Prof Charles, no Xavier

Before I started my freshman year of college
my mother asked me this question:
"Why don't you try to become a teacher?"
"...no thanks. It's not for me," I replied.

Sure, it can be hard to find a job as a Writing or English major,
and becoming a teacher is a nice fallback.
The world will always need teachers,
but I couldn't see myself being one.
This is largely because of my speech impediment.
How can I teach children when they can barely understand me?
What if I mispronounce a word and they say it like that for the rest of their life?
I didn't want to mess any kids up like that.

Fast forward to the Summer of 2011.
A broke, bored college student
finds it difficult to find a job
until his church reaches out to him
to tutor children in reading and writing at an enrichment camp.
He works for free, but as stayed before
he is bored.

At some point I found out I was teaching math as well.
Most Writing/English majors would buckle upon hearing that,
but I've always been better at math than writing anyway.
I just don't enjoy it as much.
Rather, I couldn't see myself enjoying a job that entailed
cranking equations all day.


The children I was given charge of?
Let's call them... inner city youths between the ages of 6-12.
Niglets. I mean black.... they were black.
Reaching an age group that wide would prove to be a challenge as well.
I'll never know how teachers in the olden days did it.
I commend them.
I ended up splitting my kids up into halves though:
little kids (8 and down) and big kids (9 and up).

I didn't have a textbook or anything,
so I made up my own curriculm as I went along.
...I mean I had a syllabus. Yup, sure did.
Worksheets I found online did help structure my class, however.

How was it to actually tutor/teach kids?
Well, as expected, I found it difficult at first.
I felt as frustrated as Mr. Cartmenez:
"How do I reach these kids?"

Well no, I lied.
Math was easy to teach.
The kids actually wanted to learn that.
Mostly because it was like a competition.
Kids love to be able to say they're better than someone
so I used that to my advantage.
Don't worry, I told the kids not to say,
"Why you so slow? You so stupid. Gosh!"
One little girl kept saying it anyway, though.
It got her sent out the classroom a couple of times.

No, English proved to be the real challenge,
which hurt me as not only a teacher but a writer.
They considered it boring or hard.
Taught the wrong way, language arts can be rather boring.
And the English language is without a doubt a hard language.
But I still tried anyway.

I created vocabulary list and held spelling bees.
I held grammar lessons (because let's be honest,
most everyone's grammar in the hood is atrocious, including adults).
I even printed out short stories for them to read and comprehend.
Everything didn't reach any child,
but every child took something away from my lessons.

But all these feels static.
I should tell you about the children.
For the most part, they all called me Mr Charles.
I mean, I am an elder to them so it made sense.
I didn't feel like being called by my last name though.
That would have made me feel too old.
Some of the kids called me Uncle Charles for a while.
That was cool, too.

When I came to teach,
the kids would usually be at recess.
Seeing me meant recess was over,
so of course some kids resented me for it.
One had even more reason to resent me for mispronouncing his name all the time.
It wasn't even one of those ultra ghetto spectacular names, either.
It was just two letters.
But one of those letters was an R.
My mouth struggles to make R-sounds,
so it comes out more like a W.
Mispronouncing a student's name
wasn't my only speaking fail,
but I was able to overcome it.
Most of the kids were able to understand me enough.

They heard me whenever I yelled, as well.
They're kids. Bad ass little black kids.
I expected to have to yell at them to be quiet and pay attention.
It honestly was my least favorite part of the job.
Screaming always gives me a headache.
Eventually I stopped shouting at them and sent them out of the room
whenever they became too much of a hassle.
After seeing the leader of the camp,
they would usually return quiet and ready to learn.

Remember how I mentioned kids loving competition?
Well at some point or another, they all wanted to be my helper for the day.
What kid doesn't enjoy feeling important?
I used that to keep them quiet and in check as well

In fact, some of the kids kinda played teacher's pet to me.
This one kid, he kept trying to impress me.
It made me like him and I started to treat him like a little brother.
I found this was bad as far as demanding respect in the classroom.
But he disappeared two weeks later.

