Tag Archives: Self-Discovery

Bernard King and The Knicks of ’84

26 Monday May 2014

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Bernard King, one of the all-time greats, 1984 NBA Playoffs. (http://www.totalprosports.com/).

Bernard King, one of the all-time greats, 1984 NBA Playoffs. (http://www.totalprosports.com/).

I usually keep it kind of heavy on Memorial Day. Between what Memorial Day is really about — America’s fallen soldiers, sailors, marines and pilots — and the abuse and domestic violence I’ve seen and experienced on Memorial Day ’82, I consider any Memorial Day that’s incident-free a good one.

Earl "The Pearl" Monroe driving for a layup, May 26, 2014. (http://i.cdn.turner.com/).

Earl “The Pearl” Monroe driving for a lay up, May 26, 2014. (http://i.cdn.turner.com/).

But in light of the running theme of this year — that being a look back at the world in which I lived in’84 — I wouldn’t be providing a complete account if I didn’t talk about my Knicks at least once. To think that it’s been forty-one years since they last won a title is just, well, atrociously pathetic. It’s like being a New York Rangers fan in ’94 — oh yeah, that was me, too! I actually do have a few memories of the Knicks of Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Dave DeBusschere, Willis Reed, Bill Bradley and Earl “The Pearl” Monroe (my Mom and Uncle Sam gave me “Earl” as a middle name because of him back in ’69), but they’re very vague memories, almost snapshots. I was three and change, after all, hardly old enough to appreciate great defense, the midrange J, the turnaround J, or setting up defenders off the dribble to beat them to the hoop like these guys did.

I came into my own with basketball in ’83, just after the Knicks and Micheal Ray Richardson parted ways (that’s an understatement!). At that point, my Knicks had only sucked for the better part of a decade, but now with Bernard King as their superstar, and the coke-snorting Richardson gone, things were going to allegedly get better for the team. At least, according to the New York Post and New York Daily News. With disciplinarian Hubie Brown as head coach, we’d have a serious chance to compete with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Dennis Johnson and the rest of the hated Boston Celtics.

I loved watching King play. He could nail a J from anywhere. Off the dribble, double-teamed, facing the basket, off a screen, top of the key, with his back to the basket. He could also drive to the hole with ease. King could score at will, and back in ’84, probably in his sleep, too. He wasn’t by any stretch a great defender, the big knock on King throughout most of his career. Between Reggie Jackson and Dwight Gooden, though, there was King for me.

New York Knicks favorite and Mont Vernon great Ray Williams, circa 1983 (died March 23, 2013). (Dick Raphael/NBAE/Getty Images via http://espn.go.com/).

New York Knicks favorite and Mont Vernon great Ray Williams, circa 1983 (died March 23, 2013). (Dick Raphael/NBAE/Getty Images via http://espn.go.com/).

Not only did we have the Brooklyn native as the Knicks centerpiece for ending the Celtics’ dominance of the East. We had Louis Orr. We had Rory Sparrow. We had Bill Cartwright. We had Trent Tucker. We had Mount Vernon, New York’s own Ray Williams (may he RIP). We had just drafted Darrell Walker, known to defend with ferociousness. We even had Ernie Grunfeld — once the all-time leading scorer in the University of Tennessee’s Men’s Basketball history — coming off the bench. Yeah, it was going to be playoffs and contending for championships for the foreseeable future.

Really, who was I kidding? What was the New York sports media snorting and injecting? Outside of Williams, Cartwright and Walker, no one on the team defended consistently enough to stop Mike Gminski on the Nets, much less Bird, Parish or McHale. But boy did they entertain! King scoring 50 or more in games on WOR-Channel 9 (before MSG got their own channel and broadcast all of the games themselves) was such a treat! I actually enjoyed it when Walker and Danny Ainge got into a fight during the second round of the NBA playoffs in ’84. Those were pretty good teams with King as a scoring machine. Pretty good, but hardly good enough.

I actually cried after the Celtics slaughtered my Knicks at the Boston Garden in Game Seven of that May ’84 Conference Semifinal series, 121-104. I cried even more, though, after King tore up his right knee’s ACL in a game against the then Kansas City Kings in March ’85, in the middle of an already miserable season. It lead to the Knicks in the first-ever NBA Draft Lottery, them getting the #1 pick, and Patrick Ewing in the process. But King and Ewing would never play a game together, both with injuries throughout the 1985-86 and 1986-87 seasons. It would be nearly another decade before my Knicks were strong enough to be part of any serious championship conversation.

