I was born poor. In the Kansas City, Missouri I was born 27th Benton Boulevard. One of the most historically violent neighborhoods in the city. And it still remains fairly violent till this very day. But it was a war zone when I was raised there in the 80s. To all of the people new to the USA, or who have never lived there, the 80s was probably one of the most violent times in terms of crime in the USA. The CIA had just flooded the neighborhoods with crack, Regan doubled down on the war on drugs, and the working class black families now found themselves jobless as the manufacturing bases left the cities and moved overseas. We now had black families who were making decent livings, now struggling to make end's meet, and crack and the War On Drugs certainly didn't help matters at all.
I was born in 1979, right at the formation of all these problems in America. And like most black kids at the time, I was born to a single mother, though my father was still around here and there. But hey in his 20s in the 70s and AIDs wasn't quite the threat to heterosexuals it would become later in the decade. So he was still fucking everything that moved, and doing drugs. Even got on this new thing called crack bandwagon.
I came from a traditional black family. Everyone voted democrat, and everyone went to church on Sunday. My mother worked for TWA (a long defunct airline, but employed a lot of people in KC and St. Louis at one time), as a data entry operator. With a modest low income she actually put a lot of value in my education. A good example of this is when I was in Kindergarden. I was an inquisitive kid who always asked questions. And never stopped asking until I got an answer. Since school were and still are about conformity, the staff decided that I was a slow kid with a learning disability, and wanted to throw me into a special needs class. They would administer a test, and felt that there was a 90% chance I probably wouldn't pass. If I failed the test, I would have to go to a special needs class. So as you can see, I was the underdog pretty early in my lifetime. Needless to say I passed the test. But continued to get bad grades all throughout elementary school, only to always out test the other students who fell more in line. Administrators spent my entire elementary school years trying to prove I was slow, but never could.
But hey, that's the racket the play with young black kids. Something that would never get released to CNN, and something detractors of black people don't know about. My mother, however pulled me out of public school after the first grade. She felt I didn't demonstrate that I ever learned anything. I still could barely read after the first grade, only knowing how to spell my name at the age of 6. My mother felt that I was not equipped for 2nd grade, decided I should repeat 1st grade, and put my in catholic school.
The summer of 1986, when I was 6 years old I learned a lot about myself. My mother had me look at educational TV, and I looked at Sesame Street and 3-2-1 contact. I found out that I loved to learn. And I taught myself how to count to 100. I also learned how to carry numbers. So I essentially taught myself math. It quickly became my favorite subject. But that summer my mother also taught me how to read, feeling I was too old to not know how to read. I also developed a love for reading. I guess since I was so much older when I finally learned, I wanted to read everything.
By the time I got to catholic school, I actually did pretty good. I had a teacher, who I will always remember, Ms. Grittinger. There I learned how to count to 1 million. And the approach to teacher was always thorough. Our teacher volunteered and lived in a homeless shelter, where she would cook meals for them. We actually took a field trip to her place of residence a few times. She definitely had committed her life to helping people, and it came through in the class room.
Things went down hill from there. I went to Father Benedict Justice catholic school in Kansas City. At the time it was in a pretty bad neighborhood, so the school suffered from a lot of break ins. It was also in an annex building to a catholic church. But the building wasn't in great condition. I think eventually the school had to shut it's doors for good. And I went back to public school where I continued to suck. In 1988 I went back to Phyllis Wheatly Public school, and we finally left 27th Benton Blvd and move to 39th and South Benton. That move ended up being worse, as I was constantly bullied by the kids on that block. And we were next to 38th and Chestnut. This place was extremely violent, murders happened constantly over there. Even one of the guys who bullied me ended up going to jail for shooting an 11 year old in the chest. Yes it was THAT BAD.
My mother also decided to work things out with my father, and we lived together on 39th Street for a little while. However my father drug addiction had gotten so bad, that he was barely around. He went to jail for the first year we were "living" together. And when he was at home, he was pretty much high out of his mind. My father got addicted to sherm. To all of you non-street people. They're cigarettes laced in PCP.
I think eventually my mother got tired of the situation. My father quickly made enemies on the block. And one of the families he made enemies with was a family with who were generational criminals, with a long history of violence. Last I heard the kids of this family who I played with at the time were all serving time in prison today. This was pretty much an extremely bad neighborhood. So with my father's drug addiction, the overall surrounding violence in the area, and us having enemies on that block my mother decided to leave. We went to my grandmother's block, which I won't drop here.
This was another bad situation. At the time California was going through some major gang wars. Gang members who were forced to leave California found themselves refugees in many cities. A lot of lower key cities is where the settled, and Kansas City was one of these lower key cities. Kansas City has never shy'd away from bloodshed, and they welcomed their California brethren. As a result, the street gang that ran my grandmother's block were turned into crips. And they were in the middle of a war with a close by block. This lead to shoot outs on a nightly basis and leading us to sleep on the floor.
I continued to go to public elementary school from 1998-1991. Basically concluding the first "saga" of my life. My grades never really were great in elementary school. With my third grade teacher being an older mixed black lady, who really liked me because she loved my potential. And my 4th and 5th grade teachers being suburban white guys dropped into a failing district, who hated me because I wouldn't comply with them. My 5th grade teacher being the worst, as he was a formed military guy and needed to rule his class by fear.
The best things about these years were the creative outlets for me though. I played a lot of videos games at this time. And I always wanted to design characters. So I continued to study math, even math far beyond what my teacher was teaching me. I couldn't always understand the concepts, but just peaking into my older cousin text books, I would love to see the symbols and operators. It was beautiful to me.
After I left elementary school I decided to embrace my nerddom. I watched a lot of shows on TV and there always a nerd stereotype. I always thought they were cool. So going into middle school I decided that I was be a nerd, get good marks, and excel above everyone. How did that work out? Well, I'll go over in in part 2.
Anyway, provide feedback. Am I wasting my time writing this? Great story? Is my writing too amateurish? Leave a comment.