School Dayz with a Young, Frisky Vince

How often do you think about grammar school? We're still young enough to frequently think back to high school days...but grammar school? When's the last time you thought seriously hard about your 2nd grade teacher and the impact she had on your life? Or remembered that lil girl/boy in kindergarten? Or that time you got sent to the Principal's office in the 4th grade?

I know I don't do that too much...probably because high school was such a circus. But I was bad-boy in my day, with some memorable classmates and teachers that I think you should read about. I'm going to be updating it periodically throughout the day...so check it out...

The School No. 74 Dayz

Pre-K
Teahcer: Ms. Hawro. Doesn't everyone have a crush on their first female teacher, as long as she doesn't look like Walter Matthau? I mean, Pre-K teachers are extra nice and caring, and that's enough to get you crushing when your 4-years-old right?

Well Ms. Hawro was that chick. The nicest teacher of my scholastic career. She was a female Mr. Rogers, except I never felt like she wanted to molest me. She also took a special interest in me (I think) and it's probably because my mother and father were so involved. Mom came to sit in on a few classes and even brought baked goods a few times. That type of parent involvement is rare in all-black schools...so I think she appreciated that.

As a Jehovah's Witness, we don't salute the flag or celebrate any holidays/birthdays and Ms. Hawro always accomodated that and never made me feel uncomfortable. If I saw her today I wouldn't recognize her, but one day I'm gonna look her up, and send her a Thank-You note and shiny, red Macintosh apple.

Classic Classmate: I can't remember anyone in Pre-K.

Classic Moment: Me crying like a bish on the first day. Big ol' crocodile tears, begging for my Mommy. It was a harrowing experience. Looking back on it, it's weird...because I'm SO far from being a Momma's boy. But I always say my mother is the World's Greatest Mom, especially in our early years. One of the reasons is because she never dropped us off anywhere...we were always with her, under her care...so that first day at school was probably the first time I had ever been away from her for an extended period of time and the person/people I was with wasn't family. My Aunt Roxanne, our family's greatest storyteller, always tells the story about the time Mom dropped me off at her house and cried for 2-3 hours straight, looking out the window waiting for her to come back. She usually tells that story (laughing uncontrollably) after I have something smart to say to my mother or exert some type of adult-independence, showing me how I used to be (and giving people the impetous to clown me). But anyway...that first day I was a wreck...a red-eyed, snotty-sniffy nosed wreck. I needed to man up.

Kindergarten
Teacher: Ms. Randazzo. Ms. Randazzo was a short, waddly, Danny Devito-shaped older gal. She wasn't mean, but I definitely remember longing for the days of Ms. Hawro, the pushover. I can't even remember her voice too well, but it probably sounded like DeVito's shrill, too. And it definitely wasn't serene like Ms. Hawro's voice. When I think about her, I see a white sweater with a red turtle neck. Black polyester pants, covering her ample rump...and nurse-shoes. And I think she wore glasses.

My sister, Lyd (soon I'm gonna stop prefacing their names with sister, brother) had Ms. Randazzo two years before me. So, I got a whole lot of, "Why can't you behave like your sister." Thinking back, that's an incredibly asenine question. She may as well have asked, "Why can't you be a well behaved homosexual."

Classic Classmate: Can't remember to many, but I am about to divulge a story that I never told my family or anyone else. Read along...

Classic Moment: There was this one lil girl...I can't remember her name, so lets just call her Tayshana (because that's how we get down in East Buffalo). Tayshana was a lil fresh girl, a sassafrass, sass-mouth. I think I impressed her with my winning charm and supreme intelligence. i got all the laughs, knew all my ABCs and could read. She liked that and she wanted me to be her dude. But I wasnt tryin to have her be my boo.

Well, we had naptime everyday around noon and Tay was always trying to lay her blanket next my joint. One day she switched her lil fresh-tail over to my blanket and got all close. Next thing you know she grabbing my hand and preparing to show me how to pleasure her.

