the Central Patrol Division KC police station sits on a corner of Linwood. I find it more than a little ironic that these three buildings are so close in proximity. So whats the connection you ask, the answer is that there is no connection, and that is where the problem lies and the irony is so striking, at least in my eyes.

The Narcissist is one of those inner city apartment buildings that most of us would never give a second look if we happened to drive by it. It sat empty a few years ago, I'm not sure why, maybe it was for health or safety reasons, which wouldn't come as a surprise, perhaps it was remodeled , which I doubt, whatever the reason for it being closed , it probably should have stayed that way.

You need only to drive by the place once , when the weather begins to warm up to see why. Only the most naive of us would fail to notice the activity that goes on within a crack rock's throw of the building. In that respect the Narcissist is no different than tens of dozens of buildings that line Armour Road, or Linwood, or any number of streets along the cities east side.

What sets it apart, the thing that makes it different at least from my perspective is the look of the building. There are these brightly colored umbrella shaped things that sit on poles lining the front of the building. I don't know if they are meant as some type of shade or if they were someones idea of making the place look bright and inviting, they miss the mark. Long before Tasha Cole's baby ate crack like it was Fruity Pebbles, I always thought those umbrellas gave the place a strange Stephen King novel like vibe. It wouldn't have surprised me, much, to have spied a crazy malevolent clown standing under them late at night.

If you are waiting for some profound point to all of this, then you are going to be disappointed. You will have to draw your own conclusions, and make your own connections this time, but I will leave you with this to give you something to ponder. When three children all too young to attend school ingest crack in such close proximity to the police station what does that say? I would also add that there is a daycare/ preschool one block from the Narcissist, yet that wasn't mentioned in any of the stories I read or saw on the news. I'm not blaming the police because these kid's ate crack. But if there was a stronger effort to stem the flow of drugs along the troost corridor, maybe this wouldn't have happened. What you can bank on is that this wont be the last horror story to come out of the east side. It wont be the last time something tragic or sad happens in the Narcissist Apartments.

The only thing I can offer with any certainty is that Walt Disney never in his wildest dreams would have imagined that the children he spent a lifetime entertaining, would live in such great peril , only a block from where he first drew life into Mickey Mouse.