Author: Jeffrey

Before the teacher left the room, she would choose one kid to be “in charge.” That child, which was rarely me, all too often found purpose and meaning in life by scribbling every possible name on the blackboard, along with an infinite supply of check marks. It was an admirable effort to thoroughly document every inappropriate word, deed and thought.

The experience tainted my perception of the universe. I’m not a big believer in rules. They are what they are. The people in charge get to be “in charge.” Good for them.

I’m enamored with the idea of common sense and good judgment. We have few rules at home. Very few. I implement a handful of expectations in my classroom. In every moment, I hope the children in my charge will do the right thing.

That said…

Some rules should be broken. There are consequences, of course, for every choice.

I asked Sophia and Miles this morning, “What’s more important: doing the right thing or following the rules?”

They looked at each other and delivered the unison response, “Doing the right thing?” Their answer lingered in the air, full of uncertainty.

“I agree. But, there can be consequences. People might not be your friend. Other people might talk about you. The boss might take away your job. I got kicked out of a class because I told a teacher to stop bullying another student.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I made up my mind, but I got thrown out of class. You will have to make up your mind, too. Just know there are always consequences.”

It was quiet for a while.

“I don’t think you have too much to worry about. God’s not worried. I’m not worried. Do the right thing and we’ll figure out the rest.”

That pearl of fatherly wisdom seemed to appease their concern, at least for the moment, if not the day.

Common sense.

In the early days of her teaching career, a Central Office administrator told my mother she would never get a “Superior” rating at a choral festival.

“Maggie, you let too many black kids in your chorus. They don’t have the right sound. You won’t have the point on top of the chord.”

She never got over that. She flatly refused to make kids audition for the chorus. Everybody could be in the musical. And she never-ever returned to THE choral festival in North Carolina. Anytime somebody asked, she explained, “I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me how kids should sing a song.”

Common sense permeated everything we did. Church. Summer School. Home. It didn’t have to make sense to the rest of the world, and it frequently did not. If it seemed like the right thing to do, we did it. If it didn’t, we found another way.

There were consequences. Oh well.

I’ve inherited the same sense of whatever-it-is. “Damn the torpedoes…”

I’m not a sign-reader. “Do Not Enter” is a philosophical quandary, but hardly a rule to be followed without hesitation, isn’t it?

What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. People grow. People learn. People change.

My grandmother was Blanche. She ran a boarding house on College Street in Thomasville. She made and served breakfast, lunch and dinner in her kitchen and dining room for about 200 men, seven days a week. White folks in the front door. Black folks and “indians” could buy a plate at the back door.

It was the way of the world.

Time passed. Nannie (Blanche) moved to Winston-Salem and started living with us in 1982.

My mother frequently got phone calls from the Winston-Salem Police Department. The Twin City’s finest had invariably taken one of Margaret’s students into custody for something. Fighting. Driving drunk. Walking the streets. Being black.

“Ms. Griffin, this is Sargent Blah-Blah-Blah… we have one of your students in custody. He says he has nobody else to call. We’re not gonna keep him and we’ll let him go if you’ll come down here and get him. Keep him ‘til morning. You know…”

“Of course. I’ll be right there.”

She would holler at me, but I was normally already awake.

“Jeffrey, get some shoes on. We have to go down to the jail.”

Off we would go, to claim one of her children and then back home. Whoever it was would sleep on the couch. Mama would make breakfast and then we’d take him wherever he needed to go.

(The Po-Po phone calls usually came on a Friday night.)

The phone rang a few weeks after Nannie moved in. Steven was in jail. I loved Steven. My mother loved Steven. Blanche was asleep. Off to the jail. Mama signed the paper. We went home. Steven got on the couch. We went to bed.

6:00 AM. My mother was sitting on the side of my bed. She was shaking me and whispering. “Jeffrey! We have to get Steven and go. If your Nannie wakes up and finds him on the couch, she’ll have a stroke.”

