Put Em All To Shame: The Curriculum

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PUT EM ALL TO SHAME (The Curriculum)

An Introduction

HOW IT ALL STARTED

When I was in Kindergarten at the Middlesex Street Village School in Lowell, Massachusetts, my parents came to meet my teacher at an open house night and to see some of the artwork we had been doing. I recall being particularly proud of my crayon self-portrait, which would be on bulletin board display later that night. My mom recently told me this was some form of intelligence test in disguise. One thing, which indicated I might have had some sort of problem, was the fact I did not include a neck on my self-portrait. I was not an exceptional artist, but I felt I had absolutely nailed it, and I was certain my parents would be equally impressed. The directions were something like Draw and color a picture of yourself, from head-to-toe, wearing the clothes you have on so your parents can find it on display tonight without even needing to see your name.

I went and asked Mrs. Blandini for a direction clarification, just to be sure, before sketching my masterpiece. "Did you want us to draw everything, like our entire body, in this picture Mrs. Blandini, even with all of our clothes we are wearing on top of our bodies too? She replied, Yes." This was a bit odd to me, but I decided to make the best of it. I proceeded to draw and color my head, arms, legs, body, and feet. I next started to draw my jeans, sneakers and sweater over my body. I was still a little puzzled. I just couldn’t figure out how in the world people would be able to see my whole body if I had to have on all of my clothes in the picture. I certainly knew if I wanted to follow these essential directions correctly I couldn’t have just left out my private parts. So how did Mrs. Blandini expect me to include my newly discovered male anatomy I was so proud of and still have on my hand-me-down Toughskins jeans? Plus, how would my parents even be sure it was me without this all-important defining feature prominently displayed?

Suddenly it dawned on me. I could just draw it protruding out of my half open zipper! This wasn’t all that far-fetched since it was par for the course for most of the boys in Kindergarten. Many of us had our zippers halfway open after we came back from the bathroom—at least until an adult discovered the problem for us. This solution pleased me, and was how I went about finishing this puzzling assignment. Mrs. Blandini never saw this detail in my picture before posting it up for parent’s night, despite the fact that it was not drawn to-scale. Somehow the fact that I did not include my own neck must have grabbed their attention so much that they entirely missed the fact I included something else that should have been far easier to spot. So much for the intelligence test!

Mrs. Blandini must have been in a rush, but my parents had time to study my picture. Later, they described my portrait as having contained what appeared to be a baseball bat protruding from the middle of my pants. They weren’t mad at all because Mrs. Blandini had told them I even asked for direction clarification and that she had repeated the directions again, and I had taken them exceedingly literally as any excellent Kindergarten student should have done. This was my first dabbling in the world of creativity via public art, and I remember my parents laughing when they came home, saying "your drawing certainly was creative!" This would become the magic word—creative! Plus, from this moment on I started to think I had a future in the arts. Now it was confirmed—I clearly was creative.

LYRICAL THE SUPER HERO

The next year, at the same school, I was a first grader in Mrs. Poverchuck’s class. Every day I would gaze out the second floor paint-chipped window and look at the cars driving by. I would daydream while we were doing math or working on reading skills. I was an avid fan of The Incredible Hulk and would envision how I soon would be turning into him at recess. Then, I could proceed to rescue all the girls on the playground by tossing the other boys aside who were certain to be teasing them. I learned how to hold my breath to the point where I could change color (into a more reddish hue than green), and all my veins would pop out of my neck. I would inject myself into the drama when some poor damsels were in distress, acting as if I was pushed or bumped and had become seriously upset. Here, the metamorphosis would begin. But first I needed to become angry, or else I couldn’t turn into "The not-so-incredible Hulk."

I got my fair share of attention at home since I was an only child. I was also the tallest kid in Kindergarten, and this helped me grab extra attention from the teacher and the other kids at school. But when I started first grade it pained me to discover that even though I was now taller than all of the second graders, I was still only the second tallest kid in my class. Babak had me beat by about half of an inch, but to me, the tape measure might as well have read half of a foot. Perhaps this was why I enjoyed the awkward attention I received from turning into The Hulk.