Now, lets stop...I don't think this is natural for a 5-year-old girl. Yes, Tay was a sassafrass lil thang, but thinking back, chances are she had a grown man in her life that wasn't behaving properly. I mean, why else would she know to bring a boy's hand down in that place?

Well, I can't remember particulars, but I do know that my lil pudgy paws never got to no skin...either I pulled back with a guilty, young Christian conscious, or Randazzo shrilled something like, "No talking, it's nap time!"

Unfortunately, that was the last time a woman was attracted to me.

1st Grade
Teacher: Ms. Icabucci. Learning had began in earnest by the 1st grade and Ms. Icabucci was an Italian fire-cracker. I remember her being challenging and a hard-liner. Looks wise, she wasn't crush material. She was tall (at least to me), skinny (to my lil eyes) and had a disgusting mole on the left-side of her upper lip. But you know what? Something tells me she was probably halfway decent looking. I do remember her wearing skirts a lot and possesing an energy. We also discussed the merits of my favorite football team, the Chicago Bears (that year's Super Bowl champs)...this was before I began my love affair with the hometown team.

Classic Classmate: Willie. I can't tell you much about Willie, other than he smelled like tuna fish, looked and dressed like Jimmy Walker and he was the fastest kid in class.

Classic Moment: By the 1st grade I had become a behavioral problem. Not the kid who's getting into fights or threatning the teacher -- those were the children of broken homes and drug addicts that made up a large portion of 74 -- I was the smart-allick (sp?), jokester, mischevious dude...always searching for a laugh, always talking, always misbehaving. I didn't need to pay attention...unfortunately, I was probably 2 grades ahead of my poor classmates, thanks to attentive parents that continued the teaching at home. And I had what I always want in any class, workplace, bar -- I had a partner-n-crime, someone who was just as much of a clown as I was. And, it was Willie.

Well, Willie and I used to play stupid games while Ms. Icabucci was trying to teach the class. We'd throw things, play hot-hands, see who could steal a pencil from each others desk without them knowing...and when we'd get in trouble, we'd point at each other to absolve ourselves from blame. Quintessential knuckleheads (in hindsight, Willie shouldve been paying attention, since he couldn't read or count. I laugh, but I laugh with a heavy heart.). And I should've never behaved this way, since my parents "taught me so much better than that". It was totally uncalled for.

1st grade was also the first time we got report cards. You either got O-Oustanding, S-Satisfactory, NI-Needs Improvement or U-Unsatisfactory. I bet you can guess that I got Os for all academic categories and Us for behavior categories for the first two quarters. But that stopped real quick after Pops whooped me a couple good times. You know, where he would give me a painful lash for each syllable, " You. Not. Gon'. Be. Mak. N. Me. Look. Like. No. Fool. In. That. Skoo." Of course he ryhmes everything.

We also had this game where we would fill our mouth up with frothy-spit, blow up our cheeks and ask, "You dare me to spit on you? I dare you to dare me to spit on you. I'll do it, too." Well the whole thing be to swallow the spit and then blow out air...the suspense was thrilling.

On this day, however, I was filling ballsy. Looking back, it started a pathology, where I do wrong things solely for shock value. Anyways, we're going back-n-forth daring each other. After about three rounds, Willie blows out his air. "Ah-ha, Ah-ha. I got you. You was like a little scarey-cat girl. Ah-ha, Ah-ha." Little did he know I was about to wet that lil ignant nigga up.

So, now it's my turn...I fill up with spit..then he dares me...I squint my eyes and act like I'm building up massive pressure inside my mouth and then...PPPGGHTHGGHTHPPGGHPPTHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I spray Willie with my frothy-spit. He yelps, starts frantically wiping his eyes...he can't believe it. Meanwhile, I'm ecstatic, gleeful.

Well, this whole game was going on while Ms. Icabucci was reading to the class. But when Willie yelps, she picks her head up from the book, turns and sees Willie with a face of froth and me with bubbly saliva poppin on my botton lip.