By disappeared I mean that his parent(s) stopped bring him to camp.
Kids were always coming and going.
I think I had 5-7 constant kids
and that's only because they were the kids of the counselors of the camp.
Because of this, I realized I wouldn't be able to teach everything I wanted.
I never set an end goal for my english lessons,
and I only made the little kids practice adding and subtraction over and over.
But the big kids, I wanted to get to decimals and order of operations.
I guess I should be happy though.
I got them through multiplication, division, and fractions
including mixed, addition, and subtraction.
I was on multiplying and dividing fractions when camp ended.

I sincerely hope I taught the kids enough to put them ahead
or at the very least catch up to their classmates.

As I typed that I realized how much I actually care for those kids.
I think that's what really makes a teacher:
their level of commitment to their student's excellence.
Needless to say, I'm reconsidering my job options.
With a year left of school, I might just take some education classes
to make my career as a teacher more of a possibility.
Next time, though, I'm dealing with teenagers.
Teaching the fundamentals is draining.
Word.

Baby's First Earthquake

As a 22 year old man living in Newark, NJ
I always thought I'd have to worry about a stray bullet
more than a falling ceiling fan killing me.
Well apparently Mother Nature thought it'd be funny
to remind me that anything is possible.

So apparently there has been a 5.8 scale earthquake in the DMV area.
My prayers go out to everyone who was caught in the midst of that.

I'm just surprised that it shook the whole East Coast.
Correction, I'm surprised there was an earthquake on this side of the states at all.
Did Pangaea fuck us all and now we're on the West Coast?
I'll be damned.

It started as my chair and table rocking back and forth.
At first I just thought it was a big ass rat fucking with my emotions.
Then the floor started to shake.
My heart beat faster as my body froze.
But I tell you what,
if stuff decided to fall from the ceiling
I would have tucked and rolled so fast!

After the mini shock subdues
of course I go to update Twitter
because I am a slave to social media.
I swear I thought it was just my imagination running away with me like the Temptations
Sure enough I see people from Maryland to NYC talking about the shake.
Have I never been more glad to be a slave.

The last thing I tweeted was:
I feel like I should hide in a closet in case it the earthquake comes back... but I promised myself never again. #gayboyproblem
I always like to make light of a situation, you know.

If Walmart is smart,
they'll start selling Earthquake kits
all along the East Coast
before people forget.

If there's anything I learned from the East Coast Earthquake of 2011 it's this:
IT AIN'T SAFE NO MOOOOOOORE!
Word.

57) Find community service to take part in

No one likes a lazy ass.
So when I found out I would be staying in Jersey during the summer
I searched for some sort of employment.
My standards refused to let me work in fast food.
My lack of a license kept me from jobs not reachable by bus.
My trust in the economy failed to supply me a paying gig.

Luckily for me, my church hosted a summer camp this year.
Well, it was more of an enrichment camp;
u kno, wit chil'rens learnin nd stuf.
Obviously, I was scooped up to be the kids' English teacher, or tutor rather.
Unlikely for me, it was not a paying position due to a lack of funds from the state.
I only decided to do it because it would occupy my time.
But again luckily for me,
this meant my community service challenge was about to be fulfilled.
I didn't even realize it until I was 2 weeks away from finishing up
when my mother mentioned that I could put it on my resume as community service.
I swear, she's more of a genius than I am.

Doing it to boost rep.

Why was community service so important to put on my 101 list?
Simply put, I have been able to dodge it any other time
and I started to feel bad about it.
At my high school we had this thing called Spring Phase.
Basically it's the last month of school devoted to one activity-like-class. We were to complete community service as a class at least one year.
However, I dodged it by being one of the few kids
to work on the literary magazine every year during Spring Phase.

At some point I decided to assign myself a reason for being against community service.
Reason 1) I shouldn't be forced into it. I should want to give back freely.
Reason 2) I may be black but I'm not felon given a clean up sentence.
Reason 3) I'm not privileged or established enough to give back to anyone.
Even in high school I was such a load of shit.
I went to catholic/private school all my life.
There was something I could have imparted
to my inner-city youth public school counterparts.

As I look back, there was probably some dope ass scholarship I could have received for being such a valuable memorable of the Newark community or something.
Fiddlesticks.