Failure is a part of life, but so is hope. And back in May ’84, all I could do as a naive fourteen-year-old growing up in basketball’s mecca was hope. As I hope that someone will end the insanity that has been James Dolan and the Knicks on 33rd and Madison soon.

If Eri’s Now 30, What Does That Mean For Me/Us?

22 Thursday May 2014

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Really, I’ve written about this before, five years ago, right after Eri turned twenty-five. Everything I wrote about Eri in “The Meaning of Eri’s 25th” is still applicable today. I only have a few things to add to that earlier post. First, Happy Birthday, Bro!!! Welcome to the second tier of youth, the one for folks over thirty, but not yet middle-aged! For the first time ever, we’re in the same general age category, until I turn forty-six, a year and seven months from now – yay!

Second, the fact that you’re thirty today is a reminder of how long I’ve been doing certain things. Like the fact that I’ve been cooking for myself, for family and for other people for thirty years. And that I’ve been at least six feet tall for a bit more than thirty years. And that I’d turned to Christianity a couple of months before Eri’s birth, a bit more than thirty years ago. All of it serves as a reminder that Donald 1.0 had been in the midst of evolution right around your birth.

Third and maybe just as important, the fact that it’s never too late in life to achieve your dreams. That I’m able to writer about my experiences — and our family — these days with commitment was something I couldn’t even conceive as a dream thirty years ago. By May ’84, I’d buried that knowledge of myself as a writer deep within my spirit and soul, so much so that I rarely thought about writing anything again until I was nearly twenty. Imagine a situation so deep that an aspiring writer can’t articulate the words necessary in which to write. I didn’t have to imagine it, though.

I hope that you Eri — in fact, our other brothers Maurice, Yiscoc and Darren, too — will find the strength and energy to do your dreams, to harness what remains of our dwindling youth before our hair is completely gray. I will do the same.

AP US History Exam Day & Harold Meltzer

13 Tuesday May 2014

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AP Day (cropped), May 9, 2014. (Tim Needles/http://artroom161.blogspot.com/).

AP Day (cropped), May 9, 2014. (Tim Needles/http://artroom161.blogspot.com/).

Twenty-eight years ago on this day/date, I was on my way to Mount Vernon High School, listening to Mr. Mister, Simple Minds, Sting and Whitney along the way. I was a few minutes away from a three-hour exam that could change my future. It wasn’t exactly the sunniest or warmest of days, though. That second Tuesday in May ’86 was brisk and heavy with clouds, a high of only 52°F. Still, with the way I felt that morning, May 13th might as well have been sunny with a high of seventy-two. 

I’ve written about my AP US History exam experience and Harold Meltzer ad nauseum here in this blog, as well as in Boy @ The Window. How I felt in the months and weeks before the exam. My expectations for a “5” and what that meant in comparison to taking something much less representative of the college experience, like the SAT. My perspective on my AP classmates and the general sense of obnoxious whining that permeated our classroom in throughout March and April ’86, and in whispers the following year. The keys to my academic success, and me being conscious of those keys, for the very first time. And, of course, the mentoring and tutelage of the late Harold Meltzer, the only teacher after elementary school who took a genuine interest in my development as a human being, not just in my grades or in my intellectual abilities.

I was a high school junior whom, at sixteen years old, had more wisdom about what would leave me well prepared for college than most parents, teachers and so-called education reformers possessed in ’86 or in 2014. Taking Algebra in eighth grade, AP courses in eleventh and twelfth grade, accelerated math and science classes all through high school. I knew even then that the APUSH exam was far more representative of my academic preparation than any SAT score would indicate, no matter how high.

AP US History For Dummies cover (2008), May 13, 2014. (http://bookoutlet.com/).

AP US History For Dummies cover (2008), May 13, 2014. (http://bookoutlet.com/).

Yet I’ve found myself in debates with folks in recent months over an issue that’s been well settled in the education world for more than a decade. Over a single four-digit score that many thought should be the difference between going to an elite school and attending a no-name local technical institute. These folks refused to recognize what even the College Board and ETS recognize. That social class and racial privilege have been infused in the SAT process for years, with so many students taking SAT-prep courses at Princeton Review and Kaplan being all the prima facie evidence I need.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Advanced Placement (or International Baccalaureate, for that matter) is much better. But in terms of the actual amount of time spent in direct preparation, with the right teacher, even an impoverished Black kid like I was could attend a public school with a magnet program and earn a “5” — without spending $1,500 on Kaplan or Princeton Review. 