Nannie’s bedroom door was still closed. Mother and son headed downstairs. The couch was empty. We walked in the kitchen. Blanche was sitting there with a cup of coffee. Steven was eating breakfast. Eggs. Biscuits. Bacon. Grits.

“Margaret, I found Steven on the couch this morning. You should have told me we had company. I would have gotten up earlier. The youngin’ is starving.”

Steven kissed my grandmother and we took him home.

What’s right is right. People grow. People learn. People change.

Common sense.

The 1995 ACC Tournament. Randolph Childress with the cross-over. 107 points in three games. The game winner against North Carolina in overtime. It was, and remains, one of the greatest tournament performances in the history of college basketball. The voting for the Most Valuable Player award was not unanimous. Randolph won the award, but somebody voted differently. One vote.

Wow.

Cooperstown. The Major League Baseball Hall Of Fame. The class of 2020. I’m not a baseball guy. The game takes too long to play and I’m impatient. I’ve been to one major league game. Yankee Stadium. The Yankees and the Mets. My grandmother said, “There are two teams in baseball. The Dodgers, and we’re for them. And the Yankees, and we’re not for them.”

That’s the way it was.

Derek Jeter. Five World Series rings. 14 All-Star selections. Five Gold Gloves. Five Silver Slugger awards. The captain of the New York Yankees. The Hall Of Fame vote was not unanimous. Jeter is in the Hall, but somebody voted differently. One vote.

Wow.

Common sense? Good judgment?

Too many black kids in the chorus. From the back door to the kitchen table. One vote.

People grow. People learn. People change. Some rules should be broken. Do the right thing, folks. Do the right thing. What’s right, is right.

I don’t know how other folks feel, or what they remember, but… I’m not fond of what I recall about myself from elementary school. A fat little kid. Poor. Some friends, but hardly the most popular. Smart, but not a part of the “GT” class. G. T. Gifted and Talented.

People picked on me every day. Every day. I was the poster child for kids who got bullied long before it became a hot topic in today’s social media circus.

I was invited to one birthday party. Roller skating. I didn’t know how to roller skate, so I watched from the side.

I was invited to one person’s house to play video games after school. It was Atari, the only video game anybody knew about at the time. (Pong had fallen out of popularity by then.) Three boys. Me and them. They played. I watched. I went home.

I played one season of little league baseball. We were terrible, but we were good. Amy Hauser, the coach’s daughter, saved us almost every Saturday morning at the Northwest Little League complex. She would hit home runs and I would stand in left field and watch. I held down the bottom of the batting order.

When my father left, I got sick every day at school. It continued for weeks. My teacher was mean. M. E. A. N. I’ll never forget sitting in the office and hearing her tell my mother on the phone, “You’re a terrible parent. You’re trying to replace his father with food and that’s why he’s so fat.”

Life at Old Town Elementary was brutal.

My mother was eventually assigned to teach a half-day at North Forsyth and a half-day at Old Richmond Elementary. (Mercifully, I had to switch schools, too.) We moved to Pfafftown. She rented a house on Seven Hills Road. Gigantic yard. Enormous. The biggest yard I’d ever seen.

Donald Marler lived on the other side of the vast expanse that sat before our house. I looked out the window the first morning and saw Donald trudging across the field carrying a bat and a glove. His younger cousin, Win, was not far behind.

“Hey. Can you come out and play?”

“Play what?”

“Baseball.”

“We don’t have enough people.”

“We’ll play rolly-bat.”

Now, it’s damn-near impossible to play rolly-bat in a field with chopped-off corn stalks dotting the territory, but play we did. The greatest game of rolly-bat ever.

So began our friendship.

My first confidant, comrade and codefendant.

My mama would beg me each morning as she left for school at North, “Jeffrey, you have to stay awake for the bus. You cannot miss school, son.”

I would be sound asleep as the bus passed our house and headed for Old Richmond. I would wake up in a panic, grab my book bag and run across the field to Donald’s house.

