Breakdown: The Messiah Complex At Work, Part II

January 7, 2012

Cosmo, from Nicktoons' Fairly Odd Parents, a reminder of Ken, January 5, 2012. (http://fairlyoddparents.wikia.com).

The saying goes that a lawyer who represents him or herself at trial has a fool as counsel. This is also true of a supervisor who believes that the only ideas worth pursuing are his own, unadulterated ones. Especially one in the midst of a nervous breakdown, who who’d know since the late-1980s that he had bipolar disorder. This was the case of my last days at New Voices in January ’04, as I prepared to move on, and as Ken prepared to flip out (see my “The Messiah Complex At Work, Part I” from November ’11).

The seven weeks between the weird November meeting with Ken and others and his breakdown were tension filled. I worked out a schedule that allowed me to take until the middle of February — three months — to find another position at the Academy for Educational Development or elsewhere. Beyond that, I did my job, and found Ken constantly snooping in my office, monitoring my telephone calls, and double-checking my times in and out of the office in the meantime. It was as bad as it was during my first weeks working for him in December ’00 and January ’01.

I’d long suspected that Ken had some mental illness, either bipolar disorder or paranoid schizophrenia (as I noted in my “Working At AED: Alternate Sources of Fear” post in June ’11). And in the year prior to January ’04, I’d made some of my suspicions known, to superiors like “Driving Miss Daisy” Sandra, my former Center Director Yvonne. I’d even taken two New Voices colleagues out to lunch that summer — a month before the birth of my son — to warn them about the signs I’d seen of Ken become more maniac and paranoid than usual.

But I didn’t realize that Ken’s condition knew no bounds. So it was that on the morning of Wednesday, January 7, that Driving Miss Daisy had called us into an impromptu meeting with Ken. We went into the seventh floor conference room, not knowing why we were meeting. Ken came in last, after I’d spent about five minutes updating Driving Miss Daisy about the preparation status for the New Voices gathering at the World Social Forum in Mumbai.

His face was flush, the color of freshly caught and gutted salmon, and sweat ran through his hair like he’d just run his five-foot-two frame a couple of miles in a sprint. He came in, sat down as I continued the update, then started to cry. Ken said, “Sandra, I’ve got to go,” and then left in a rush. By the time we had adjourned, Ken had left the building.

I wouldn’t see the man again for another five weeks. In the meantime, several AED higher-ups brought me up to speed on what had occurred between the time I changed my son’s diapers and disembarked from the Metro at Du Pont Circle that morning. Ken and Driving Miss Daisy had met with AED’s president and CEO that morning about the status of the project. During that meeting, Ken had gone off on the head honcho, accusing him of sabotaging the project, of sabotaging him as the project leader, of being a corrupt, money-grubbing president. Of course, I found a letter in a printer two days before which summarized some of these

Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC December 16, 2008. (http://flickr.com).

ideas, but I’d no idea that Ken had printed it or planned to use it.

The next revelation dropped that Saturday, although I wouldn’t learn of it until I came back to work that Monday, January 12. Ken had left me a message Saturday morning, around 8 am, apologizing for the hell that he had put me through the previous couple of months. Then, as his voice started to crack, Ken said, “I love you, Donald!” I heard a sniffle, and then a click on the message. Within that week, I learned from one colleague in human resources that Ken had checked into the psychiatric ward at Georgetown University Hospital, and from another person that it was Driving Miss Daisy who’d driven him there.

There are any number of lessons that I or anyone can draw from this experience. For me, of all of the jobs I’ve held, this one was the most bittersweet experience, and in retrospect, I probably should’ve said no to it when it was offered to me in November ’00. That everyone with some authority who worked with me or Ken should’ve but didn’t notice the signs of his manic-depressive behavior.

That no matter my integrity or proper professional behavior under the circumstances, that I’d end up the bad guy. After all, my staff went to Mumbai without me — Driving Miss Daisy’s decision — while I went on to hold down the fort and found another position at AED. And don’t tell me race wasn’t involved. A tall mentally stable and heterosexual Black male versus a short, bipolar and semi-in-the-closet White male? Only in this world does the latter keep his position another six years after this and several other breakdowns.

That said, one thing stands out above all else. It’s a sad but important lesson about the difference being true to yourself and lying to yourself, about finding the right balance between life and career.

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Down The Rabbit Hole

January 3, 2012

Alice In Wonderland, surrounded by the characters of Wonderland, illustration, by Jessie Wilcox Smith, 1923. In public domain.

