A Man for Others

Introduction

I learned how to view my own needs as secondary. Whether it was sharing toys with kids who didn’t even like me as a child or donating time and effort to populations of people who thought of me as a square, a romantic fool, etc., I learned how to work against my best interests.
As a result, I am an overeducated, unemployed man with no prospects. I take antidepressants for a dysthymia, chronic depression. This condition is unlike classical depression. It differs because depression usually has a normal emotional base line. In other words there is a normal emotional high point. A dysthymic does not have those normal emotional high points. So, I have to make proper life decisions for two reasons. One reason is material, and the other is psychological.
My intent is to offer a sincere picture of how I learned to work against my best interests. I learned how to become an overeducated, unemployed man with no prospects. The economy really didn’t do this to me. I was headed in that direction. Perhaps the reader may find some useful information in this blog entry. Then again, maybe the reader may not. However I need to reveal this because it has taken me over 30 years of my life before I could finally understand how I became the man I am today.

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When I family moved to Detroit in 1974, I was 5 years old. I was very excited about moving to Detroit. I lived in Ann Arbor from 6 months of age until age 5. I never really liked Ann Arbor. It was an openly racist city that taught Black children that they were inherently dumb and couldn’t be taught things like standard American English. I went to a Methodist nursery school, Huron Hills Nursery School. My teaching Ms. Twinning always thought that I was developmentally delayed because I couldn’t draw or color. I could read and write, something the other kids couldn’t do. But since I was a little Black boy, and she was born and bred in Jim Crow America, this didn’t have merit. Yet, I had to play peacefully with these little racist kids. I’d get called ‘nigger’ and they wouldn’t get disciplined. If I retaliated, then I’d get written or isolated. Needless to say, I was excited about leaving that place.
July of 1974 brought about some drastic changes and harsher lessons. Because my dad was a doctor and had his own practice, I soon learned that I was too ‘White’ for the Black kids. I didn’t realize that I had an Ann Arbor brogue. Since I was a big kid for my age and had no older brothers or sisters who would fight for me, I took plenty of abuse from kids my own age and their older brothers and sisters. The problem is that I had to befriend these kids. My mother would treat those kids like they really were friendly with me. Once I learned how to defend myself, I earned respect from my peers. This was something that I could never get in Ann Arbor. So when my mom would feed my friends, I would feel annoyed because I remembered when I couldn’t get passed them to get to and from school, but I learned to overlook that. I don’t regret learning how to forgive my brothers and sisters. I needed to learn that lesson early.
By the summer of 1980, I would be sent to the lion’s den once again, a Huron Hills Nursery School gone viral. The school was the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy.

Men for Others

This subtitle is the slogan for U of D Jesuit High School and Academy. The school was founded during the reconstruction era. It is an excellent academic middle and high school. I wouldn’t recommend sending artistically inclined children there. It’s a culturally conservative school. It’s a politically conservative school. So individual opinions and forms of expression will be summarily suppressed, particularly if they don’t fit the political and cultural mold. I had to learn how to place my musical interests, aptitudes, and skills that I had just learned I had aside to keep up with the academic rigor. I spent a lot of time fighting against the pecking order too. I wasn’t used to being bullied anymore. Once I learned how to defend myself in public school, I couldn’t go back to being picked on, especially if the older kids were wimps themselves for the most part.
While my parents were right when they noticed that Detroit Public Schools lacked academic rigor, they taught you who you were and that’s the root of wisdom. It was hard to sell that to parents between 1980 and 1987 though. Black boys were killing each other over shoes, coats, pocket money, etc. So, U of D Jesuit High School and Academy was an easy sell at that time. Order and academic development will always win over bullets. Nevertheless, I was doing well in my studies, but I was failing myself though. I learned how to do public service work and volunteerism. We learned that it was the ‘Christ-like’ way to give to the less fortunate. The problem was that I didn’t realize that I was psychologically underdeveloped. So, I was giving time, tithe, and talent to causes that I needed to donate to myself. I had a friend of mine who went to U of D Jesuit High with me from 7th grade to 10th grade. He transferred to Mumford High School down the street and flourished there. He met his wife there, played his favorite sports and improved his GPA. This was during the same era where kids were being shot over shoes, coats, etc. I have a lifelong buddy of mine who grew up right across the street from me who went to Mumford High School and is now a political staff writer for the Detroit News and Free Press. So, who says that you can’t learn to read or write in Detroit Public Schools? Both of my friends had pretty well balanced high school lives also. They didn’t volunteer money and time to causes. They volunteered their time to being teenagers.
By the time I graduated from high school, my GPA was about a 3.3. At U of D Jesuit, it didn’t look that great. My friends that went to public high school used to say that it would have been a 3.7 or greater had I gone to a public high school. The bottom line is that I didn’t. So, I worked that hard just to be a little above average, and I had to sacrifice my music aptitude in the process.
I taught for 15 years. I taught elementary, high school, and college students in that time. The students that seemed to excel in life were those students who enjoyed personal and academic success. I didn’t have that. I was working most of the time at excelling at school. I learned how to be involved in various activities but I didn’t learn to develop myself personally. So, I was always finding causes and/or jobs in which I would work hard but be compensated very little. I never knew what it was like to be paid what I was worth. I was always an ‘expendable.’ It didn’t matter that I was always a B-student and that I earned my B.A. in 2 years and my M.A. in 1 year. I was in a recession when times were ‘good.’
I learned how to work hard at being mediocre. I learned how to suppress my gifts and talents in order to fit in. There is no place for a mediocre person, except at the end of the unemployment line. That’s the only place where mediocre people can fit in.