prom pic 05

what can i say. as quoted by the great stitch, "this is my family". yes, my brother treats his baby like a football. my little sister is yelling at the camera man. my mom is fussing at my sister about her dress. i'm doing magic tricks. my sister's prom date is attempting to look down our cousins shirt. our cousin is attempting to do a booty shot in a family photo. and our aunt marla is actually in the middle of a jump to try to get in the picture.

my dad, at the moment of this frozen piece of time is either behind the camera, or sitting in his underwear eating chicken in the living room. richard, whom is a cousin on the weekends, an uncle on mondays, and a brother for the rest of the week, is either behind the camera or eating chicken in his underwear in the living room. somebody is in their underwear in the living room. i just forgot who.

my brother and i are in a good mood in this picture, not because out little sister is going to her first (real) prom, but really because we just successfully threatened our first real prom date. i mean, it really went smoothly. for years my brother and i have been talking about pulling out guns on our sister's prom date! for it to have actually happened...and well!? we were excited! in a nutshell, i had a man-to-man with the date in the living room, calmly moving a pistol from one pocket to another as i suggested they have a "safe" night. my brother decided to take the more subtle route of carrying a shotgun under a tshirt to the driver of the car (some other teenage punk that was slick enough to have a car). we said what we had to say, and left it at that. it was poetry.

so yeah, my fam. i just came across this picture and thought i'd show it some bloglove.

two types of people: showers

i woke up friday morning, which is always a good thing, and sat up in bed. complete with eye boogers and morning breath, i commenced the usual hour-long battle with the snooze button. then, when it was very apparent that i could not stay in bed any longer, i dragged myelf to the shower, hoping to be refreshed before i went to babysit/teach. as i turned on the water and stood there for a moment though, i realized something very interesting...

there are two types of people in this world. hotup people and cold-down people.

the water is never how you want it. let's admit that off top. whenever you get in the shower, no matter how many times you've done it, no matter how many years you've lived in your home, no matter how good you think you've become at turning the knobs just right, it's never good enough. it's always too something. too hot. too cold. too strong. too weak. yet, for the purposes of this blog, and the fact that it's autumn, i'll work with the scenario of too cold water. the principality though, applies to all.

the first type of person is "hotup". this particular person gets in the shower and, after realizing that the water is too cold, proceeds to increase the hot water. this often adds more force to the water and inevitably makes it more hot. this type of person, in my opinion, is one that is most likely to add to situations. in the bar with their friends, they are the ones sure to add their two cents. they are the ones that instigate the fight between middle school kids. the "hotup" person tends to be the man that ends up in bed with your wife, or the woman that gets the free pair of shoes from the cute guy at Nine West.

the second type of person is "cold-down". this person gets in the shower and, after realizing the water is too cold, turns the cold down. (no, some people could not have guessed that - stop taking your intelligence for granted). this often takes away some of the force of the water and proceeds to make it less cold. this type of person is less agressive than the "hotup". they tend to be observers. rather than partake in the heated discussion in the bar with friends, they simply stand on the outside of the circle and laugh at the decently funny jokes. more like a chuckle though. don't let them fool you though, they still take action. although they are a little more conservative, they do not fail to get the job done. the "cold-down" person tends to be the man that no one knows anything about except for the fact that his penis is the size of a large squirrel, or the woman that wears her hair in a wrap and still get guys attention because she's "down to earth".

the last type of person, although not mentioned before, is the type that doens't give a fuck. this type of person doesn't bother to change the water at all because they are too busy masturbating to morning shower daydreams. they don't bother to make toast, they just eat the bread and figure it's all coming out the asshole the same way. this is the person you don't see at arguing at the bar with their friends. instead, they are in the rear on their apple laptop checking stock quotes and sipping green tea, writing an haiku in their mind. this is the man that lives next door, with the better lawnmower and obidient children; or the woman that sends a letter to her high school reunion, telling the whole class to fuck off, and enclosing a nude picture to show that she's got a better body than any other woman there.

this is what i thought of in the shower this morning. so...with all that said...go get clean.

