Ch. 15: Me and Mr. T

The first time my blackness earned me a standing ovation at my predominantly white high school

There are few things that caused a rush of adrenaline to course at 2x speed through my 13-year-old veins than the anticipation of breaking out a new Dungeons & Dragons campaign to play. I could spend hours at the bookstore reading through all the different pre-packaged campaigns sold by TSR for the worldwide phenomena. I’d then go home and spend more hours creating my own dungeon campaigns for my brother and me to play (yes, I had to play both Dungeon Master and player character. It’s odd, I know. Kinda like managing an election for a state gubernatorial race AND running in the race yourself. But, I digress).

Dungeons & Dragons wasn’t just a game. It was a way of life. It opened up a world of imagination and wonder. And I always played the same character, Darthenswain the Paladin.

Anyway, when I wasn’t playing 1-on-1 with my little brother at home, I’d play during lunch with my Asian friends at school. You know that opening scene in the first episode of season 1 of “Stranger Things” when the boys are all playing Dungeons & Dragons in the basement? Yep. I was basically the black kid in that scenario. (I was not at all surprised that his first girlfriend in the show ended up being white.)

And in that scene, the main character slams the small metal figure of a Demogorgon down on the table. This is clearly a foreshadowing of the real monster the boys will all face later in the series.

The equivalent scene in my story might be me slamming down a small, 3-headed, Ghidorah-looking monster with an orange-colored Trump caricature as the center head, flanked on either side by a Steve Bannon head and a Michael Flynn head. (Or maybe Bannon and Sessions? Pence and Stephen Miller? Sarah Sanders and Ann Coulter? Frak it. I need a 7-headed hydra!)

But, I digress…again (I digress a lot). The reason I’m venturing down this memory lane is to set the stage for how my blackness earned me my very first standing ovation. And no, D&D has nothing to do with it. My love for D&D and the fact that I played it at school just sets the stage for what you are about to learn.

The First Black President

The school where I played D&D at lunch with my friends was South Pasadena Junior High School. In the early ’80s, South Pasadena was a small, suburban community of middle-, upper-middle, and upper-class families, primarily white and Asian. The few times I’ve visited or seen the school (and the high school) since I graduated, I believe it has become significantly more diverse. But when I attended, you could literally count on two hands the number of black kids in my class.

This was quite a difference from the schools I attended before. In fact, the school I attended right before South Pas was Marshall Junior/Senior High School in Pasadena, CA.

From what I recall, Marshall was a very diverse school. Lots of black kids, white kids, brown kids, Asian kids, you name it. I also remember that it had somewhat of a danger element. Like this one time, on the bus, I saw this kid showing another kid a knife, and I was like, “I’m not sure you’re supposed to bring knives to school. Especially ones that big!” It was pretty frakking big. (Side note: right when you read that section, what color were you assuming was the kid with the knife? I bet you a MILLION dollars you were thinking black kid. Weren’t you? Don’t lie. Now, the fact that he was black doesn’t matter. Why did you think that? Just something to think about. And please, don’t email me if you’re one of the six people reading this who didn’t think of a black kid.)

I attended Marshall my first semester of the 7th grade, and it was the first time I ventured into the world of school politics. I ran for class president, and by some miracle, I won. It’s funny, because I really have absolutely no recollection of how the process worked. I don’t remember giving a speech. I don’t remember having a day of voting. I just know that I was the 7th Grade Class President in the first semester of the 1980-’81 school year. I remember my friend Juanita would call me “Mr. President.” I liked the sound of it.

But, alas, my presidency would be short-lived. My mom had met a new fella. Someone who was going to stick (I remember her dating a few men during my elementary school years). This new guy was head of anesthesiology at the hospital where she worked. And they were going to get married. And with that marriage, we would be “movin’ on up,” as it were. From my mom’s modest, 3-bedroom, 2-bath home in the black part of Altadena, to a large, Spanish-style home in the white-ass hills of South Pasadena.

Moving to South Pas meant leaving my friends at Marshall. Leaving my constituents. My teachers (and, of course, my current crush. Hey, at least this time she was Filipino!)

Unfortunately, my longing for the good life I had back at Marshall made me miss out on opportunities in my new school.

Novelties Last Only So Long

The first time we drove up to South Pasadena Junior High, I thought it was a private school. The architecture has a Spanish feel, and the building looked like the kind of buildings I’d seen in college movies. The principal drove a Mercedes. There were patches of green throughout the campus called grass. It was a far cry from the concrete jungle and spartan architectural design that was Marshall.