Once again, it’s time for the leap year silly season, between the presidential election cycle and the Summer Olympics. Only with a twist. Between the reactionary GOP/TPers, the state of the world in general and over-hyped Mayan predictions, 2012 promises to be a year full of surprises, for better and for worse. Only, as far as I can read a calendar, this year runs on the same day and date lines as 1984. Minus George Orwell’s post-apocalyptic impressions or Van Halen’s first big album (That reminds me — I should download “Panama” from iTunes).

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) speaks about entitlements during a campaign rally at the Hotel Pattee, Perry, Iowa, January 2, 2012. (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

What has been predictable so far includes Rick “Sanitarium” Santorum’s race-baiting via entitlements, calling on Blacks to not take “other people’s money” yesterday on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. What a dumb, racist ass! Especially since the overwhelming number of Americans on welfare are White. Especially because most poor Blacks still feel the lingering effects of a society built on racial preferences that denied them and previous generations the wealth that helped make America the richest country in the history of the world. Especially since Santorum has tried these tactics before, in Pennsylvania, where he showed how crazy he was six and eighteen years ago (Please Pitt, stop using him in your promotional ads!)

Yes, America’s all Alice in Wonderland again, sliding down the rabbit hole into an election cycle that’s more about style than substance, where the spin cycle’s constantly on and character is only defined in the most sanctimonious of terms. Between San”scrotum,” Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, and Jon Huntsman and their idiotic campaigns, I’d take an ancient Roman approach. Cut each of them on their right butt cheeks, throw them all in a bag with a wild leopard, and drop them in a river full of hippos. Whoever survives should then get to run against President Obama. That would be fairer than the system we have now.

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Musical ‘Mates and Matters

December 24, 2011

The "A" Note, February 5, 2008. (Pearson Scott Foresman, via Wikipedia). In public domain.

If someone asked me what was the one thing that me and my classmates had in common during my middle school and high school years in Mount Vernon, New York, it would be a love of and for music. I wouldn’t have been able to draw this rather obvious conclusion five years ago. But, in the course of interviewing folks and writing and rewriting my Boy @ The Window manuscript since ’06, music seems to be the one common denominator that connected us all.

Take the fact that so many of my Class of ’87 classmates found their way into the underground or mainstream music scene over the past twenty-four years. At least one was a producer, a bunch rapped, played, sang, and danced their way into the industry, even if they’re not household names. Others did studio work, and at least two are doing music/sound work for the small and big screen.

These folks are Black, White, Afro-Caribbean and Latino, so, no, race doesn’t seem to be a factor. Was it something that was in the water or in Mount Vernon’s lead water pipes? Not likely. It really couldn’t have been instilled in us by Humanities, or going to Davis, Nichols or Mount Vernon High School, right? The official doctrine of the powers that were would’ve made our favorite music somewhere between Sinatra and Tchaikovsky.

It could be as simple and as complicated as the times we grew up in, the fellow travelers to which we were

Culture Club "Club Sandwich Tour" poster, September 27, 2011. (Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution and subject of blog post.

exposed, the constant noise that was Mount Vernon public schools in the 1970s and 1980s. Living in a city in the early stages of decline, within shouting distance of Manhattan and a short walk to the Bronx. Having the level of Black and Brown diversity that we had, with a decent sized White minority in the school system, may be all that was needed to create the conditions for music to be our one common language.

It wasn’t just in my class, as the classes of ’85 and ’86 turned out the late Heavy D and Al B. Sure. Nor was it just in Mount Vernon’s public schools. There was something about Mount Vernon itself, a painful place for some, a cool and pleasureful one for others, that made music both a code for coolness and an escape from reality.

For my specific groups of Humanities nerds, renaissance folks and generally sharp classmates, though, the tastes ranged and even mingled. For the guidos and guidettes whom I labeled “The Italian Club,” the music was decidedly “White.” From “A” serenading 7S with The Police’s “Roxanne” ala Eddie Murphy, to the frequent blaring of Billy Idol, Bruce Springsteen and Foreigner from turbo-charged Camaros and Mustangs.

The Time promotional poster, circa 1990, July 6, 2006. (Mista Tee, via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution and subject matter for blog post.

Then the was the obviously cool Black and Afro-Caribbean, with a clique for every occasion, whose music was also obviously “Black.” Teena Marie, pre-”Material Girl” Madonna, Phyllis Hyman, Prince, Luther Vandross, Doug E. Fresh, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Run-DMC, if it was Black and cool, they listened to it, and knew the exact date the new album would hit the stores. They drove around in their Nissan Maximas, Audis and old Cadillacs with this mesh of R&B, early rap and hip-hop, and crossover pop pumping out of their tinted windows.

