IN CURRENT TRAFFIC

...Took a break from blogging to start a podcast and I'm convinced that as many people love listening to 30 minute tirades as do the number of those who love reading them. Anyway, I had been thinking quite a bit lately about how I got to school from the 4th through 8th grades.

Let me start by asking you how your kids get to school? Do they walk, take a bus, hitch a ride with a neighbor family? Do you take them and make yourself late to work some days as they meander and stall because they've been Instagramming and texting all night? If you don't have kids, can you remember how you got to school? Well, I can.

According to Google Maps, with "normal" traffic my route to school from about 1984-1989 was 1 hour and 10 minutes. That's a one-way trip. That's barring an accident on one of the three busiest freeways in Los Angeles (I-10/405/101). Ignorance is a saving grace man. I knew I was in school with kids who walked or were driven to school. But I don't remember thinking too much about that after I was on the bus in the afternoons. I thought more about finding a way to sneak and eat my candy on the bus ride home without the driver seeing me. I memorized lines for my role as the Cowardly Lion in the school's production of the Wizard of Oz. I attempted to complete homework on that ride home while fending off Corn Nuts, ambient laughter and exhaust fumes. Some days I just slept until a jolting brake alerted me that the bus was exiting the freeway for the first afternoon stop.

Whether going or coming, the ride from South Los Angeles to Woodland Hills was a labor in hindsight. It was anywhere from 2 hours and 20 minutes to 3 hours spent on the road round-trip and it all started because mom thought it'd be a better educational opportunity. So...what precious virtue was forged from this furnace of daily expedition you ask? Here's what I got:

PATIENCE
For the majority of the 5 years I attended schools in the San Fernando Valley, it required me to take two buses from my home to school. Back then Metro Transit Association (MTA) was known as the Rapid Transit District (RTD), also known as the Rough Tough & Dangerous because of the stereotype that gang altercations ensued on these public buses. I got up for school between 5 and 5:45 a.m. from the time I was 9 years old until I was 13 and began my day as early as most adults who rise early to earn a living for their families. The RTD, if on time or not missed, was a 10-minute ride to my school bus stop from which I boarded the Los Angeles Unified School District or contracted equivalent transportation en route to the promised land. It's still vivid how I felt on those mornings, anxious to prove that I was intelligent, eager to perform well with peers who didn't ride a school bus. Everyday felt like a basketball tryout and for whatever reason I was willing to endure mild Carmegeddon for the chance at an escape route from the inner-city.

RESOLVE & RESOURCEFULNESS
Sometimes buses break down and while your science teacher is reading the paper and having coffee in his San Fernando Valley home, as a "bussed-in" kid you have to decide to wait until the bus arrives (could be hours), run to another stop to try and catch a different bus headed to the same location or sprint to your school-bus stop because the RTD never came that morning. Oh and there's also thugs who don't care how young and small you are. Some mornings you simply have to decide how to evade or engage these cats who prey on the week like 1 and 2-men war tribes. I wasn't a fighter by nature and everyday presented the possibility of getting jacked on the way to school. But when it was all said and done I finished the 8th grade. I figured that a couple moments in a full sprint beats a full day of dodging the imbeciles who would harass you all day if you went to school in your own neighborhood.

HUMILITY
I wish I could say that I didn't experience racist indoctrination prior to my integrated education. But I didn't grown up in communities where Americans of African Descent trusted Whites. Truth is, it's hard going from black homogeneity to white homogeneity, from being the majority to being a gross minority...gross in every since. When I was in fourth grade, Madonna was fresh on the pop scene pretending she had only recently lost her virginity. Kids in the Valley loved her while I barely knew who she was. Boys in Woodland Hills were saying, "Bitchin' and Rad," and their jeans were rolled at the bottoms and uncreased. What? Hair was spiked and argyle sweaters were en vogue, but not where I was from. So when I had seen enough, I mumbled, "Madonna Sucks!" and this kid said if Madonna sucks you suck. I had only recently started using the word "sucks". It sounded terribly offensive. But when in Rome yo. So the encounter escalated, he called me a "Nigger" and a smashed him in his face when the teacher wasn't looking. I think he knew he'd provoked at least a portion of the encounter so he didn't tell on me. I was terrified. I thought I'd be kicked out of school but that was the end of it.

I realized at some point that the teachers were well aware of the difference between us bussed-in kids and the natives. But whatever reservations they may have had, I benefited from Mrs. Kaufman and Mrs. Morford. Fourth and Fifth grade were "dope" experiences for me. No matter what challenges I had on the playground, these white women treated me with respect and demanded the same of me as anyone else. This was a big deal too since I was in some kind of cohort with the higher performing students. I swear I was one of 2 black kids in the classes. But it was in those first two of the five years that I learned to accept help from those willing to offer it. Color matters but there is no honor in refusing tutelage. It was as if I had been fortunate enough to be placed with teachers who responded to students who demonstrated a willingness to learn.

CROSSOVER
Long before I was ever good at basketball, I lived between this 'hood and suburb world. My white friends made light of it and my urban homies called me an Oreo when I slipped up and used proper English. The Valley kids didn't believe that gunshots were a nightly occurrence in South LA. They didn't believe that once I got on that bus in the afternoon, I had to change a little bit, smile less, check my wardrobe to make sure I wasn't displaying the wrong colors. But whether they believed it or not, a kid had better understand his transition as routine if he intends to succeed across the divide of inner city dwelling and affluent academia. I learned the hard way that speaking too proper an English dialect in my home neighborhood could come across as arrogant to adults and peers whereas speaking slang in Woodland Hills netted you caricature status. So at school if you blurred the lines or forgot where you were, you might have an Argyle sweater walk up to you rocking side-to-side with his hands overly demonstrative while yammering, "Yo, yo, ma homeboy. W'ssup?" The crossover is a learned skill by which you learn to effectively communicate without consciously betraying your identity. Those five years in the Valley taught me how to communicate without losing myself.

I'm realizing this has gotten long and I need to get ready for work so to be continued...

p.s. - Peace to Serrania Elementary and Parkman Junior High School.