For instance: I have a friend. For the sake of this story, we will call that friend Darrel. While in high school, he was having some trouble with his girlfriend. Instead of saying something like "Actually, what you said may have actually hurt her. You should call her up and apologize". My response was "Oh you were totally in the right. That girl is psycho. We should go out and forget about her".
Long story short, we ended up running from the police through the Dinkytown train yard, spending 20 minutes in the Mississippi river, getting a hunk of cheese thrown at us by a group of hobos, and Darrel lost his wallet and house keys. Looking back now, that was one of the funniest stories I tell at parties. But Darrel lost a really good girl because of my advice. By the time he got around to apologizing to her, her response was literally "You obviously weren't THAT sorry because you spent all night out with Jon B". I wonder how many times those words have been uttered by other significant partners...?
Since I've gotten older (and hopefully wiser), I think my advice has finally caught up. The reason for thinking this is because DeJean got into Georgetown University. DeJean was someone I met when he was in 9th grade while I taught at his school. He was literally one of the most thugged out kids there. But he had a part of him that was out of this world unique. We related quickly, talked about rap and graffiti, and formed a pretty good bond. After teaching at the school we stayed in touch (mostly through email) and I would give him advice and tips on people to meet with when he finally decided that college was something that he wanted to do. Needless to say his "family" had no way to pay for school so we spent a lot of time talking about grants and scholarships. He applied to a lot of places and eventually got accepted to Georgetown. He is also getting a full ride. I hooked him up with a UPS job out there so he'll have some spending money. He sent me an email the other day talking about the change of scenery. He's even going to have a study program with one of my favorite people on the earth, Michael Eric Dyson. I told him for all the work I put in, he needs to go to West Baltimore and take some famous Wire-Spot pictures for me. He said he left the ghetto to go out there, and has no interest to go take pictures in one. I admire him for that.
Sidenotes!
-It's the 46th street block party today. Hopefully it doesn't rain
-Just reread The Old Man and the Sea. Such a great book
-Drew gets home soon. If I'm in town, I'll have to throw it down with him. Forces will collide if Mike Boo is in town the same week. That's like what happens when you cross rays in Ghostbusters. If Steve Dahl gets in the mix, you have the formula for a legendary weekend.
-Twitter takes up a lot of my time
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