Appalled and absolutely stunned, she takes me, lays me over her laps and gives me about 5 wacks with the paddle. I know what your saying, "WHAT?!?!?! She can't do that!" Yes she could. First off, this was before Dr. Spoc's book about not physically disciplining your children. Second, the no-touch laws had not been passed in schools yet. Third, I deserved it. And most importanly Fourth, my parents authorized her to spank me when I misbehaved.

That was the first and only time I got sent home early from school. 74 was only four blocks from house, so I can remember me and Mom walking home...with lil Chrish (2-years-old) taking those quick lil "Terrible-Two" steps beside us and lil Adam (just born) in the stroller as my mother yells at me with a face red-with-anger. Plus she kept saying those dreaded words, "Wait until your father gets home."

Man, those 4 hours I sat in my room waiting for Pops was excruciating. Long story, short..he came home, heard the news, talked to me and then beat the flesh off my &$% cheeks.

Then, he took me to school the next morning, had me apologize to Ms. Icabucci and Willie, took me in the bathroom and beat the last little bit of flesh of my &%# cheeks...then took me into the classroom and had me apologize in front of the class. I tried to splash some water over my eyes to look like I had just washed my face and didn't dry off, but the first thing this one girl said was, "Why you cryin?!" I was mad, so shot back, "I wasn't cryin stupid! I washed my faced." Pops eyes got wide and he asked, while squeezing the circulation out of right arm, "Boy what did you call her?! Don't make me take you back in that bathroom. Now apologize to her, too."

Pops was mad at me for about a month. Then the NBA playoffs started and we were good.

2nd Grade
Teacher: Ms. Seggio. My first dealings with a racist teacher was with Ms. Seggio. First she a fat, tub-of-lard piece of trash South Buffalo (yeah, I said it. And what?). I despise that woman and her evil motives back then.

Coming from South Buffalo, she probably hated every black child she taught. She thought we were all stupid and had no future. She was mailing it in, getting a check. The classic overburdened, disenchanted, frustrated public-school teacher. But she was also a South Buffalo bigot. There was this one little boy in the class, Jimmy. he was the only white kid in the whole school, other than the big guys in 7th or 8th grade (the one who pushed me into the toilet stall when I was pissing one day. He was dangerous...any white kid that was still at 74 by 6th grade was either a foster kid or a special kid...I think this dude was a foster kid.). Anyway, her precious Jimmy wasn't all that smart, but probably knew a little more than most of the kids in the class and Ms. Seggio loved it. She used to put him in charge of the class when she went away, praise him unduly and incessantly and generally slurp him, because he was her shining light in a classroom and school of darkness.

I didn't have a problem with Jimmy, except he was so competitive. he always wanted to know what I got on my tests and he was consistently hurt when it was a higher score. He hated that I won all the spelling-bees. He hated that I knew my multiples of 7 all the way into the 100s. He hated that I knew more about sports than him and he generally hated that I knew I was destined for greatness and he was destined to work at a gas-station and talk with a lisp for the rest of his life.

Ms. Seggio hated me too. I was a cocky, arrogant, obnoxious lil dude..especially with her, because I knew she favored jimmy over everyone else because he was white. Pops taught me how to peep stuff like that. I'd ask things like, "How come Jimmy gets a star for spelling 'Clouds' and I don't get a star for spelling 'Cumulus'?" Or, "Why is does Jimmy get candy for scoring an 87 when I got a 93." I was a handful.

Well, Ms. Seggio hated the fact that I was obnoxious...and she couldn't take that from a 7-year-old child, let alone a lil nigger-boy. So, I guess her way of putting me in my place was dropping me down a reading level. When my parents found about this they came to school and questioned the decision. Ms. Seggio, taking my cribs for stupid people (what she thought about most blacks), gave them some ridiculous explanation and even got a little indignant with the fact that they questioned her decision.

