Snitches Get Stitches

Prompt – Rules you respected.

When I started teaching on the southside of Oklahoma City, my students lived by the code “snitches get stitches.” I understand how that sounds to people who have never stood inside it. It can feel violent or theatrical, almost criminal in tone. What I heard; however, was something ancient. I heard a promise. I heard an agreement about who we protect and what we refuse to surrender. I respected that rule of the southside because I recognized it.

Some of the students labeled as the worst carried the deepest loyalty I have ever seen. They defended classmates before defending themselves. They accepted consequences to shield a friend. They held silence when adults demanded names. The system called them defiant. I saw devotion. Their allegiance could be misdirected, yet it was genuine and intense. It did not bend easily. I recognized it immediately because it lived in me too.

Growing up as a military kid taught me a parallel code. I learned not to burn bridges since I might never return to that shore. Orders arrived, boxes were taped, and friendships were interrupted by geography. Loyalty became the only stable ground. When place shifted, I clung to people or at least to the memory of them. Even when they drifted. Even when they failed to defend me. Even when distance thinned the connection, I remained committed.

I do not have many friends left from high school, not because I abandoned them but because I left the landscape that held us together. Others moved as well, and we scattered into jobs, marriages, and cities that barely resemble our beginnings. Occasionally we reconnect and speak as if we are tracing lines of an old map. In my mind, friendship does not expire. The bond may quiet down, yet it does not dissolve.

In college, several friends decided to jump from a bridge into a river below after a night of drinking. The choice was reckless and unnecessary, yet it carried the electricity of shared risk. I followed them. I did not jump because I feared their judgment. I jumped because I wanted the story we would carry together. I wanted proof that I belonged to something chosen rather than assigned by relocation orders. I wanted family formed through experience instead of paperwork.

I have spent much of my life trying to build family through loyalty. If blood ties could be uprooted every few years, I hoped allegiance could anchor me to people in a way that geography never did. I made friends into family by showing up and stepping forward when the moment demanded it.

Loyalty has demanded something from me. It has kept me seated in rooms longer than wisdom advised. It has held my tongue when speech might have changed the outcome. At the same time, it built steadiness within me. It shaped my belief that love is measured less by declaration and more by presence.

As I grow older, I understand that loyalty is not only about protecting others; it is also about protecting the younger version of myself who feared being left behind. I learned early that places could vanish and friendships could scatter, so I chose to become the one who stayed steady. I see now that loyalty has been both my shield and my anchor. It has tethered me to people long after circumstances shifted, and it has revealed how deeply I have always wanted to belong. Perhaps coming of age is not about abandoning the rules we respected, but about examining why we respected them in the first place. When I trace my life back through classrooms, bridges, barracks, and hallways, I find the same quiet vow running through it all. I will not betray the circle. I will remain.