The Story of Me

As a teenager I had two very good friends. Donna was my hanging partner and Lonnie was my confidant. Donna and I dressed alike, hung out with some of the same folks, and yes, even got into trouble together. Our mothers were best friends who hung out together so it was very natural that we spent so much time together.

Now Lonnie on the other hand was a real ladies man. Even as young teens, all the girls wanted to be with cool Lonnie Stro, as I called him. Now you see, Lonnie was just that, my friend. We would talk for hours on the phone. But I was never his girl. So girlfriends, No Lonnie and I were not, I repeat, Not boyfriend and girlfriend.

But what Lonnie was to me, he was my first, not in a sexual way, but in the way of a true friend. Lonnie brought me my first boy, girl gift. A friendship bracelet engraved with my name on it. He took me on my first date. It was to see the Jackson 5. And he introduced me to my first boyfriend, Leon.

About the time I entered High school, I started to change for a number of reasons. I had a new look that was now acceptable, I had new set of friends, and I was going through puberty. Up until that point, I had been a very shy and quiet child. I preferred to stay at home, hiding from the pain, and reading my books. I got to high school and lost my mind.

Leon and his brother were both football stars in high school. Just being his girlfriend, gave me popularity and attention like I had never received before. I had also joined the marching band in school and was a member of the girls swim team.

Two very significant things happened my freshman year in high school, I was introduced to drugs and sex. My new friends that I now found myself hanging out with, and Leon my new boyfriend smoked marijuana. Now I am telling on myself, but remember this is the early seventies, when smoking pot, free love, Afros and miniskirts were the thing.

Here I am with a beautiful new smile, a big pretty Afro, and a pair of legs other girls would die for. And it didn’t hurt that I was dating a very popular football player. Things couldn’t get any better, or so I thought. Smoking weed, gave me a false feeling of peace, self-assurance and reckless abandonment.

It was during one of those periods of sitting around getting high that I lost my virginity to my boyfriend. You see, doing drugs not only gave you a false sense of freedom and wild abandonment, it also causes you to do and say things that under normal circumstances you may not do.

My getting high lasted almost everyday throughout my freshman year in high school. Now my girl Donna who is actually a year younger than I, was already smoking weed. So this newfound lifestyle fit in with our friendship. We would often sit in her attic all day, when we should have been in school, smoking dope and getting high. On those rare occasions that I did go to school I would generally go to band, where half of the folks in the band, at least the ones I hung out with would be getting high too.

The band room at our school was located in an annex of the building away from the main school campus. We had to go into an area of the building that very few people came through, unless you were going to the band room or to the shop class, and smoke either before or after practice.
Remember my friend Lonnie? Well, he stopped speaking to me for well over a year because I wouldn’t listen when he told me he didn’t like the new me and any of the new friends that I was now hanging out with. When he did start speaking to me again, the damage had already been done. Our friendship would never be the same again.

As my popularity soared, my grades plummeted. I had entered High school in an honors program, and was failing every single class except band. My mother and I were at war on a daily basis. I was out of control and I didn’t care. I was being accepted by the world.

Now understand, my mother did try to fight back. But I now realize that I was probably too far-gone at that point for anything to change me. One incident that stands out in my mind was the time she came looking for me. As I have mentioned, In addition to being in the band I was also on the swim team. The swim team generally practiced everyday after school until 5pm in the evening. One day I did not go straight home after practice and went to hang out with some friends to watch the boy’s basketball team practice. The boy’s basketball team usually started their practices about six or seven each evening.

Now keep in mind that I should have been home no later than 5:30 pm. We only lived about ten minutes from the school and my mother was actually being generous by allowing that extra time for me to get home. When I didn’t’ get home by 6pm my mother decided to come look for me. She and my uncle found me hanging out at the gym and took me home.

I remember my mother yelling at me all the way home. In my rebellious mind and with youthful arrogance, I didn’t understand what the problem was. When I got home, my mother went and got her belt and proceeded to whip me. I refused to cry. That was the last time my mother would ever try to punish me physically.

But she still didn’t give up on trying to get me to do what I was supposed to be doing. She would ride by the school on her lunch hour to see if I was hanging out on the rails. She had our neighbors watching to make sure that I didn’t sneak back into the house when I should have been in school. She became friends with my guidance counselor and as many of my teachers that she could. She recruited an army to try to keep me on the right path.

As a mother I have to commend the effort my own mother put forth to get me through school. It greatly distresses me to realize just what I put her through. But she never gave up. Just like we must never give up on our own children. By any means necessary!

I generally followed this pattern of getting high and skipping class through most of high school. There were two significant men in my life that impacted me enough to help get me back on track. One was my History teacher, Cecil Rice. Mr. Rice cared enough about me and the intelligence that I could display from time to time, to make an effort to get through to me.

