MY BABY DAYS

I don't remember much as a baby, but one memory I dohave—and it seems I'll never be rid of—is vivid images ofmyself lying in bed and kicking my baby feet with a brace onthem! The brace was a metal apparatus designed to try to straightenout my pigeon-toed feet. Having to wear that brace 24-7 wasn'ta fun beginning for me. I was just a little baby trying to enjoy thebeginning of my life, and I had a 3-5 lb. bar with brackets attached tomy baby shoes that felt like it weighed a ton! So instead of the joy ofkickin' and cooin', I just lay there, and to make matters worse, afterall the suffering I did, it didn't work! I'm still pigeon-toed!

As a young child growing up with my crooked feet, at times I tooka lot of abuse from other kids. They used to tease me, and it mademe feel like I was a freak of nature. I didn't know about the ElephantMan back then, but now I know how he felt taking all the verbalabuse that he got from people. But what you see is what you get.If I could straighten out my feet by myself and change my physicalcondition, I would have, but it's like anybody's birth defect—it'ssomething that we have no control over. In the Bible, in Mark 2:5,Jesus healed a paralytic, and Jesus associated the young man's birthdefect with sins. So when Jesus healed him, he said to the youngman, "Your sins are forgiven." So for now, as imperfect humans, wejust have to live with the birth defects we have until Jesus returns tofurther exercise his authority over the birth defects we have, but betterdays are coming (Matt. 25:31). As for me, it's a matter of how amI going to deal with my minor birth defect. Am I going to let it getme down, or will I use it to help build my character and to let it helpme become a stronger person? There's an old movie entitled MidnightExpress, and all the prisoners used to walk around a structure, all ofthem in the same direction. But one day, the star of the movie startedwalking in the opposite direction from everybody else—against thegrain—and in doing so, it helped strengthen him mentally.

That's what my experiences with verbal abuse have done for me. It'smade me mentally strong. I discovered later on in my life what theadvantage was of me being pigeon-toed. Pigeon-toed people are veryathletic—and I am—and they can zig and zag better than all otherathletes! Whenever I look way back at the bad memory of my legbraces, it's intriguing, because some may have thought that scenarioof me in "leg-irons" was a glimpse into my future since I was about togrow up poor! And because of that, I would go on to live my life inleg-irons, a life full of crime and in and out of jail. Unfortunately andironically, that kind of thinking is expected in the big cities where loweconomics do have an effect on a child's choices in life. But it's alsoan excuse. None of that was an omen about my future life, but it didbecome true for some of those around me. It's interesting that I wasbeing judged as a criminal already, and I was just a baby. But I thinkthe concern at the time might have been, was I born with the badgene? Was I born with criminal potential? Some experts claim thatbad people are born with the bad gene, so they are destined to livethat way—bad. So my parents were concerned that if I had the badgene, would it lead me into a life of crime? Or could we, as a family,overcome it? In spite of all the speculations about that, one thingis for sure. Babies are very impressionable, and they learn from theexamples around them, the things they see and hear (Luke 1:39-41).

With me growing up in a big city, one way or another, I wasinfluenced by my city's environment, my family members, and myfriends (1 Cor. 15:33). Unfortunately, we can never be sure whatthings a baby takes into its mind and also its heart. It's amazing how,when a child grows older, he or she acts or talks a certain way, andyou ask yourself, "Where did that come from?" I remember someonecommented to me once that they did everything they could to raisetheir baby right, and after the kid came home from his first day inpublic school, he was cussin' and karate-kickin', so five years of goodhome training and upbringing went away just like that.

Back in the day, my parents had an easier task of controlling some ofthe outside influences or distractions that could affect my thinking. Ididn't have a cell phone, computers, and gaming stations. AlthoughI was influenced by the things and the people around me, the onlyquestions that remained were, was it for the good, or was it for thebad? If you and I ever meet, you'll find out then. To all you parentseverywhere, in our big cities and small cities, especially you in the D,if you have children, I wish you well with raising them. I hope theysurvive. I'm praying for them and for you as well.