To make my Hulk escapades seem extra menacing, I would occasionally jump off the stoop that lead into the front entrance of the school; we were always told not to jump off the stoop—or else. I had seen The Incredible Hulk jump ridiculously high before and somehow thought that jumping down the height of about four steps would be equally impressive (gravity didn’t quite matter to me yet). Oddly enough, in normal situations I would often try to avoid attention, especially in crowds. Still, something about the superhero thing spoke to me. Saving the world, or at least the girls in my class, was a modestly noble aspiration.

Hiphop now allows me to have a superhero identity as Lyrical—disguised as mild mannered Professor Plourde. But Lyrical is still a bit different than Professor Plourde. I think the real trick is integrating our secret identities with our normal lives—all controlled in one person as one persona. Before I had discovered music, I was OK with receiving awkward or negative attention. I was (and still am) an introvert and have not always had a grasp for how to express myself in a way that was not anti-social. I still prefer the dimly lit table in the back of the room, and I regularly chose to attend movies by myself over a potential night out with friends at a crowded venue. But self-expression has always been paramount to me. I now enjoy guiding people towards the expressiveness I have found through music and writing lyrics. Innovation and creative thinking and the power of healthy self-expression can be enhanced when children experience the power of music early in their lives. I have discovered the most happiness in my life occurs when the rapper, student, and teacher in me are able to function in unison. Today, I am a poet-teacher and a scholar-practitioner. These identities now coexist in me harmoniously. Isn’t this what Dr. Banner always wanted?

Well before I was hip to these profound truths, I remember receiving a detention because of the Hulk ordeal for flipping out and jumping off the stoop. I had to call my mother to tell her. I made sure to hang up after just a few rings, and I succeeded because she was doing laundry in the basement. I think my mom had to do errands today, I said. But the next day the same thing happened again; they made me call home—but this time she answered my call. She answered and I softly uttered, Hi Mom, can you come get me today after school? I have to stay after for detention and they won’t let me go home till you pick me up. In retrospect, I don’t know if the crime matched the time. I thought the call home was just a pretense to get my mom in for a conference to inform her I was not paying attention in class.

My mother wasn’t exactly in shock after hearing what they had to say. But Ms. Noole, the teacher assistant, feared I might be suffering from epileptic seizures! My mom reassured her I was just playing Hulk while holding my breath till near unconsciousness.

What they all didn’t know was when I would visit my grandparents a few days every week (especially on the weekends), just across the bridge over to the other side of the Merrimack River, I sometimes took their green electrical tape out of the drawer and cover my face with it to look like David Banner changing into The Incredible Hulk. Victory! Next, I would run out in the middle of the street and try to stop cars, thinking the drivers would shudder in fear once they saw what could only be…The Hulk. In retrospect, of course they just feared for my mental and physical safety. Luckily, this part of Lowell (Pawtucketville) had streets much slower than where I lived with my parents.

Our house, in the other part of the city, was right on the corner of a major street (Princeton Boulevard). We had many accidents right in front of the house. This included one fatality. It left a bloodstained headlight imprinted on the front fence—and an actual decapitated head in the yard. My Aunt Paula recently reminded me of the part about the head in the yard. When I was younger, I think I only got the headlight part of the story told to me. This, less than safe, boulevard was perhaps why I never truly hung around with my future partner-in-rhyme, William Fee Feehan, who lived about a quarter of a mile up the street.

I played with my friend Tommy every day. He lived three houses up Dingwell Street. This is where my parents liked me to stay and play. Dingwell Street was much slower and safer than the boulevard. Plus, my cousin Barbara and her kids Joey, Tony and Maria all lived right next to Tommy, so Barbara could keep an eye on me. Unfortunately, Barbara always told my mother how I was the one initiating any trouble or roughhousing that would ensue.

For a short while, I did manage to stay and play in the yard while I had a dog named Happy. Paula had surprised me with the dog since she knew how much I loved them (she had a kennel of bulldogs at her house). However, my dad was not onboard with this whole plan. We were one of the lucky houses on the street that had a pretty decent sized yard (even though it was cut in half by a cement strip that ran right up the center from the fence to the house). Happy took the liberty of digging holes in what little grass we had, and my dad took the liberty of getting rid of Happy. However they couldn’t break the news to me honestly, so they made up a story how Happy had a rare blood condition requiring him to be in a warmer climate.v They told me they were forced to send him to California where he could live more comfortably than he could in the Boston area. In retrospect, this sounds like the same reasoning used by some NBA players and coaches as well.