But Moms wasn't goin for that. They heard me read all the time. JW kids had to get on stage and read the Bible, to practice public speaking. So they knew what I could do. So Moms had me the school test me. The next week I was leaving class during reading time to go take reading with the 3rd graders -- in their top group.

This goes to show you what happens to bright kids in public schools. Teahcers are so quick to keep kids back...sometimes for perceived noble reasons...other times for racist reasons like Ms. Seggio. And most kids in the ghettos don't have involved parents like I did, so they would have been a victim, wasted potential. That's why it kills me when someone wants to point to SAT scores as a reason for not admitting a black student into certain schools. People don't understand how public school can stunt and retard a potential star.

If saw Ms. Seggio today (she's probably be rolling around in a wheel-chair), I slap her with my Howard degree.

Classic Classmate: Precious. Precious was about 6'6. But that's because he was probably about 13-years-old too. Precious was probably in the 2nd grade when I was born..and he still hadn't got out. Precious had the best cookie-bush in the class. Precious waxed all of us in basketball. Precious looked ridiculous walking in a line with us. Precious looked ridiculous at his desk.

Precious' name was Precious.

LaSharee. I was crushin on LaSharee. But she paid me no mind. I thought counting up to 132 by 6 was impressive. She didn't. I thought telling the class that Ms. Seggio looked like Jabba the Hut was gonna get me some play. It didn't. I thought protecting her from the dodge balls was gonna win me her affection. It didn't. She paid me no mind. I, on the other hand, would hear Janet Jackson's "When I Think of You" and think of her and those pink barrets. The world is cruel...Tayshana is accosting me under the covers just two years ago, but LaSharee is treating me like I didn't just quote Magic Johnson's stat line from last week's game against the SuperSonics.

Classic Moment: Did I already mention I was arrogant and obnoxious? Well, probably the worse case of that came when I finally lost a spelling bee, but I wouldn't sit down. I was sure that I spelled the word right and Ms. Seggio was making sit down so Jimmy the Lisp could win. So I wouldn;t sit down. I kept arguing with her, until she sent me to the Principal's office.

The Principal called home and spoke to my mother, my mother spoke to my father. My father beat the snot outta my nose, then came to class with me the next day and made me apologize to Ms. Seggio. That night he apologized to me, saying that he shouldn't talk about black and white people the way he does because I'm too young to really understand and that maybe the way he and Mom discussed Ms. Seggio was making me behave that way.

About a couple weeks later, we were watching a Lakers game and he was basically calling the referee a Jim Crow pawn because he called an offensive foul on James Worthy.

The Olmstead Dayz

3rd Grade

Teahcer: Ms. Geekas. Ms. Geekas was a snazzy, tanned, tight skirt wearing Greek woman. I guess maybe I had the school-boy hots for her. She wore fiery red lipstick, too. I guess maybe we can call her spunky...is that alright? She was spunky. And a fine teacher to boot.

She wasn't my only teacher that year, though.

My mother tested me for the Olmstead schols after she found out that Ms. Seggio's fat-racist &$$ was trying to grease me. Olmstead was called "Gift & Talented". Basically a public school for smart kids. There was also a class called resource, where a small group of kids would go and teahcers would have us do things like group projects, essays, etc. It was also the first time that I had more than one teacher. I had Ms. Geekas, the resource teacher and a Science teacher. But I can't remember her name.

Ms. Geekas, however, stood out. Maybe it was her black leather skirt or maybe it was here big-greek hair, but she made an impression...and I didn't cross her either. I may have been my most well-behaved grade ever.

Classic Classmate: Joey Randstatler, Richard Warfield and Melissa Trincanatti. Joey was a short little white boy, with braces and tartar-teeth that loved sports. So we naturally got along. It was probably a sight to see, though. This short, blond-haired white boy, with this behemoth black-boy rockin' a homemade box-cut, courtesy of his father. I would put Joey on to Bobby Brown and LL Cool J..and he'd TRY to put me on to Beach Boys "Kokomo", now don't get me wrong...the Beach Boys are a classic group and have some of the most enchanting harmonies and musical arrangements ever, but 80s Beach Boys was some wack garbage...I wasn't feelin it.

