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.

Reunited

Usually when you go to a reunion
you meet with a side of your grandparents' family,
awkwardly ask how each other is doing,
make boring small talk for 5-10 minutes,
and then never talk to them again until the next reunion 5 years later.

Luckily I got a little something more
from my weekend in Myrtle Beach.
And no, I don't mean darker skin and a random hook up.
Although I actually did get one of those. [no wink wink nudge nudge :-/]

As little time as I spent in Jersey these past four years I've spent even less time talking to my family.
It's not like I was trying to be the anti-Peter Griffin or anything.
You see, in order to stay in touch with most family members
you need to ring them up on the telly.
I loathe talking on the phone.
But it's not just that.
I was basically the baby of the family on my mother's side before my sister had her kids,
and it happens to be very hard to break out of the mentality of staying out of grown folks business or even carrying a normal conversation with them.

I have two cousins that are between me and my sister's age (we're 12.5 years apart)
but they decided not to come to the reunion,
work schedules and distance and whatnot.
So I was left to hang with the old folks on the drive down to Myrtle Beach.
Said old folks include: my mom, her parents, and her aunt.
What I expected to be a boring ride was;
I slept the entire way down.

However once we pit-stopped at my sister's house in North Carolina, the laughs rolled.
This is mainly because anytime my sister and I are in the same room
we pick on our mother or just crack joke after joke.
My mom is dorky and funny most of the time too.
The real surprise came from watching my grandparents interact.
They've been married for over 50 years and still act like kids sometimes.
My grandpa'll make a crack at my grandma or poke her and she'll start to jokingly fuss.
When my grandfather fell asleep in the car himself,
she poked him until he woke up.
Little things like that made me feel like I could talk to them.

Once we got down to Myrtle Beach,
we were joined by my uncle,
a few cousins my mom's age,
and a couple of my grandma's siblings.
When I tell you we kept to ourselves, we kept to ourselves.
The way the reunion was set up
each family just did whatever until the banquet on the last day.
They didn't even have a proper meet and greet.
You could have been standing in line at a water park
and not even realize the family in front of you were your distance cousins.
After a while you kinda just assume anyone black is related to you. [hooray for enforcing stereotypes!]

Now even though my immediate family was either born in Newark (and its surrounding areas) and/or lived there for the latter part of their life,
we are still a pretty bougie, highfalutin bunch.

"Don't trust them new niggas
over yonder..."

We expect things to have class and order.
So when we went to the banquet, we came through in nice summer dresses, linen suits, and shirt and slacks.
In return, we were greeted with stank eyes aplenty.
I looked around the ballroom
and saw negroes in shorts, tees, raunchy attire.
I judged them so hard as they stared us down.

You see, this reunion was so extended that my grandmother's maiden name wasn't even on the program.
I'm guessing it was her mother's side of the family.
Well, they suck.
Damn southerners.
I felt so unwanted I didn't even stay for the dance portion of the evening,
and ya'll know how much I love to show out on an actual dancefloor.

But being so excluded from the rest of the family
kinda made my immediate relatives tighter.
We banded together and had our own damn fun
without being bothered with the rest of them.

So while I've been focused on only relying on my friends these past few years,
it's nice to know I have family I can actually reach out and talk to when I'm ready to.
Because as much as I tried to deny it in the past,
in the end you've got nothing if you don't have family.
Word.

46) Try seafood again and not die

The past four years I've stayed in Baltimore
there have been countless crab feast,
not to mention the copious amounts of fish fillets served at any occasion.
Have you any idea how much this sucks to a guy with a seafood allergy?
I mean, I can still smell that shit.
It's fucking delicious from what my nose can gather.

It's not as if I've never had seafood, though.
What, you thought I was told by a doctor I had an allergy?
I'm black, my mother ain't have money for no damn allergy test.
Anything she found out I couldn't eat occurred through trial and error.

I don't remember the first time I ate seafood, but my mother says I have a different reaction each time.
I accredit this to her subjecting to me to a different species of fish each time.

The last bit of seafood I remember having is shrimp.
I was about ten or so.
There was butter sauce.
It was delicious, pure ecstasy.
That was until the swelling in my face and throat began.

Every since then
I was the kid keeping a group from going to Red Lobster.
It's not like I didn't want to go to, though.
I mean them cheddar biscuits are to die for, man!

My father has wanted me to try seafood again for a while now.
"It's probably just shellfish," he tells me. "You gotta at least eat a tuna fish sandwich."
Out of all the fish, that's the one I don't want to try.
It looks like cat food for goodness's sake.

But he was right.
I felt I needed to try seafood one more time.
I had out grown my other allergies as a kid:
meat, dairy, tomatoes, chocolate.
Yeah, I could only eat fruits and veggies until I was about four.
So who's to say I wouldn't outgrow this one.

Well Saturday I had my opportunity to try fish once again.
My mother grilled up some tilapia and offered me a piece.
If I was to try fish again anywhere
it would be in the comfort of my own home
literally two blocks away from the hospital I was born in.

She cut me a bite-sized piece
and lifted it to my face with a fork.
I was wary of the dead sea critter, nervous even.
I sniffed it like a suspicious dog.
Then I peaked it, attempting to see if it would be the kiss of death.
After 5 seconds, nothing happened.
I licked it for extra measure before finally chomping down on it.

My initial impression after swallowing it?
Tilapia: the pork of the sea.
It wasn't bad at all...
until my tongue started to itch.
Then my throat joined the party.
My upper lip was fashionably late,
showing off its new boils.

My mother gave me two Benadryl and watched me like a hawk for the next hour,
making sure I downed bottles of water as if I were a fish myself.
Sure enough, my lip and throat slowly got better.
A trip to the hospital had been averted,
but I would still have to decline the invitation to my next fish fry.
...least I didn't die. That's always good.

Part of me still wants to try shellfish though.
Mainly because I want to fully participate in a crab feast, really.
Swinging a mallot at a dead animal: who wouldn't enjoy that?
Word

I Actually Don't Mind Them

There have been multiple cases,
and I'm sure you've experienced this too,
when I'm around a group of people
and they will collectively shit on a person's life.
Usually it's behind the person's back
but most have no qualms with doing it to their face either.

Now to each their own.
As long as you stand by your opinions and beliefs at all times
I have no problem with you.
However, I have a problem with those who don't.
In this case I had a problem with myself.

You see, while I never said anything to degrade a person
I would nod along and "mm-hmm, yeah" while others did.
I went with the group just to go with the group.
I had no reason to dislike the person they disliked.
I was a phony, and I felt sick about it.

I have this irrational disease a few weak-spirited people have,
that wanting to be liked by everyone shit.
And I felt that if I aligned myself with the wrong people,
others would dislike me by association.
Well, that's stupid.
If people were to do that,
the fuck do I need them around me for,
to bring me down?
I'll pass.

It wasn't until about the middle of my junior year in college
that I finally figured that out
and said, "Fuck it, I'mma hang with who I want."
Granted, I did it secretly at first,
but I found I was happier.
I almost let other people keep me from a person
I shared common interests with,
more common interests than with those previously mentioned.

Basically, all I'm saying is don't let other people
determine how you view other people or the world, even.
Come up with your own conclusion
before you shut yourself off from something you might actually enjoy.
Otherwise you could end up a depressed, lonely fool
among a sea of people you don't even care about.
Word.