Of course, that left the rest of us, the few who seemed to like a bit of everything. Crush #1 and Depeche Mode. Brandie Weston and her clique’s love of Boy George and Culture Club. V’s commitment to Billy Joel, at least a decade and a half too young to understand the full meaning of what we’d now call adult contemporary. Not to mention The Police, Sting, The Who, Rolling Stones, Thompson Twins, Duran Duran, ABC, Tears for Fears, a-ha, and so many others. But it didn’t stop there. For we, too, liked Luther, and Billy Idol, and John Coltrane, and Lisa Lisa, and Run.

I don’t know if my musical tastes were the most eclectic of all, or if mine remain so. But I can say this. I ran 4.75 miles yesterday, listening to Genesis’ “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” (album version), Sounds of Blackness’ “Optimistic,” U2′s “Beautiful Day,” Grover Washington Jr’s “Summer Chill,” Stevie Wonder’s “As,” Sting’s “A Thousand Years,” and Enigma’s “Silence Must Be Heard” along the way. It seems that I’ve always had a song in my head and theme music in my heart for every situation and every period of my life. For better and for worse, I have to give Mount Vernon credit for that, if for nothing else.

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Posted by decollins1969

The Messiah Complex At Work, Part 1

November 12, 2011

Heinrich Himmler, ala Messiah Complex, 1938. (German Federal Archive via Wikipedia).

Today marks eight years since my former immediate supervisor Ken (see my “Working At AED: Alternate Sources of Fear” post from June ’11) forced me into a meeting with the head of HR and his “all-wise” boss Sandra “Driving Miss Daisy” in an effort to strip me of my Assistant Director of New Voices title at the now defunct Academy for Educational Development. All because I did my job while he was out of the office tacking on a couple of extra days after we’d attended the Independent Sector Conference in San Francisco the week before.

But this wasn’t about me or me doing my job as I’d been doing it for three years. No, this was about Ken in the middle of a period of emotional and psychological instability, and about me no longer trying to work around his moments of mania and depression. After all, I had a newborn son to worry about, a job search to keep secret, and a book I was determined to publish. Couple that with a fifteen percent cut in funding from the Ford Foundation for the New Voices program, and there was no way I’d make it through my last months with New Voices without Ken reacting irrationally.

It didn’t help that Ken suddenly wanted to do a New Voices conference in Mumbai, India as part of the World Social Forum with no significant planning that August, while I was out on maternity leave. It also didn’t help that Yvonne, our center director, chose early retirement in June over being kept into “Driving

Anglo Corned Beef, November 11, 2011. (cgi.ebay.com).

Miss Daisy’s” box of highly talented and experienced but underutilized managers of color.

Most of all, it didn’t help that I was completely honest, for once, in my assessment of my performance in my annual review that October. I dutifully reported my recent publications in The Washington Post and a semi-scholarly journal, presentations, teaching of graduate courses at George Washington University, and so on. During that meeting, Ken all but told me he was jealous of the kind of year I was having professionally. He even asked me where I wanted to be in five years. “I want to be director of my own project, of something like New Voices,” I said, again being all too honest.

So, during a week in which we had zero babysitter coverage, where I’d taken the week off to take care of my three-month-old son, Ken insisted that I come into the office. All so I could listen to an hour of accusations, insinuations and wild speculations. He accused me of undermining his authority because I relayed State Department travel warnings for Mumbai to New Voices Fellows. He told me how “amusing it was” that I had titled my position Assistant Director, even though that was the title of my position when I applied for it, interviewed for it, and accepted the position three years ago. And even though he’d been introducing me as his assistant director for three years.

He accused me of sexually harassing a New Voices Fellow and two staff members back in ’01 over two conversations that he had heard about third hand, and not from a staff member. One was about a strange site visit conversation that had nothing to do with anything approaching sexual harassment. The other conversation, it turned out, was about me and a former staff member’s gastrointestinal illnesses, something we had in common. Ken also accused me of wanting to take his job, of believing that I could do his job better than he could. Only on that last part I agreed, with a definitive nod of my head.

So when he asked me to accept having my title as Assistant Director stripped, along with the commensurate duties that went with that title (including supervisory authority), I said, “No, I think it’s time for me to move on from New Voices.” It left Ken in shock. Heck, it left me in shock, thinking about how we’d make it without my income if I couldn’t find another job over the next three months. The HR director and “Driving Miss Daisy,” though, weren’t surprised at all.