Then there was Melissa she sat in our group, too (arranged in alphabetical order). She was the smart, popular white girl. Once again, I had a grade-grubber -- sort of like Summer from School of Rock -- and she was constantly competing with me. Rubbing it in my face when she goody two-shoed her way to a 100 and I didn't...or pouting when I did the same to her. We ended up going to the same HS, too. And, despite her grade-grubbing -- to this day, that's my girl, she's one of my favorite classmates of all-time. Lil Joey had a crush on her though, so he was on 10 for most of the day...made for some good comedy...like how he used to love playing the air-guitar to "Simply Irresistible." Joey was basically Marty from Back 2 The Future.

Olmstead was different because I had never been a minority in school until then and I'd also never been around kids just as smart as me and handling class assignments that were challenging. There was no such thing as "class discussions" at 74...and if there was, I was busy cracking jokes or spitting froth-saliva in Willie's face. Olmstead was refreshing when I look back, and I gotta give Mom credit for not listening to Pops when he wanted to keep us at 74.

The other kat at our 4-desk group was Richard Warfield, a fellow JW. My mother insisted that I befriend this dude, but he was the squarest kat in the world...he was Urkel, before urkel...black, skinny, wore his pants real high, even had the glasses to go with it. And he always had glossy film of saliva on his bottom lip, it was strange. Like Joey, he crushed on Meliss, so he my first introduction to a wannabe Good Lifer. Man he had it bad for Meliss, but he couldn't play the air-guitar, so homeboy was just short on that one. His favorite track that year was "Don't Worry Be Happy"...u see what I'm sayin?

When I think about it, I see why everyone wanted to be in our group..we had all the cliche's covered. Warfield was the dork, Meliss was the "cheerleader", Joey was the "cute white boy"...and I guess covered the class clown and huge-hip-homeboy thing. We were the Fantastic Four.

Classic Moment: Everytime Joey air-guitared Robert Palmer or Meliss broke out with some "Electric Youth" or Warfield hit us with some Billy Ocean...it was classic...but I have to say the defining moment came in about the thrid quarter.

Ms. Geekas told us to choose three professions and ask our group which one we should be. Joey had something like baseball player and doctor..we all agreed: baseball player...he was gonna be the next George Brett. Meliss had like Senator and actress: we all said actress...she was gonna be the next Molly Ringwald. Who cares what Warfield said...maybe he said Cuba Gooding Jr., OJ Simpson or some other Good Lifer.

The point is, we supported everyone's career choices, because we had confidence in them.

I gave them two professions, too: NBA basketball player and rapper. Because, I just knew I had what it took to be the next Magic Johnson or KRS One. But, this was '88...these white kids and Warfield had no idea about rap music, so they didn't choose that. And NBA player?! Come on Vince, you were 5'2, 520lbs...so, Meliss scratches her head and says, "Uh...what about comedian Vince?"

She greased me.

4th Grade

Teaher: Ms. Carroll

Classic Classmate: Andre

The rest coming soon...

The City Honors Dayz

5th Grade

Teacher: Ms. McCollough

Classic Classmates: Charles Pressley and Craig Lee

The rest coming soon...

6th Grade

Teahcer: Mr. Verso

Classic Classmates: Mike Benz, Aaron Glazer, Donna Latham, Tammy

The rest coming soon...

7th Grade

Teacher: Ms. Venator

Classic Classmated: Tony Knight, Larry Karcher, Tiffiney Grissom, Seth Triggs

The rest coming soon...

8th Grade

Teachers: Mr. Geelan, Ms. Bourke, Mr. Schlacter

Classic Classmates: Mike Rios, Venus Quates, Rasheed Hatten

The rest coming soon...