Enough on that. Today, I can truly say that AP US History Exam ’86 Day was a fundamentally important milestone for me. It sealed the deal I made for myself in the midst of the summer of abuse, to get out of 616, out of Mount Vernon, and into college. Thanks Humanities. Thanks, Mr. Meltzer. Thanks, classmates. And, thank God!

Black History = American History, But For American Stupidity

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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Pythagorean Theorem (except when it comes to Black history and race), February 4, 2014. (http://ncalculators.com/)

Pythagorean Theorem (except when it comes to Black history and race), February 4, 2014. (http://ncalculators.com/)

It’s Black History Month. It’s a month that often feels more like an obligation to honor the Civil Rights Movement than it does a full month to celebrate and appreciate all African American contributions to the development and success of the United States over the previous four centuries. Yet there are many Whites, Blacks and other people of color who refuse to see this at all. Some argue for a White History Month, some argue that Blacks don’t have a culture or history at all — or at least, one worth celebrating. And some argue that the time and need for a Black History Month has passed.

Some of this ridiculousness I parody here:

No argument is more central to the reason why Black History Month needs to continue than the one I’ve heard from conservatives and former students over the years. That because Black history shines a light on America’s racist, economic loading of the dice in favor of White elites and business interests, I’m being “anti-patriotic” when I talk about or teach on this. Then, of course, I get the “love-America-or-leave-it” response.

People who respond this way are such assholes. Some of your ancestors brought my ancestors here in chains, well before most of these alleged patriots’ ancestors even thought about coming here. My ancestors built plantations, chopped down forests, grew the cash crops that made White men rich and provided the money necessary to make America an industrial capitalistic powerhouse, built the White House and the Capitol, and have fought in every war this country’s been a part of. But I’m unpatriotic when through Black history I can point out America’s flaws and great failings?

The less evolved part of me would say, at least in a street argument, “Kiss my Black ass!” But to be honest, I don’t want these folks to touch me, much less kiss my butt. What I want them to do is read, listen, watch and learn, and not just assume everything they’ve heard from FOX News, their parents and in elementary school social studies is the gospel truth. That way, they would then have the choice between understanding that US history and Black history are one and the same and wallowing in their willful stupidity.

On Becoming A Father — 11 Years Later

16 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Wife and son, August 16, 2003. (Donald Earl Collins).

Wife and son, latter at two weeks and change old, August 16, 2003. (Donald Earl Collins).

This week eleven years ago is when I first learned from my wife that she was pregnant with our one and only child, our son Noah. It was a high that took a few months of post-natal sleep deprivation to come down from, not to mention a fight to keep my job and move on from it courtesy of AED in ’03 and early ’04. But learning that I was soon to become a father didn’t just bring joy and euphoria. It came with baggage and the fear that my baggage would be a handicap to me as a father and to my gestating son.

Luckily I had a bit of time to prepare for becoming a father. I figured out that my wife was pregnant a few weeks before she did. It was on Thanksgiving Day ’02, and I was whisking a cream sauce to go with some chocolate torte dessert I was making. I asked my wife to watch over the cream and to make sure that it didn’t boil over when I went to the bathroom. Sure enough, the sauce was boiling over when I came back. I said sarcastically, “Thanks for messing up the cream!,” which led to my wife going to the bathroom, crying. You have to understand, my wife rarely cries, and never cries over my brand of New York-esque sarcasm. So when she said, “I’m sorry,” I said, “It’s okay, honey,” followed by, “Why are you literally crying over boiling cream? Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

From that moment until my wife had given herself an EPT test three weeks later, I’d already started the process of psychological preparation. We’d barely begun trying to have a kid. We talked about it in July ’02, changed our diets in August and September, and I started taking herbal supplements by the end of September. Two months of actual trying in total. Really? That’s all it took?

All I knew was that fatherhood would bring back so many memories, some good, most of them bad and ugly. About my father Jimme and his alcoholism and homophobia as directed at me, my ex-stepfather’s physical and psychological abuse, about having to serve in my father-like role with my younger siblings and with Darren. By the time I’d reached grad student, some eleven years earlier, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever fall in love or get married, much less become a father. I mean, who would want to be with me, have little Donalds and Donnas running around that had about half of my features and traits? I wasn’t sure if I’d ever want that.