The meeting Ken had forced made my secret decision to move on an open one. Either way, it was inevitable. As I’d written in my journal after my annual review with Ken a couple of weeks before the meeting:

Mr. Magoo screen shot (and a serious lack of vision), June 23, 2011. (http://tumeke.blogspot.com).

“The most telling comment that my Director made during our fundraising effort came when I asked about his vision for our project. ‘I don’t know what the project’s vision should be,’ he said. I realized at that moment that everything we had worked for would fail, no matter how sound our ideas. My Director’s vision for the project did not extend beyond his need to feel needed, to feel as if he alone could keep our project – and by extension, himself – alive. I concluded that this was a dangerous position to find myself in professionally, and that it was beyond time to go.”

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The Beatdown

November 5, 2011

Ironing out balled up paper, a bullying symbol, November 4, 2011. (Donald Earl Collins)

An anti-bullying video’s been trending in the social media sphere this week, in which a teacher demonstrates to her class the effects of bullying on a student’s psyche. All courtesy of balled up, stomped on and unfolded yet crumpled pieces of paper. It’s a good, though incomplete description, because it doesn’t address the great feeling of superiority that those dispensing the verbal, physical and psychological abuse get from bullying their classmates.

Though I seldom have thought of myself as someone who was bullied, by today’s definition, that’s exactly what happened to me for the better part of five months of seventh grade, from November ’81 through February ’82 and late-May to early June ’82 (see my post “The Legend of Captain Zimbabwe” from May ’09 for much more). I guess I’d been called so many names by so many people in 7S so first few months — and, to be truthful, did the same in response to a fair number of classmates myself — that I didn’t think too much of it as November ’81 began.

About two weeks after my fight with Brandie (see “Adverbs and A-Holes” post from last month), I experienced a serious physical bullying altercation (there were one or two attempts by neighborhood kids while I went to Nathan Hale and Holmes Elementary, and a couple of attempts in high school). The best way to describe it is that I got jumped and then beat-down after the end of the school day on the first Friday in November ’81.

It wasn’t a random jumping or beat-down, and not one that involved Davis’ Black or Latino students, who were always described to us super-nerds as “dangerous.” No, the perps in this case were from what I euphemistically called the “Italian Club,” a full two years before we had an official Italian Club in high school. They’d been on me in 7S homeroom and in Italian class with nearly constant verbal abuse for the two weeks or so since my scuffle with Brandie. Apparently, my decision to ignore them didn’t work well enough.

The leader of this pack of uncouth Italian or White working-class preteen Humanities boys was “A,” who presented himself as between John Travolta’s character on Welcome Back, Kotter and Arthur Fonzerelli from Happy Days. A’s favorite move those Humanities middle school years was to walk into our homeroom and belt out The Police’s “Roxanne” refrain, as if he were Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours. The way his band of Italian or Italian-esque brothers hung around him, you would’ve thought he was a rock star, someone like his fave, Mr. “White Wedding” himself, Billy Idol.

A Christmas Story (1982) screen shot of bunny suit kid, December 11, 2009. (http://myhealthypassion.wordpress.com). Qualifies as fair use under US copyright laws, between low resolution, cropping, and intent of use.

Led by A, about ten 7S classmates attacked me after school as I was on my way out the school’s side door closest to the Humanities wing to walk home. They grabbed, punched, and kicked me, and called me everything but a child of God. A, of course, wasn’t actually involved in any of the dirty work of beating on me. Like a about half a dozen other 7S classmates, A watched as he directed his gang.

That was my third A Christmas Story moment. Except I’d been better off wearing the pink bunny suit over my kufi! Bullying is a funny thing, even when you’re one being bullied.

But unlike the piece of trampled, stomped, balled up paper, I wasn’t scarred in the sense that my self-esteem was shattered. Far from it, my self-absorption and delusions of academic grandeur shielded me, made it possible for me to iron out most of the wrinkles in my psyche from being jumped that day. It took my grades, a crush, and events that played out at home, at 616, to shatter my childhood.

Of course, being called a “dumb ass” as if it were my nickname, or “Captain Zimbabwe,” as a proxy for “Negro” or the N-word, wasn’t exactly besides the point. Nor was the idea that a bunch of White kids could decide that they could gang up on me essentially because I was an enigma to them. Like me being weird, uncool and smart was too much for their pubervescent heads to handle.