“Mr. Marler, Mr. Marler, I missed the bus. Will you please take me to school?”

“Don’t worry. Get in the car.”

Five minutes later he would drop me off at Old Richmond, the best elementary school in the history of the universe, so I could wrestle with the long-division monster in Mrs. Nance’s classroom.

Our friendship kicked into high gear when we were reunited at North Forsyth. Donald is almost entirely and solely responsible for the joy I discovered on the campus hidden on Shattalon Drive.

Donald completely disrupted Eloise Brown’s Spanish class when he started hollering while listening to the ACC tournament on a transistor radio hidden in the collar of his Member’s Only jacket. That was a beautiful day.

He fell out of his desk and rolled around on the floor when Mrs. McCarthy and Mrs. Moultry started to trade blows during an argument over dictionaries during a 5^th period English class. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Geometry with Sylvia Chadwick. Donald was one of her favorite victims.

“Donald, please stand and recite theorem 4.3 for the class.”

Donald always obliged.

“Theorem 4.3. For the Lord saith, ‘the most reverant pointeth shall disecteth the plain’ and it shall be so, forever and ever with the power invested in me by the city of Pfafftown, with liberty and justice for all. Amen. Member F.D.I.C.”

Germaine Lane would snicker. Mrs. Chadwick’s eyes would turn dark. I would hold myself to keep from belly-laughing, because I knew my mother would shoot me with a bazooka if she found out.

“Thank you, Donald. You may have a seat. That is all.”

“Are you sure? I can recite more, if you would like.”

“Sit down.”

Mrs. Chadwick would subsequently give up and regale us with tales about her husband’s liquid diet for the remainder of the class.

To this day, it is the only class (elementary, junior high, high school and college) during which I learned nothing beyond the value of laughter and friendship. Which is to say, of course, it was one of the greatest classes of which I have been privileged to attend. And it had nothing to do with geometry.

We performed in all the shows together. North Forsyth and Summer Enrichment. I’ve been in a lot of shows. I’ve worked on a lot of shows. I’ve seen a lot of shows. I don’t think I’ve ever said this, and it is way, way, way overdue. Donald’s role as Jacob Marley in SCROOGE may be the finest performance I’ve ever seen in a high school theatre production. It was phenomenal. A tour de force. Bravo.

Donald’s daddy passed away. I cried more for the loss of that man than I did for the loss of my own.

When my mother made the decision that was so rightfully hers and moved into Hospice, I was a bit discombobulated. Lots of people reached out. There was a seemingly endless line of visitors, telephone calls, text messages and voice mail messages. I got lost in the swell.

I picked up Sophia and Miles from school and we made the drive across town to the Kate B. Reynolds Hospice Home. We walked into Margaret’s room.

A man was standing there. Tall. Beard. I glanced at him since he was lingering near my mother’s bed.

I offered the customary John Deere-inspired-downward-head-bob greeting, “Hey.”

He smiled.

My mother looked at him and said, “He has no idea who you are.”

Well, that caught my attention. It was true. I had no idea. I looked again.

“Donald?”

The twinkling eyes gave him away. It was the only time I cried in the days before my mother’s departure.

Donald has always appeared when I needed someone most. Kinda like an angel. A ridiculously funny angel with an under-appreciated gift for sarcasm. An angel, nonetheless.

I wanted to pull him into the front yard at Hospice and make him play rolly-bat with my children.

We’ve seen each other since. Our children think of Donald as “the man with the motorcycle.”

I think of him as my oldest friend. I’m eternally grateful he made the long walk across that field on Seven Hills Road.

L’Chiam.

Every boy needs a man. One of those men. I didn’t have one. My father was not around and most of the men in my life were artists or teachers or coaches. Which, of course, is not traditionally where one encounters one of those men.

I’ll explain.

He has rough hands. He wears the same outfit to work almost everyday. He gets his hair cut at a barbershop. He can fix stuff. He drinks a little bit. He plays cards. A man.