No, I have not participated in community service while at Loyola either.
Loyola has a program called Spring Break Outreach
where white kids (and a few minorities sprinkled in to help bridge the gap)
go to underprivileged cities along the east coast and south
and pitch in, in whatever way they can.
Usually spots include: Gulf Coast of New Orleans; Ivanhoe, Va; Baltimore, MD; Camden, NJ; and Newark, NJ.
I kid you not, look at the website.
How can I feel compelled to help out a city on the same list as my own?
Suddenly my third reason for ditching community service felt justified.

Doing it to boost album sales.

Honestly, who knows how long it would have taken me to find a city or organization
to help out with if I hadn't stumbled
upon this opportunity.
It probably would have been the last thing on my list to be completed. haha

But how do I feel
now that I've completed my service?
I'm not inspired to donate my time like crazy...
but I suppose I wouldn't turn down an invitation
or a good cause to go out and help. You do end up with a nice accomplished feeling.
What is that lame line elders always tell us?
It's better to give than to receive.
As far as help goes,
I'd have to say that's a pretty true statement.
Pretty true, indeed.
Word.


Oh yeah and if you want to read what tutoring kids was like, click here.

6) Become comfortable with wearing shorts

Anyone that's been around me long enough
knows that I only wear jeans.
Search your memory banks, friends,
and you'll know it to be true.
Beside the days I have to work in khakis,
my legs are covered in blue denim.
Winter, Fall, Spring, and especially Summer.

There really isn't so much a story
as there is a simple explanation.
I have eczema.
What that means is that if I don't moisturize my skin
it will become ashy, flaky, and scaly.
They'll even crack and bleed.
Luckily I've been able to treat everything but my hands so far,
those tough leathery bastards.
But back in the day, my skin was simply the pits,
my legs being the worst.
So like any logical kid,
to avoid humiliation I never wore shorts.
Even when we had gym, I wore sweatpants instead.

Though my legs have gotten much better and smoother,
I've still held on to my no shorts policy.
Mostly out of habit,
but also out of fear that my eczema'll catch me slipping.

I don't know what possessed me to include this on the list.
Well no, that's a lie.
It's number 6, so obviously it popped into my head immediately.
I suppose I included it to challenge myself.
To overcome a fear I didn't need to hold on to any longer.
And I'm sure I added it to create more possibilities to my wardrobe as well.

When I was finally ready to embrace my legs,
I posed a simple question to Twitter,
"I keep getting mixed signals on jorts.
What do you guys think about them?"
Jorts, for those that don't know, are jean shorts.
As a guy who knows only jeans,
I figured why not stick with what I know.
Besides, we all know it's the hipster thing to do.
The answers I received were mostly no's.
However, one friend told me wear them if I wanted to let my flame out.
All I needed was one yes to try it. I'm all for more ways for people to easily tell I'm gay.
Shortly after I had made up my mind, I received this response from a trusted gay friend: Who are you, Ellie May Clampett? Fucking nay!
Needless to say, I laid my jorts dreams to rest.

Three weeks later,
I went shorts shopping.
After much browsing in H&M
I found a nice little pair of black shorts.
Cotton, I believe there were.

I got home and tried them on.
They were so tight and short.
I was pleased.
They were very hipster of me.
Also, what gay man doesn't like to show off his ass?

However, my mother wanted to see how they fit me as well.
...she was not pleased with the fit.
She said they went up my crack.
I honestly couldn't tell.
She urged me to return the shorts, and I obliged her.
I don't know why, it's my body. I do what I want!
It might have been because she gave me the money to buy them, though...

The 38s

In any case,
I exchanged the black shorts for a bigger size.
From a size 33 to a size 38.
It was on the discount rack.
The size 38s fit fine with a belt because of the make,
but I miss the snugness of the 33s.
At least they still came above my knees.
Only roughians wear shorts below their knees.
[Is my bougie negro showing yet?]

So how do I actually feel about wearing shorts
now that I've had them for the past 2-3 weeks?
...they're not all bad.
I mean, I hate the breeze that comes across my legs.
It bothers me.
Also, air conditioning chills me much faster now.
However, wearing shorts has it's pluses.
They make great lounge wear,
allow the legs to move around freely while dancing,
and they're not a bad way to switch up how I wear a t-shirt.

Will I buy more shorts?
I honestly don't know yet.
Only time will tell.
I have been eyeing an old pair of jeans
with a hole at the knees that I could cut up though. :-D
Word.