If I weren’t in class, Mr. Rice would find me and drag me off to class. If he couldn’t find me on the school grounds, he would contact me as well as my mother and make me come to class AFTER school and complete that day’s lesson. If he caught site of me anywhere but in class, he would drag me off to whatever class I should have been in. Needless to say, I did manage to pass Mr. Rice’s class along with a few others that year. I also managed to straighten up a bit, but not totally, and then one day in my senior year, I found out I wouldn’t walk across the stage with the rest of my class. I was two classes short of my graduation requirements. I was standing in the kitchen washing dishes one day when it really hit me.

I had spent so much time partying and having fun in school, that I hadn’t really realized how I was impacting my future. Many of the same people I been hanging out with and getting high with would be graduating and leaving me behind.

One other significant thing happened that same year as well. My friend Lonnie, who had graduated from high school the year before and gone into the military, got married. It broke my heart. You see our friendship was never the same after that first year. We did eventually start speaking again. But the dynamics of our relationship had changed. I was at a lost as to what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

The other man that helped to change my life was Donald Estelle. Mr. Estelle had been my principal in Junior High School. He had risen through the ranks of the Highland Park School system and was the interim Superintendent of schools when he happened to run into me at the high school one day. Somehow he had found out that I was not going to graduate on time and made a point of speaking to me about it.

Mr. Estelle, unknown to me, had been keeping up with my progress, or lack of progress in this case, during my high school years. The day he decided to come talk to me, I am not sure how much he knew or realized what the words he spoke to me that day did to ensure that my resolve to graduate was re-enforced. At a time when my self-esteem had been bolstered in a worldly way, he bolstered my intellectual confidence by reminding me just how intelligent I could be when I chose to be.

You see, even though I never felt pretty or accepted, I have always known I was smarter than most of my peers. Actually, I now realize that many of my choices of the time was to downplay my “smarts” so that I could better fit in with the crowd I chose to run with. I was a smart girl who made some pretty dumb choices.

A fool finds pleasure in evil conduct, but a man of understanding delights in wisdom.
Even though I had started getting my life in order, I had still not come to an understanding of wisdom. Not only that, over 25 years later, and even though God had forgiven me for these past sins, I still have a price to pay. It’s my turn to be a parent. I now have a teenaged son in high school. Proverbs 10:23

This disturbs me for two reasons. One, I know he will have to face some of the same challenges that I did. My son James is truly a son born of my blood. James is a very smart young man who has not yet realized just how intelligent he really is. He is very concerned about being liked and accepted by those around him.

After James’s father and I separated James started having problems in school. Always one of the brightest students in his class, his grades started dropping off. James and his father had always been extremely close and he didn’t understand why his father couldn’t or wouldn’t spend more time with him.

He started getting in trouble in school. I recognized his actions for what they were. A cry for attention. He had mine. I tried to explain this to his father but John would state time and time again that I was jut making excuses for him and that James just wanted to be the class clown.

Secondly, I cannot save James’s soul for him. It took a very good friend of mine who happens to be Muslim, to point that out to me. Stephen saw how upset I had been one day when I got a call from my son’s school. He had been suspended again and I now had to leave my job and go pick him up from school. My friend, made me take moment and listen to the reasons why I couldn’t always run to his rescue.

He explained to me that my son was no longer a child. When he was a child he was protected under God’s grace. At the age of fourteen, James was now at the age of accountability. He knew that James had been raised in the church and knew right from wrong. James knew what sin was and most of all he had already accepted Jesus as his own personal savior. (A term my Muslim friend was not happy to use, but knowing that I was a Christian, was explaining things to me from my perspective. Although Muslims believe in Jesus Christ, they don’t believe that they need an intercessor. They believe that since we are all children of God and heirs to the throne, each and everyone of us can go directly to the throne on our own behalf).

The most profound thing that he said to me though, was that God allows us to go through our own personal trials and tribulations to see what we are made of. Just as he tests adults, he could be testing James.

He further stated that as his mother, I sometimes have to step back and allow God to work in my son’s life, just like he works in mine. As a parent you have to pray, trust, and rest in the fact that you have armed them with the right equipment to go out and fight the good fight of faith. Although my son was still a boy in my sight, God had to prepare him to be a man. And you know what? What Stephen said, made a lot of sense to me.

We mothers have to learn that no matter how much we want to protect our children, there comes a time when we must step back and allow God to do his work. There will still be times when will still need to step in and be mama, but there are also times, when we must be discerning enough to know it’s time to let go and let God be the parent.

That’s right ladies; my son who is only a teenager must make some of his own mistakes without me running to the rescue. One of the biggest problems with our men today, is that too many mothers are always ready to run out and rescue their sons. Even when they know they are wrong. Many of these sons are grown men! And Guess what? Mama is still running to the rescue. Mothers step back and let your sons grow into the man that God wants him to be.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 1 Corinthians 13:11