Fast-forward through grad school at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, through four and half years of dating and two years of marriage. I was in a different place, not much different, but different enough to be much more sure about what I wanted. As I said to my wife, “There are four days out of the week where I’m sure about having a kid, two where I don’t want a child, and one where I simply don’t know.”

That was still good enough for my wife. And she’s the reason I could be firmly committed to fatherhood. I don’t think that I would’ve become a father otherwise. Have I made mistakes over the past ten years and five months with Noah? Of course! I once left him in a carrier on our table when he was five months over, and it flipped over end-over-end, scaring the crap out of him (literally!). I’ve yelled at him when I shouldn’t have, and I’ve cursed out at least one hundred too many bad DC area drivers with him in the back seat of our Honda Element over the years.

But despite all of the ups and downs in my life, career(s) and even marriage, one of the handful of things I’m sure about is having become a father to my son a good eight and a half months before he was born. I still check on him nearly every night to watch him sleep (and breath).

Head Over Heels

03 Tuesday Dec 2013

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http://vimeo.com/29807866

December is both my most and least favorite month of the year. I was born at the end of this month, but only two days after Christmas. I’ve run away from home and been mugged, suicidal and inspired this month. Not to mention burned out and homesick and heartbroken. But I’ve found myself and experienced renewal on this least sunlit of months as well.

Twenty-eight years ago today was the day my crush on Phyllis, a.k.a. “Crush #2” began. It wasn’t a crush of epic love, but it would affect how I viewed myself and the young women in my life for the next two and a half years. As I wrote in Boy @ The Window:

It was the third of December, a cold and frosty Tuesday that would make someone think twice about going outside. It was after school, and I happened to be on my way to the library. I stopped home first to grab a bite to eat, to see if Mom wanted anything from the store after my time at the library, and to listen to some music. The last song I heard before walking out the door was Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” their third major hit in the US in ’85. The hard tones of their synthesized piano were hypnotic for me. “Head Over Heels” reminded me of my own failed attempts to get past myself when it came to saying more than “Hi” to any woman or girl whom I thought interesting. Besides having a family that I saw as an embarrassment, I simply didn’t have the tools of “cool” necessary to break through with any female. My voice usually cracked under the stress of not knowing what to say, and when it didn’t crack, the slow catch in my voice made everything I said sound like it was deliberately at half-speed. My ineptitude also included my automatically taking anything a girl did say about liking me as if it were a sick and twisted joke.

Snow covers trees in Central Park after a storm, New York City, December 28, 2013. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images via http://www.nydailynews.com).

Snow covers trees in Central Park after a storm, New York City, December 28, 2013. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images via http://www.nydailynews.com).

That’s what “Head Over Heels” had conjured up in my mind as I walked down East Lincoln toward Lorraine. For whatever reason my thoughts turned to Phyllis. I thought about her smile, her always-wearing-a-skirt style, her standing as a popular student at MVHS. She was always nice to me, always friendly, to the point of being coy about it. The brief flash of Phyllis’ face and smile put a smile on my own as I started singing to “Head Over Heels” out loud. “I wanted to be with you alone, and talk about the weather . . .” was coming out of my mouth in high falsetto as snow started to fall. My thoughts had turned to the cold, the snow flakes and the stark bareness of the wintry landscape as I reached the corner of East Lincoln and Darwood. I was singing “something happens and I’m head over heels . . . don’t break my heart, don’t take my heart, don’t, don’t, don’t throw it away.” Just as was I was about to cross the street, a black two-door Mercury Topaz, circa ’84 or ’85, pulled up, with Phyllis’ mother driving and Phyllis in the front passenger seat. Phyllis’ sister Claudia was in the back. Phyllis mouthed a “Hi” and waved at the same time as the light turned green for their car. What I remember as they pulled away was the smile that she flashed me. It didn’t seem fake. It looked like an I-really-like-you kind of smile to me. I was caught completely off guard!

I spent the rest of the walk to the library debating whether the smile was genuine or a nicety, what the smile meant for her, and how I felt about it. By the time I got to the library, I could only reach one conclusion. I liked Phyllis, and not in an “I like her but only as a friend way.” I liked the girl, simple as that. Those lips and that smile were worth at least a thousand kisses a day!