The best revenge, though, was going through puberty myself, to find myself growing ten inches in twenty months, between March ’82 and December ’83. That, and taking care of my body, mind and spirit over the past thirty years. Not that I have a dart board of my tormentors or anything, but I think it would be hilarious if any of them attempted to bully the 225-pound me today. Of course, I’d probably laugh so hard that they’d get a couple of licks in, at least before my sense of righteous rage would kick in.

The moral here, I guess, is to have a sense of how to deal with bullying if and when it does occur, to not shrug it off as “boys just being boys” or, for that matter, “cliquish girls being cliquish girls.” By middle school, though, it’s not just about reporting it to teachers or parents. It’s about other students stepping in, and students the subject of bullies’ discontent defending themselves. And that is what I’m instilling in my son. Of course, I’ll step in when necessary, too.

Flexing muscles, as in too bad I didn't have these 30 years ago, November 4, 2011 (Donald Earl Collins).

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Holes in Foundation Shield of Education Funding

November 3, 2011

Leather knight shield with holes, November 2, 2011. (http://paulssupplies.com)

As an educator and someone who has worked in the nonprofit world on education reform issues for slightly less than half of my life (I turn forty-two next month), it’s curious and disappointing to continue to see a scatter-shot and tweaking approach to education reform. An approach that often gets the bulk of the funding from private and corporate foundations.

If what Bill Gates said at the National Education Summit in Washington, DC in February 2005 is correct, that “American high schools are obsolete in their current form” — and I believe he is — then why does his foundation and others fund mostly small-scale projects? Especially ones that have few, if any, possibilities for replication or for making American high school more relevant to the twenty-first century?

But let me not pick on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as being neglectful of seeing the big, panoramic picture on K-12, K-16 or even P-20 education. Below, in general, are the parts of education process the big foundations have tended to fund over the past five to ten years:

Preschool, Pre-K Education = Annie E. Casey Foundation, Pew Trusts

K-12 Education = Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation

Higher Education, Education Research = Spencer Foundation (most $$$ now via AERA/NAE), Mellon Foundation

Higher Education Access/Success = Lumina Foundation for Education, Ford Foundation, Gates Foundation, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation

Student Financial Aid = Lumina Foundation for Education, Gates Foundation

Teacher Effectiveness = Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Ford Foundation

Poverty, Community Development, Race = W.K. Kellogg Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Pew Trusts, Ford Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Gates Foundation.

They have funded and still do fund everything from early childhood education programming, credentials for early childhood educators, small schools, research for curriculum realignment, online education options for K-12, leadership programs for principals and school superintendents, to student and teacher incentive programs, fiscal and human resources allocation, early and middle college high schools, and assessments for teacher effectiveness. (By the way, that is the longest sentence I’ve ever written, at least without editing into

Ed Harris as Jackson Pollock in Pollock (2000), spreading and throwing paint, August 6, 2009. (http://www.totalfilm.com).

smaller sentences).

Seems like everything in the P-20 education universe is covered, right? Except, I’d defy anyone in or out of the education field to try to add all of this up into a comprehensive overhaul of early childhood and K-12 education that would then force reform in higher education.

The reason that we can’t assume that all of this adds up to real reform is simple. A dozen or so foundations pouring billions of dollars into a quarter-trillion dollar a year system through tens of thousands of grants, each working on a separate problem? By definition, a comprehensive overhaul isn’t possible. It’s as unlikely as Wall Street disengaging itself from American politics without a decade of Occupy Wall Street.

We could start, conceivably, with the idea of early and middle college high schools. One where school districts and the colleges and universities adopting these high schools collaborate on creating a system that would leave high school graduates with the equivalent of two years of college training or an associate’s degree. Or in the case of students who made plans to not go to college, two years of training that would make them employable in the twenty-first century workforce.

Only, these early and middle college high schools would be without the additional burden of providing remediation to ninth graders not ready for what we now call high school. Bottom line: we need a single-track college/career ready system that begins its work in preschool and pre-K programs, one in which these programs are tied to elementary schools, so that it doesn’t take the poorest of students three years to catch up. We need linkages between elementary and middle schools — or as many researchers suggest, K-8 schools — where the work to make students ready for algebra, critical thinking through writing and the arts could take shape in a more supportive and coherent environment.

More direct linkages between schools and community organizations and services — health clinics, psychological services, nonprofit organizations focused on the arts, writing, sports, science and math — are

Crane removing part of Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate, December 21, 1989. (SSGT F. Lee Corkran/US Dept of Defense). In public domain.

necessity to build communities that are committed to large-scale education reform. For if these organizations and systems continue to work in parallel series rather than in collaboration, all these attempts at reform are for naught.

