When I was ten years old, I had a youth league basketball coach tell me that I was too short to play basketball and that I should give up, maybe just run track. When I was twelve years old, a teacher told me that the way I wore my pants was a disgrace and embarrassment to my parents and to my school, that people like me only end up dead or in jail. When I was fourteen, in summer league basketball warms ups, I got a technical foul for grabbing the rim (which I didnt really grab; it was more like a part of the net that I pulled down on), and my coach, in anger, told me that not only were my actions stupid, but that I would never dunk a basketball. When I was eighteen, I released my first rap album, and at a show, I remember a guy coming up and shaking my hand, and then telling me that he liked what I did, but that my music would never have a real fan base, until I started making dance songs. When I was twenty three, my jaw was broken in two places and I had to have facial reconstruction surgery; the doctors told me I would never rap again. A couple of years later, I was enrolled in a masters program for english literature and creative writing, and I had to meet with a committee of professors about my promptness in arriving at the Writing Center for scheduled tutoring sessions with students, and one professor forwarded the idea that I might not be professional enough to work as a teaching assistant, because of my casual dress and tendency to clock in slightly after my scheduled time. Years after that, during my Ph.D., I had numerous conversations with one of my writing mentors, because he wanted me to change my publication name from Chuckie to Charles, for which I refused. I look back at these hurdles, the micro-agressions, these small moments in time that make up the narrative of who I am today. Fortunately, I continued to play basketball and I played four years on the collegiate level, on scholarship. Fortunately, I didnt end up dead or in jail. Fortunately, I did eventually dunk a basketball, with one hand, two hands, backward, on lobs, and in other ways. Fortunately, I kept making my music and every day my very real fan base grows a little bigger, not because I blindly entertain them, but because I have something real to say. Fortunately, my mother sat at my side after my surgery and watched me slowly regain hypomobility in my jaw by taking popsicle sticks, and little by little, using each stick to pry my jaw open wider and restore my range of motion. I did rap again. Fortunately, I did become a teaching assistant, and that experience would have me fall in love with helping others in the classroom. And, yes, I kept my childhood name Chuckie that followed me from youth league basketball games to now, with all its history, good and bad, after all these years; for better or worse, theres a lot in a name, and I took what was at first a nickname, and built it into something with power. Sometimes, though, I get tired of fighting. I get tired of fighting against everything the world wants us to be. Commonly, I think Im worn by what people expect of others, and myself, the categories we put each other in, the way we stifle our potential and forget that a lot of things that produce and reproduce our doubts in ourselves are manmade. If they can be made by man, then they can be made by another, or undone by others. Whatever it is that you want to do with your life, go out and do it. Create it. And, do it so damn well that everyone who doubts you has to take another look at themselves. You only get one chance to live this life and this world doesnt belong to anyone else anymore than it does you. Its yours. #rappingprofessorathletescholardegreemongerbasketballcoach
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 17:44:24 +0000
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