As I’ve noted in the book and here in the blog, my instincts about Phyllis’ smile turned about to be correct on both counts. Too bad I wasn’t listening to Alexander O’Neal’s “Fake” or Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings” when I walked out the door to our 616 apartment at 4:30 that afternoon. Still, for that moment, at least, all seemed possible in my little world.

My One and Only College Visit Before College

05 Tuesday Nov 2013

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Concordia College, Bronxville, NY, November 5, 2013. (http://concordia-ny.edu).

Concordia College, Bronxville, NY, November 5, 2013. (http://concordia-ny.edu).

One of the many pitfalls of poverty in the midst of striving toward college was that I didn’t do a single formal college visit prior to taking the Amtrak to Pittsburgh in late-August ’87. (Ironic, then, that I’ve been on at least sixty college campuses to teach or lecture, for graduate school, for conferences, talks, interviews and other events in the past quarter-century). The only options for doing any college visits at all while at Mount Vernon High School (NY) were either the schools in the area or to go on the HBCU college visit trips to Howard and Hampton University. I had no interest in applying to an HBCU (which I’ll talk about later), and the prospect of visiting Columbia or NYU never really occurred to me until years later.

But I did have one inadvertent encounter with a college campus prior to arriving at Lothrop Hall on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus in ’87. It was in the fall of ’85. As I wrote in Boy @ The Window:

I discovered something rather interesting about myself toward the end of the year. I understood, maybe for the first time, how much walking and nocturnal self-pleasure had replaced sitting on the radiator at the living room window as my after school and weekend distraction. Walking allowed me to continue to contemplate my future, to make sense of my senseless world. Very early on in my junior year, I went on a Saturday walk straight up Route 22, from East Lincoln and North Columbus. I ended up at Concordia College in Bronxville, a small liberal arts school in the middle of one of the richest towns in America. It was a cloudy and crisp early fall day, those first series of gray days you experience after a long, hot summer. I wore my gray hooded and zippered sweat jacket with my beat-up multi-colored and checkered long-sleeve shirt and some cheap, made-in-Taiwan blue jeans.

Even with that and my tall, Black male self on a mostly White campus, I seemed to blend in. Not a single person looked at me as if I didn’t belong there. Some of the students actually said “Hi” to me, and not that overly enthusiastic greeting, either. I walked across the campus, walked into some of the buildings and walked around some of the empty classrooms. After a bit more wandering around, I ended up at the library. It was surprisingly small, but the books it did have were the kinds I used to like reading. Old and dusty historical texts and subjects of interest only to old writers and historians. I saw students at tables studying or talking softly while studying. Then it dawned on me why the students didn’t automatically assume that I wasn’t a college student. I was dressed like they were, or,I guess, they dressed like me. Sloppy, but not too sloppy. It also dawned on me that you needed a college ID on the campus in case the guards suspected that you weren’t a college student. So I made my way from the campus and trekked back home.

This was my first and only college visit. And though I hadn’t stopped by the admissions office or spoken with a financial aid counselor, my wandering walk gave me much food for thought. The visit reinforced my thinking on what I needed to do in eleventh grade to guarantee both college acceptance and a scholarship. I assumed an academic scholarship, but an athletic one was still in the realm of possibility. I knew, again, that this was my make-or-break year to bring my grades up as far as possible. I had no idea what my class ranking was, but I assumed that I needed to be in the top fifteen or twenty to have my best shot. So I set the largest goal possible – making it to the top ten of my class.

Eddie Murphy (with Rick James), "Party All The Time" (1985) video (screen shot), November 5, 2013. (http://vimeo.com).

Eddie Murphy (with Rick James), “Party All The Time” (1985) video (screen shot), November 5, 2013. (http://vimeo.com).

In the back of my mind, I knew even then that I didn’t want to attend a school with any of my classmates or with any reminders of Mount Vernon. So many of my Black classmates were already talking about attending HCBUs or New York area school. I knew that despite their relative maturity as eleventh graders, I didn’t want to be in classroom settings with the Rick James “Party All The Time” set or with White and Black classmates who thought of me as a caricature of a human being or Black male.

That walk to Concordia reminded me of a simple fact. That my path to college was my path, not to be determined by anyone else, and certainly not the people I didn’t even trust with a smile.