And what I immediately noticed as I went from class to class… I was usually the only black kid in the class (or one of 2 or 3 tops).

As I think about it, South Pas is where my journey of having predominantly white or Asian friends all started. Marshall had all kinds of ethnicities. As did my 6th-grade school, my 5th-grade school, and my 4th-grade school (which was all black).

Naming all of these schools reminds me that there was something else I soon learned. All of these kids had known each other since KINDERGARTEN! Apparently, you could go to the same school all throughout your elementary school years. WHAT THE HELL! REALLY?!

You see, my mom moved about every year to year and a half. So, I literally went to a different school every grade from 1st through 7th. (I actually went to two schools in both 6th and 7th grades). It was only after she married my step-dad did we settle down more permanently in South Pasadena. Up to that point, I thought you were supposed to change schools after every year. Go figure.

When I arrived at the new school, I had a sense that there was this interest in me as the “new kid on the block.” Lots of kids talking to me, asking me about where I came from, etc. I vaguely remember some of the girls seeming to have a crush on me. (Or maybe it was just the novelty of another black kid.)

Had I been more up on the social ladder-climbing abilities, I might have taken advantage of that novelty. Unfortunately, I was too “homesick” for Marshall and I probably came off as cold and distant.

That would ultimately land me in a spot where I had never been before: unpopular, hardly seen, and playing Dungeons & Dragons with my Asian friends outside the science class (no, I’m not making that up).

At Marshall, I was class president, loved by many, and a rising star. At South Pas, I joined the cast of freaks & geeks. (No offense to my old South Pas Jr. High friends. But dudes, come on. We were nerds.)

I tried my darndest to recapture my past glory and ran for 8th-grade class president. And lost. Then I ran for 9th-grade class president. And lost. I gave 10th-grade politics a shot too. You guessed it. The big “L.”

I probably never would have ever been noticed by the kids at my school if it weren’t for two other black people in my life. The second you’ll learn about in the next chapter. But the first one was our vice principal.

Me and Mr. T.

Do you remember that John Hughes comedy where the tough, military-trained, hard-as-nails black vice principal shakes things up at the predominantly white junior high school? You don’t? Oh, that’s right. Of course you don’t. John Hughes didn’t put black people in his movies. What I’m remembering is my freshman year at South Pas.

His name was Mr. Tripplett, and he was just as I described. A tall, dark, bad-ass brother you did NOT want to fuck with. Man, I wish I could have been on a fly on the wall of the school administration meeting that decided to bring him to South Pas. There is no way of ignoring the ramifications of bringing such a starkly BLACK black man to be the harbinger of death and destruction on all the white class clowns and cut-ups at that school.

Mr. Tripplett patrolled the school halls with a confident walk, finely-pressed suit, and dark shades. And boy, did he have the walk. It wasn’t a clichéd, JJ Walker, arms swinging like a jigaboo kind of walk. It was the walk of a tall, proud, ain’t-gonna-take-no-shit-from-no-privlieged-ass-white-kids kind of walk. Imagine if Shaft were Ferris Bueller’s principal instead of Principal Rooney. That was Mr. Tripplett.

So, how does he end up helping to raise my social status, even just a tad? Serf Day.

I can dig this kind of “slavery”

Serf Day was a fundraising event the 9th-grade class held every year. If I recall, the money raised was saved and put towards what would eventually be our prom. Now, for some odd reason, the junior high at South Pas went from 7th to 9th grade (typically, 9th grade was the start of high school, not the end of junior high). So, the 9th graders were like “seniors” at the school. (But, chances are, many of you reading this went to a middle school and don’t even know what the fuck a “junior high” is. So just forget about all that shit.)

Serf Day was an opportunity for the lower classes to “buy” a 9th grader for the day, and have them be their serf. And the tradition was to dress the 9th-grader up, usually in a ridiculous outfit. At the end of the day, there was an assembly for the school where all the serfs would parade on stage and a winning outfit was chosen.

And for my costume, I came as, you guessed it, Mr. Tripplett.

I had his shit down man. The look. The walk. The kids in school absolutely loved it. I was getting handshakes and high-fives all day. Boy, was I ever intoxicated by the newfound attention. And when I strutted my stuff across that stage, I got my very first ever standing ovation.

Alas, stardom only lasts so long. Serf Day came and went, and I was back to rolling 20-sided die and mastering dungeon campaigns. My 15 minutes of fame were up.

The following year I would move up the street to the high school. Still nerdy. Still mostly alone in the quad.

Until I met the kid that would help change my life forever.

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