Another one of the few vivid memories I have as a baby is that of mymother breast-feeding me. Not only was she providing me with thenourishment that I needed to thrive and survive in this world, but itwas also a time of warmth and closeness between me and the personthat carried me for nine months. The provisions of a mother caringfor her child don't stop after the child exits the womb, althoughsometimes that responsibility gets passed on to others. It's really justthe beginning of their relationship. The instance of being outside themother's womb is probably one of the most critical stages of a baby'slife. Everything that the newborn gets exposed to outside its mother'swomb has, all of a sudden, become a harsh reality. The baby is nowphysically exposed to the turbulent, sometimes cruel, and wickedworld that it heard for nine months while inside its mother's safeand secure womb. How unsettling is that? But while I was in mymother's arms, she made me feel like I was in a safe haven and verymuch loved. Speaking of food, I also remember eating that blandbaby food! Strained carrots, peas, and even the so-called dessert, thebanana pudding, tasted bland! And that's one experience that weall have shared, and we all survived it! In life, whenever someonechampions something, they then become subject-matter experts; likewhen a body builder wins Mr. Universe, he become a subject-matterexpert on food. Well, I find it interesting that Mr. Universe in the90's said that "people have been eating food with condiments for solong that we have forgotten what food tastes like in its natural state."So after hearing that, I stopped putting ketchup, mustard, and jellyon almost everything that I eat. And voilà! My food still tastes good.I liked it when I was a baby eating foods with no condiments, and Iturned out okay. To this day, I still apply that philosophy no matterwhat foods I eat.

SCHOOL DAYS

Elementary school was the start of schooling for me,my generation didn't have preschool. There were morestay-at-home moms back in the day, and kids stayed at homeuntil we were five years old then went to the first grade a or b. Myfirst-grade teacher was a very, very stern teacher. I guess she had tobe that way with us in an attempt to correct any bad behaviors earlyon, before they became deeply rooted in us, for fear we would likelycontinue to act that way throughout our whole lives! First grade waslike boot camp, and my teacher was our drill sergeant. She was meanand unloving; her only focus was training us. Some of those kidsneeded the discipline that they received. One of her favorite formsof discipline was washing out a kid's mouth with soap. There was abroom closet toward the front of our big classroom, and wheneverone of us kids, usually a boy, would speak a profane word in theclassroom, Sergeant teacher would take us into that closet, sticka huge bar of soap in our mouth, and roll it around so as to washthose bad words out of our mouth! I don't remember very many joysassociated with being in the first grade or learning much at all, butI do distinctly remember all the discipline I got! Since I only wentto all Detroit public schools, I didn't know school to be any otherway for a kid! I don't know if I'll ever heal from the embarrassmentand shame I experienced in front of my classmates, because thoseare bad memories that my classmates like to remind me at our classreunions. Do those kinds of things go on in all the big city-publicschool systems, or is it just behind the walls of Detroit schools?

To this day, another thing I can't get healing from is the philosophyof punishing everyone for what one individual does. If little Johnnymesses up, why do we all have to be punished? Why do we all haveto put our heads down with the lights out and take a nap and notget our graham crackers and milk? Today, that's the same twistedphilosophy that's common in corporate America. If one personmesses up, then everyone is punished! It doesn't matter whether youhad anything to do with it or not, and managers can't figure out whythey have morale problems at work?

I do have at least one fond memory of elementary school. I met a lotof nice kids, especially pretty girls. They were smart, with nice hair,and were very feminine and prissy! The proverbial question is, "Whatkind of girl or woman do you like?" Well, for me, that's it—girls inpretty dresses with pretty hair, and if they like to accessorize, the morethe better! If I conjure up in my memory any of the girls that I wentto school with at any school level, all the ones that wore dresses ona regular basis are the first ones to come to mind. The thing aboutfemales in dresses is that they remind me that as a man, I am themasculine one, and it helps me assume my role as the man. Anotherpurpose females in dresses serve is that I'm also a leg man! I love a hotpair of legs, and a woman that has a great pair of legs doesn't needanything else!

I have quite a few bad memories and bad experiences associated withelementary school. If I was to do the math, the bad outweighs thegood ones. One of those experiences was getting my lunch stolenregularly! I guess either my big city-public school didn't have thefunds for us to have our own lockers, or it could be that they thoughtwe weren't mature enough or responsible enough for that yet. So itwas common that when we brought our lunch to school, we wouldput them in a huge box. Most of us had brown lunch bags, and a fewof us were fortunate to have metal lunch boxes, which were really coolbecause they had some type of theme on them, like a popular TVshow or a comic-book superhero. So all the different kinds of lunchessat half the day in that box. For those of us with the brown bags, wewould write our names on the outside of the bag for identificationpurposes, but not only did that help us know which lunch wasours, everyone else knew which lunch was ours, so we were settingourselves up to get our lunches ripped off. In the big-city jungle, thebigger animals always feed off the smaller, weaker ones. In elementaryschool, I wasn't yet big or strong at all, so unfortunately, my lunchwas one of the ones that came up missing a lot! One thing thatprobably contributed to the atrocity was having a brown lunch bag,because they were easier to steal than the metal lunch boxes. So forthat reason and others, I had to have a metal lunch box. Lunchtimefor us kids was supposed to be one of the highlights of our day atschool, but it mostly was a lowlight for some of us. What kind ofvalues does stealing teach a child? That it's okay to steal to survivein the big city even if it's at the expense of others? Sad to say, but theexperiences I had like that helped prepare me for similar experiencesto come later in life.