I was devastated, but this story worked on me until I was about twelve and randomly saw Happy one day on the way to my other Aunt’s house in Lowell. It turns out they had given him away to a family with a fenced in yard who lived about one mile away. I guess they didn’t mind the Happy-Holes as much as my dad did.

Our other neighbor was Ralphy the fireman. He lived with his much older father, Rocky. While Ralphy was at work, he often left his garage wide-open. It had all kinds of fun things to play with; I was especially fond of stepping in several buckets of motor oil Ralphy kept well-stocked. Many days I came home with my sneakers looking as if they were milk-chocolate. This sealed the deal on why I never got my own pair of Nikes until I was about fifteen (they were green ones off the clearance rack at Marshalls). It also ensured my childhood wardrobe would be full of fashionable hand-me-downs from my cousins. Most of these gems looked just like the ones Will The Fresh Prince Smith described in Parents Just Don’t Understand.

Fee lived just up the dangerous boulevard and was a year ahead of me in school. What made it worse was that he lived just over the border of Lowell, in North Chelmsford, on Dartmouth Street. This meant he went to a different school system than us on the Lowell side; we barely saw each other at this age. But still, we played amongst the same group of kids about half way up the boulevard. This included: Norm Shaw, Terry Moran (my cousin), Steven, Roger, Freddy, the McTeagues, the Kolkowskis, and the Paquettes. Nevertheless, even though my grandparents had fewer kids in their neighborhood, I still loved going to their house more. My aunt (Dot), who is about fifteen years younger than my mother, also lived there. Plus, I thoroughly enjoyed my green-tape-activity; after all, I was The Incredible Hulk.

TROUBLE WITH MATH

When not distracted in school, I would try spelling long challenging words like DINOSAURS. D-I—N-O-S—A-U-R-S, Dinosaurs I would say with a decidedly odd cadence. I was proud I had figured out a way to extend an already impressively long word by adding an s on the end. I would do the same thing when my mother and grandmother (and/or aunts) let me play Scrabble with them. I didn’t win too often then, but later in life I would become obsessed with playing (and winning) word games like Scrabble. Otherwise, I would just draw pictures or dabble around with some words which rhymed together while becoming sidetracked from the daily lesson in the classroom. These were my humble beginnings of a lifetime spent trying to get lyrical.

I recall becoming frustrated while the class was working on some mere basic addition. I didn’t know the answer when I was called on. I was staring out the window and not following along. Many have speculated I have always had ADHD, but I have never been tested for it. Mrs. Poverchuck asked, Peter Michael Plourde, do you know what the answer is? I had no idea and said no.

I remember a couple of small laughs. Did these kids think I was stupid? But the small chuckles were nothing in comparison to what another boy in class regularly received. This poor kid could not hold his pee till bathroom times. I felt horribly for him. He would just pee until a puddle emerged under his desk, and for some reason he wouldn’t know he was doing it and wouldn’t even raise his hand to go to the bathroom. I think he helped lessen the blow when someone like me didn’t know the answer to a basic math problem such as how two threes makes six.

Now that my mother knew part of the cause of my lapses in attention, I felt free to ask her to practice times tables with me now and then. After all, I wasn’t stupid; I was just bored and easily distracted. We were not even officially doing times tables yet in school—we were adding small numbers in groups, but my dad told me how this was the same concept as multiplication. I studied with my mom, and then showed my dad the results. He always would tell me only to say the answer instead of stalling by repeating the question when unsure. This forced me to picture in my head the operation of counting in groups for the harder problems I hadn’t memorized. I soon figured out some of the patterns like: if two twos make four, and six twos make twelve, clearly four twos must make eight because eight is half the distance between four and twelve. I liked these patterns right away, which seemed to be hiding inside of multiplication tables. But I was still much more into drawing detailed pictures, playing with letters in long words, and watching television (especially superhero