I’m about to hit the road. My nephew D and I are taking a leisurely drive to North Carolina to hang out with BigSis #2 and her hubby. It should be fun. Haven’t visited them in NC in a few years cause um…my bruh-in-law? He’s crazy. LOL

D…

My nephew’s entering his senior year in high school. Whew! The prayers, the work, the threats it took to get him to this point. When I picked him up last weekend, he was making phone calls (as usual). He called one of his teammates (he plays football) and told him to be sure he studies the playbook this weekend. I, being the amused Auntie, laughed and asked him why he was giving his friend’s assignments. Well, it turns out that “Da Dynasty” is captain of the football team. What?! What?! Yep, he and his best friend are co-captains. Awww shucks now!

My baby is growing up. Don’t get it twisted, he’s still a brat, he’s still “pampered” (I don’t like the word “spoiled” – it implies something should be thrown away) but that appears to be a family trait . Why ya’ll looking at me?

We’re working through the college thing now, trying to find the perfect balance of curriculum, athletics, etc. We’re a behind the eight ball to a degree – I find that to be true of his best friend also. I’ve been trying to impress upon him that there are people who will clamor for him per his athletic ability but he has to look at all the angles. Not everyone has his best interest at heart as evidenced by the lack of information circulating in his school and from his guidance counselor. *Breathe*

So, he’s about to head out into “the real world” to a degree. And I find myself making mental lists of things to talk to him about, things that he needs to learn how to do for himself. He’s driving now so when we were on the way home last weekend, I asked him if his parents had given him the “what to do if the police stop you” talk. Nope. We talk a bit about defensive driving strategies, weather conditions & speed, TICKETS.

I was washing clothes the other day and I wondered if he knew how to separate his clothes. College you know? Had he been paying attention when I gave him money and made him save half? Did he listen when I told him about weighing the pros and cons of a situation? Was he paying attention when I told him that being an athlete is wonderful but the real prize is that degree? When we talked about athletes and “privilege”? (Poor D – almost every time an athlete acted up, I was calling him with a mini-lecture. It got so that he started calling me first with the breakdown.) Did he understand what I meant about his tone of voice and how, if it read “wrong” to me, surely someone who didn’t know him wouldn’t get it either? And who can forget the “condom” conversation? My poor nephew turned 15 different shades of red but…that’s life and I want to be sure he protects his. Did he finally get what I meant about not everything that people say to him requiring a response from him? That as much as I love the truth, I needed him to understand that what’s true for him may not be true for another person and that was okay? That sometimes it wasn’t his place to tell the truth to another person - always check his motives, how he delivers it, when? That while he’s a talented athelete, a smart person, and not hard to look at, all of it is a gift - he can’t take credit for it, not to take advantage of it either but to treat it as a gift because it could all be taken away in an instance? That he doesn’t have to go along with the crowd, that he can make up his own mind? That it isn’t the quantity of “friends” - it’s the quality? That he has to make wise decisions because decisions have consequences so he needed to choose wisely? To learn to do for himself but to remember that he has a support system that he can turn to when he needs help and there’s no shame in asking for help if/when it was needed?

We had a conversation about how some people at his school (teachers, counselors, etc), keep telling praising him for “making such a great turnaround”. He was flattered. I was not. He asked me why. I asked him what it was exactly that they thought he had done that required a “turnaround”. *Crickets* Exactly. So why would they stand in the face of a young black male who has decent grades, is a good athlete, and has the same kind of brushes with authority that most kids his age have had and proclaim that he’s made “a turnaround”? I told him that first of all, he DIDN’T “turnaround” - this is the direction in which he was ALWAYS headed. I told him that, if they had truly been doing THEIR part, there wouldn’t have been any such thing in their minds as a “turnaround”.

I know that some of the things we talked about stuck because I’ve heard him talking to his best friend about some of it and some of it’s evident in his behavior. Cool. Gives us a little more breathing room.

When he was younger, my nephew told me that sometimes I was mean, at least mean to him. I told him he was right but as a young African-American male, he needed to understand that LIFE would sometimes be mean to him. I impressed upon him that I would never tell him anything that was wrong or that would hurt him but that I wasn’t trying to help his parents “raise a child”. I was interested in raising him into manhood and sometimes that meant getting in his face…or getting in his a**.

Off to double-check the suitcase. Enjoy your weekend!