Another bad memory that I have about elementary school is teachersand administrators who punish kids physically, whether it is in theirclassrooms or in their offices. My math teacher, used a 12-inchwooden ruler to spank our hands with if he thought we messed up inhis class. He would call us up the front of the class. He would thenclutch our fingers together in one hand, bend our palms upward,and strike us repeatedly and rapidly with that wooden ruler. Whenhe was done with his prescribed number of licks, which was based onthe severity of the infraction, our hand would be cherry red. It stung,and it was embarrassing for me to be punished like that in front ofthe whole class! Sometimes I would cry on my way back to my seat,not exactly sure which part of the whole ordeal hurt the most. It wasdifficult moments like that, though, that we find out who our realfriends are. In contrast, the animals would point at us and laugh,but all our loving and compassionate classmates would console us attheir first opportunity. As best as I can tell, no physical scars resultedfrom the punishment I got, but I will always have some permanentmental scars from it.

Our school principal, and his assistant, were just as bad as mymath teacher if not worse than he was—when it came to physicalpunishment! I didn't learn the word sadist until later in life, butlooking back at it all, they fit that description. Whenever a teacherwho was not a sadist had a problem with a student, that teacherwould send the kid to the principal's office, and there he or she gotspanked, either by the principle or the assistant. I don't rememberhow they determined between themselves as to who would carry outthe punishment, but it was like having a choice of poisons to pickfrom—both were deadly! One spanked us with a one-inch-thickleather strap, and the other used a huge wooden paddle to beat uswith. Although they used different tools of their trade, the MO wasthe same. The student was told to bend over the principal's deskand then got whaled. Things were worse on certain days, becauseMonday, Wednesday, and Friday were double-strap days! Whether itwas double-strap day or not, being sent to the principal's office forpunishment was never a fun time for me. Now that I think about it,could I have been learning anything when so much of our time andenergy in school was being put into administering punishment to us?If I wasn't being sent to the principal's office, I was in a broom closetgetting my mouth washed out with soap or sitting in a corner in theclassroom, facing a wall. It was all a detriment to me, but moreover,how were my other big city-public school classmates expected to learnwith those kinds of constant interruptions?

GRADES 2-5 WERE ALL PRETTYMUCH THE SAME

One of the highlights of elementary school was mymusic class—learning "Peter and the Wolf" and whichinstrument represented which character, learning andsinging songs like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," and dancing to"Ring around the Rosie." All my music teachers were very niceand obviously cut from a different cloth than some of my otherclass-subject teachers! I enjoyed music so much I started to play aninstrument in school. The French horn wasn't my first choice whenit came to choosing an instrument. I wanted to play something morealluring, like the sax, the trombone with the slide, the trumpet, oreven the violin so I would grow up and be a violin virtuoso like myfavorite composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Antonio Vivaldi,but my music class had a need to be filled, so I sacrificed myself andvolunteered to pick up the French—and it took a lot to pick too!The combination of the huge horn and huge case made it very heavy,although I did benefit from carrying that horn and case home everyday. It really helped me to develop muscles, and I sometimes used itas a battering ram to barge my way through crowds of kids, whichwas rude but convenient and was the law of the jungle. I grew upwatching Tarzan movies, and in the episode "Tarzan Goes to NewYork," while flying over the city, he looked out the window on theplane and said to Jane, "Look, concrete jungle." So in my mind, Ithought I was justified in paying back some of those kids that hadtreated me unjustly! They acted like animals, and I treated themlike animals! When I practiced playing my horn at home, I reallydidn't practice per se. I just played certain notes as loud as I could tosimulate animals like the elephant, reminiscent of the ones I saw onTarzan. Not really practicing caught up on me! I got kicked off theschool band for not being able to play or read the music sheet.