Jamie’s daddy was one of those men. My car (“Brunhilda” – a green, 1968 Chevrolet Nova that once belonged to my Uncle J.C.) could drive itself to Jamie’s house. I loved his father. Jerry tried and tried to teach me how to play poker. It didn’t stick.

Jerry Franklin was not a rich man in the traditional sense. Small house. Poor neighborhood. Blue-collar jobs. His wife and his children loved him. That was obvious.

Jamie was my friend. Jamie is my friend. His father never missed our shows. His father always laughed with us. His father always loved us.

It turned out, I loved Jamie. Although he never complained, I know I drove Jamie crazy. I frequently (daily) asked, “Am I your best friend? Are we best friends? Are you my best friend?” I thought it was cute at the time but now I think it was obtuse and incessant and unnecessary.

Jamie invariably answered, “Yes. Best friends.”

For whatever reason, I needed Jamie.

Our paths diverged.

One of our friends, who shall remain unnamed, appeared in my mother’s room at North Forsyth one day after school…

“Jamie called me last night. It was 3:00 AM. He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said it’s three o’clock in the damn morning and I’m married. I’m sleeping or doing one other thing – either way, I should not be on the phone with you. What do you want?”

Turns out, Jamie called our friend to “come out.” Jamie is gay. He wanted our friend to know.

Well. I’ll never forget that afternoon in Margaret Griffin’s classroom.

Our friend wanted to know, “If Jamie is gay, does that make me gay? We’ve been in the shower together. We’ve slept in the same bed!”

My mother laughed and laughed and laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. No, you’re not gay. And I’ve always known Jamie is gay. How did you not know?”

I interrupted. “Wait, Jamie is gay? No, he’s not.”

My mother looked at me, “Jeffrey, son, where have you been?”

Alright. Jamie is gay. I waited for my phone call. My best friend. He would tell me.

The phone never rang. The week passed. Months. Indeed, years.

I was left with the notion that perhaps Jamie was angry with me. I was no longer a part of his life. Nor he, mine.

He lived in another city. I would occasionally see his sister or his mama and our conversations were always pleasant, but we never spoke of Jamie.

My life experience had led me to a place where I was firmly convicted in the belief that gay people are not bad, but they’re wrong.

I started to wonder about all I had seen, all I had heard and all I believed.

I frequently thought about Jamie. How could I dislike someone I loved so much? What is up with people hating other people?

I watched people I loved and admired condemn others because they are homosexual. Or heterosexual. Or poor. Or rich. Or old. Or young. Or disabled. Or black. Or white. Or liberal. Or conservative. Or Catholic. Or Baptist. Or Methodist. Or fat. Or skinny. Or women. Or men.

Come on, people. Really?

Every preacher is not chosen by God. That’s a shame. Righteousness is not the sole purview of the ordained.

Over time, I’ve encountered a few holy men on the way to the pulpit. Very few. Three, to be exact. Wise men.

Claude. Buzz. Jeff.

I called each of them. I asked what I wanted to ask. They answered. I listened.

I was wrong. I. Was. Wrong.

God wants us to spend a little more time loving and lot less time judging.

It brought me back to Jamie. He wasn’t angry nor embarrassed nor ashamed. Perhaps I pushed him away. Maybe I had been so grounded and steadfast in what I believed to be right, that I had made it impossible for my best friend to talk with me.

I was so ashamed. I was so disappointed in myself. I was so embarrassed my behavior. I missed my best friend.

Jamie returned to Winston-Salem. He is in “The Group.” We’ve been to the movies. We call. We text. We laugh. We talk. We’re thinking about going to the Patti LaBelle concert. I trust Sophia and Miles with him. He is a good man.

We finally had the conversation we should have had years ago. I confessed. I apologized. (And I asked for permission to write about this.)

I promise I won’t be obtuse or incessant or unnecessary.

I love Jamie. Maybe someday we’ll learn to play poker. Jerry would like that.

Best friends.