But foundations have always been leery to link their work, to fund for the long-term, to think in ways that encourage collaboration — kind of like corporations, Wall Street bankers and the GOP. They also tend not to hire deep thinkers on issues like education. Or at least, the linkages between education, race, class, gender, community and the workforce.

Though they are doing a better job these days, especially in the case of the Kellogg Foundation on race, we need a more solid shield. One that is truly about transforming P-20 education, and not just tweak it with data and pilot programs. Funding programs without a grander vision might as well be a “make it rain” party at a strip club.

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Adverbs and A-Holes

October 22, 2011

Good or well cartoon, January 24, 2009. (Gaurav: http://mbatutes.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of lower quality resolution with purpose for describing a part of speech.

Puberty is such a strange time in life, whether you’re male or female. It’s even worse when you don’t have the maturity to deal with the changes, physical, social and emotional. Add to that no real guidance from parents, teachers or other adult figures about how to deal, and you have a recipe for disaster, even social suicide. That became the case for me thirty years ago, in a fight with a history, with my late ex-classmate, Brandie Weston.

But I planted the seeds for it almost a year and a half before, the second Saturday in May ’80, the very first time I met Brandie. My father Jimme had taken me and Darren to his “girlfriend’s” two-bedroom apartment on Mount Vernon’s South Side. His alleged girlfriend — drinking buddy, really — turned out to be Brandie’s mother. When Brandie walked through the apartment door an hour into the visit, I greeted her with the words, “Wow, she’s fat!,” as if I’d complimented her on her great beauty (for full story, see “First Impressions and Brandie” post from May ’10).

Irony, of course, has been one of the ways I’ve come to be sure that there is a God. Why else would I have ended up in Humanities and in the same classroom with Brandie in September ’81? I had no doubt that Brandie told her Pennington-Grimes friends about the incident as soon as she saw me in class on the first day of seventh grade.  Every time I saw them, my shy “Hi’s” were greeted with grunts, names like “dumb ass” and “idiot,” or just plain ignored.

My cold war with Brandie became a fight only weeks into seventh grade. It wasn’t much of a fight, though. It was in Mrs. Sesay’s classroom, our 7S homeroom where we started the day, ended the day, and had our first-period English class. At the end of this day in October, Brandie was clearing out of room from the back, passing by my seat on the left side of the classroom toward the door.

“Dumb ass,” Brandie said out of nowhere, as usual.

“You’re stupid,” I said, not even bothering to look up as I put my plastic Mead, three-ring and five-subject notebook in my book bag.

Mike Tyson laying out Larry Holmes, January 22, 1988.

Within a couple of seconds, I got pushed from behind. I turned, and Brandie threw a punch into my chest. I threw one back into her right arm as she recoiled from landing her first punch. We were fighting in the back of the classroom.

It was two semi-nerds in a fight of words, lots of shoves, and a flurry of half-hearted punches. It was an ugly display, like watching a Larry Holmes fight or Muhammad Ali in his last days before his retirement. In one corner, at five-foot-two and 120 pounds was me, in the other, at five-foot-seven and about 150 pounds was Brandie. I certainly didn’t want to fight a girl. Brandie seemed to think that she could pound me into the ground, hitting me on top of the head a few times.

At one point I punched Brandie in the chest, only to find that her chest felt spongy. It dawned on me that Brandie had breasts. I stopped pushing and punching her right then and there, somewhat in shock from the revelation.

“You’re a pervert!,” Brandie yelled while two of her friends pulled her away from me.

I didn’t know what “pervert” meant — not that I would’ve admitted such a thing, since I was the “smartest kid in the whole world.”

“Well, you’re an adverb!” I yelled in response. Someone I pulled that out of my brain to call Brandie in response.

Of all the words — adverb? That ended our fight in horrific laughter from Brandie and the classmates who witnessed it. It was another About A Boy moment. It was a weird moment, even for me. I was embarrassed, all but sure that my classmates thought that I was incredibly dumb.

My fight with Brandie had awakened some sleeping wolves, what I called the Italian Club long before we actually formed one for our Italian class. And these preteens had social adjustment issues that made me, Hebrew-Israelite and all, look like a model preteen by comparison — a story for another post. But, still, on the next to last Friday in October three decades ago, I made myself into the adverb greater, as in an asshole to a greater degree. Seriously.

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