It's Novel Time:Chapter 1 - Day 12

I want to introduce you to Mr. Tillman (Tatum wink wink) and Jamal. Young Jamal is an aspiring writer who  manages to capture his thoughts and ambitions while in eighth grade. I fell in love with Jamal and his journal as I wrote his story. He is one of my agenda builders. Below is chapter 1 of Chip Chop.

1

There is something in me that I don’t understand. I feel angry when I don’t know why I am angry. I am triggered by the wrong words or the wrong looks. I want to smile sometimes, but I can’t. Somebody may be watching me laughing too hard and I don’t want to seem vulnerable or weak. I need help at times but won’t even ask for it. Then I blame the thing that’s wrong on someone else. It’s easy to write this in my journal. It feels private, but I want others to know how I feel. I just don’t know who to trust. You know people start feeling sorry for you. Or, blaming you for stuff. Or, giving you those long talks that you have already heard before. I don’t need any more “pep” talks. I have been talked at enough. From my mother. From my big brother. From the principal. I even get tired of talking to myself. Nothing seems to change.  I am still in the same school in the same neighborhood.   Others tell me that I don’t care about who I am. What type of nonsense is that? I even ran across an article on my teacher’s desk that said the problem with black boys in schools is that they think being smart is uncool. Who wrote that nonsense? Do they think I want to ruin my life just so that I can be black?  That does not make sense to me. Are people getting paid to write this type of stuff? Mr. Tillman is saying time is up. So I am up. I check you later journal. Until next time, Peace.

            To make sure everything remains confidential I have decided to change some of the names in the pages that follow. I want to make sure that the identity of others is protected. I am going to reveal some real stuff that could get me in trouble if people actually knew I was talking about them. This is something Mr. Tillman calls anonymity. I thought that word was cool the first time I heard it. He is always throwing big words at us telling us that we need to fill our bags with tags. Each word is a tag. He tells us that a brilliant mind is able to tag a name to things.  He does not want any more this, that, or whatchamecallit. 

He must think we are headed to Harvard or the University of Chicago where they pass out all of those Nobel prizes for economics and all that other stuff. He told us that not knowing where Harvard is was okay, but we had no excuse for not knowing about the University of Chicago.  It is only twenty blocks away from our school. Can you believe this? People come from all over the world come to learn in a school right down the street. He keeps telling us that we can practically walk down the road to a new life. But it is not that easy. He always gives us these statements from the wise man without telling us anything about the wise man. Just last week he told us that the wise man said, “Read with great passion and authority.” The wise man said, “Forwards ever, backwards never.” The wise man said, “Keep your head about you when others doubt you.”   I used to hate all his sloganeering, but he will not stop it.

If he knows the wise man, why didn’t the wise man tell him that teaching in a school twenty feet from a housing project with paint peeling off the bathroom walls is a waste of time? Why didn’t the wise man tell him that there is more violence in our school than there is learning?  I did not want to hear all of that crap. It just did not seem real to me. I just see another plastic teacher gearing up for another year to holler at us and blame us for not being successful.

I sat down the other day and decided to test myself to see if I could remember all that so-called wise man stuff so that I could challenge him on each point. I could not believe that I could remember each and every one of them. I am ashamed to admit that I used one of the wise man sayings on my little brother. He was doing something stupid the other day and before I knew it I said “The wise man said stupid acts can set you back.” I wonder if the other eighth graders are doing the same thing. I was ready to challenge him on the day he offered another saying. The wise man said, “You are being prepared today for a tomorrow you know nothing about. Don’t do anything to get in your own way.”

I heard what he said, but I hated him.  I don’t know why. We always get these new teachers with high hopes for us. By the second week, their hope goes away when they find that some of the kids have little hope. They expect us to greet them as saviors. Oh my God, Jesus Christ has arrived.

I remember when Ms. D. came to our school last year and laid down some rules on the first day. Her first mistake was not saying good morning. She ignored our humanity. Mr. Tillman always talks about humanity and the common good of society. Well, back to Ms. D. She introduced herself, took attendance, and told us how things were going to be. She laid out the following rules:

1. There will be no profanity.

2. We will respect each other always.

3. A penalty will be given for late homework.

4. Hands must be raised and acknowledged to speak in class.

5. Fines will be given to anyone who writes in the new textbooks.

6. Appropriate dress is expected at all times.

7. Parents will be called if the assignment notebooks are not signed nightly.

8. One warning will be given for breaking any of the rules.

I immediately wanted to shout out  to show her how I can be disrespectful for not raising my hand and break two  rules at once to challenge her warning system.

Each year these teachers start off with the same set of rules to tame us the way wild animals are tamed.  I wonder if they are taught that respect leads to respect. Mr. Tillman calls this reciprocity. It means you give something and receive something in return or something like that. I hope you did not read it as re sip pro city like I did the first time. Sometimes I have to say a word a few times before it becomes a part of me.

This year was very different. I expected to hear the same rules over again. I was braced to find a way to get around the rules to annoy the teacher. But I could not go too far because getting suspended during the eighth-grade year can catch up with you around graduation time.  Teachers hold power over you all year long and threaten not to let you graduate for any little infraction. I used to use the word mistake, but infraction is one of those words in my bag of tags. It means the same thing as mistakes, but I find myself using some of the words taught by Mr. Tillman. I resisted for a long time, but now I feel comfortable using them. I was afraid other students might look at me funny. I just got used to it. Anyway, that’s not the point I want to make.  I was talking about how the first day of eighth grade was different. Mr. Tillman gave rules too. He only had four. They were:

1.      You will read with great passion and authority.

2.      You will learn things that you have never heard about before.

3.      You will learn who you are and what you can become.

4.      You will become prepared to compete in this society.

I had no idea what any of this meant.  I was going to read the way I always read which meant as little as possible. And I already knew who I was and was not about to let a teacher tell me what I can become. After all, he was not living my experience. He was not washing his clothes in the sink because he did not have a washing machine. He did  not have to borrow sugar or toilet paper from his neighbors because his parents sometimes ran out of money before the next check day. He did not have to experience the shame of using a Link card at the grocery store. He did not have to use the hard one-ply toilet paper.  He did not have to hear his parents curse all day long because they seemed to be mad about something all the time. His sister was not on that stuff. He did not have worry if he was going to be safe on his way to school and on his way back home. Who was this man who thought he was going to help me figure out what I can become?