Growin' Up Ghetto

Alizzle, Kermy, the Zo and I watched Step Up tonight— a movie that I enjoyed, despite it being a mediocre movie that has a plot that’s been reused at least a dozen times now. A boy from the ghetto meets a preppy girl and they dance the night away, falling in love with each other despite their different backgrounds because they love dancing so much. The part that caught my attention was, beyond mocking the generally lame parts of the plotline, Alizzle and Kermy criticized the ghetto boy’s clothes. Everything he wore was too baggy, and why on earth was he layering a t-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt? To which my thoughts were, why wouldn’t he wear that? I went to a high school where that was generally accepted to be the cool outfit. Even better if topped off with a toboggan (ski hat) with three tassels bursting from the top.

I usually don’t think of my childhood as particularly unique or special by any means, but tonight I was very aware of my roots.

I spent years 2-12 growing up in small town Vermont. It was 99% white, upper class, rural America. We lived in a town of 3,000 people. The nearest movie theater was a 30 minute drive away. We only got a handful of radio stations, and so I spent most of these years listening to my parents’ cassette tapes. I grew to love Paul Simon, Johnny Clegg, and Peter, Paul and Mary. But once my sister and I reached a certain age, my parents decided to move—for a number of reasons, but amongst them was so that my sister and I could experience what true diversity was. When I insisted that I did know what diversity was, my mother said, “You don’t even know any black people” to which I replied, “Of course I do. Mei Jing is one of my best friends.” The fact that Mei Jing was an adopted Korean girl only furthered my parents’ resolve.

I was just starting 7th grade when we arrived in Durham, NC. I had more culture shock then than when I studied abroad in Kenya. Everything was different. First of all, there were so many people! The middle school I attended probably had more students in it than my entire elementary school. One class I remember in particular was my 7th grade Social Studies class, where the boy sitting behind me would every day pull out his compass from math class and poke me in the back with it to try and make me bleed, while one of the kids in the back would try and get high on his asthma inhaler, and the teacher got fired because she was caught dealing pot to her 12-year-old students.

I took Honors classes, but I was very careful not to stand out too much. In Vermont you were encouraged to be smart, but in my middle school, smart kids were ridiculed and left friendless. We had a spelling bee in which I purposefully misspelled the word “herring” because I knew that if I spelled it right I’d be outed for what I truly was.

High school was much the same. Parents tended to choose which high school their child went to based less on which school was the most academically sound, and more based on which school had had fewer knifings. I had a solid group of friends, all of us pretty dorky, but I was on the softball team too, which certainly added cool points in my favor. (At least I like to think it did.) But even among talks with my fellow nerds we were more likely to be discussing whether DMX or Jay-Z was hotter rather than Hollywood celebrities. (I thought DMX was, because Jay-Z did too much “white” rap.) While most of the friends I have today were listening to Dave Matthews and Matchbox 20, I listened to Tupac, DMX, and Master P. And the louder your car stereo system was to blast this music, the better. Everyone cruised around town with their drivers’ seats pushed way back, so it almost looked like you were trying to catch a nap while you drove home from school. It was the cool thing to do… only later did I learn that this style originated because when your seat was that far back the side bar between your front and back seats would protect you better in a shooting.

Not that I was ever shot at, or even was worried about being shot at at any point in my life. In general I was simply a good student, an athlete, and led a very sheltered life. This is just to show how much the “ghetto” lifestyle infiltrated my entire school, down to the lowly geeks. The boys in our school would inevitably be wearing outfits exactly like the guy from Step Up, only showing a hell of a lot more underwear. My most-worn pair of pants was sweatpants that almost enveloped me, accompanied by wife beaters. Once I even gave myself corn rows.

After high school my ghettofication stopped almost instantaneously. I went to Duke, then moved to Boulder. I gave up rap and started listening to Dave, Michelle Branch, and other groups that I can’t name. I turned in the sweatpants for more form-fitting jeans. But there are still some times when I find myself in the confused, either about a huge gap in what I know, or a huge gap in what other people know. I can't name most bands or their songs to save my life. Or when my friends don’t understand people wearing baggy clothes or I meet someone who’s never drunk sweet tea or know what Bojangles is.

I neither miss my “ghetto” life nor do I resent those years. I think back on that part of my life as an adventure, sometimes wondering if that really had an impact on who I am; maybe I’ve gone back to that Paul Simon-loving child of 15 years ago. But then I’ll be driving and listening to my radio and Tupac will come on. Without even realizing it, I sing along, and I still know all the lyrics. That ghetto girl is still inside me, and I like it when she visits.