i'm a girl

as i sit here, watching america's next top model, i realize that i have become a woman. living with two, and spending so much time with three, one in particular - i watch this show on now and mutter, "yeah, that dress is great on her", "she needs to trim those brows", "that wasn't the right top for her". it's sad really.

i mean, last week i was frustrated, confused, and my nipples were sensitive. come to find out, my roommate and i were both on our PMS.

don't get me wrong, i'm glad my girl and i can sit up here and watch female tv shows with each other and we both be into it. besides, she sits with me through action flicks and psychological thrillers. my roommates talk sports with me and buy copies of Smooth Girl and King. Does that balance things off? Does that justify the shift my own identity?

i doubt it. but at the very least, it makes me feel better about new estrogen.

woes

as spoken word, i'm sure that this won't be read the way that i would actually say it. but nonetheless, i put it up, hoping somebody feels me.

woes

how you tired, but can't sleep?
sittin in bed suckin your teeth
like, "fuck, this is twice this week!"
a growing pain in your feet
cuz all day you on your toes
worried 'bout your woes
but no one knows
because you're not the type that shows-

how you just got paid and still broke?
friday night you in the bed cuz bills aint no joke
so clubs out, dates out, flicks out, meals out, malls out,
wheels out, and you can't poke-

how you workin but ain't got a job?
at the end of the day, you tired, swear that life n' livin is hard,
but when somebody ask you what you doin, where ya been
your answer is in between "nothin" and "out with a friend"
but you know you've done something!
you know you ain't "just been out!"
you know what your life's about
you know you know that you're tryin to keep from dyin or lyin
and relyin only on your skills that you've learned throughout-

how you forget what you thought you knew?
how did this life that seemed so familiar, just start to seem so new?
how your shoes don't feel the same no more?
and the road you were walkin ain't paved no more?
i don't understand.
yet in my mind i hold the hands of those that walked among the land
and grab the hem of the God that built me up into a Man.
confusion is part of the plan, in my opinion-

but knowing that don't makes my woes better.

how teachers get down (bday love pt. 2)

it is now official - if you want to party hard in a new city, find the local public school teachers and just follow them around. i don't mean if you want to find a evening of good laughs. and i don't mean if you're looking for some smooth jazz. and i don't mean if you're looking to get crunk and throw bows in the club. no - if you don't want to remember shit in the morning! if you want to wake up next to a german nurse! if you want to see your picture in the paper the next morning over a caption that reads "masked crusader found in local zoo, page 6"

so yeah, with that said, i found myself out with my fellow teachers last friday. being a new teacher, and the day after my birthday, i can say that it was an evening to try to remember. and oh, how i drank them under the table. kinda. drank myself under the table? is that an adage? i'm not sure. nothing is quite logical after you've been vomitting on a street corner in harlem in the middle of the night for an unknown period of time. i haven't thrown up from liquor since i was 12. yes, this one was complete with the urge to screw any size hole in the wall and the sensational feeling of reality seeming like a house of mirrors. the hangover was classic too. it was served with a delightful headache while i was sleeping, a side of misconception of time, and topped off with the strangest sensation in my cheek bones - equivilant to that of having cardboard stuffed right under your eye sockets.

to my knowledge, i was sober enough to try not to embarrass myself. beyond them all acknowledging i was too drunk fully engage in rousing conversation, i was alright by most standards. i've seen drunker. and in comparison, i wasn't dancing on the bar, starting my own sing-a-long, or hitting on random ugly women. to be quite honest, i was/am quite proud of myself.

again, happy birthday mr. wilborn.

birthday love

two days ago, september 8, i turned 22 years old. and in all honesty, i don't think i've ever, in my 22 years, seen SO much love for my birthday!

i mean, it was RIDICULOUS! let me give the rundown.

my sister started it off with the midnight call. 12:00:21am my phone rings with a sleepy 17-year-old woman saying "happy birthday reggie!" damn! she's 17!! i had to count from her birthdate to make sure.

later that morning, sept. 8, i woke up and took the train to my first present of the day - my new 6th grade students. i went to my classroom at 8ish, straightened up a few things and then proceeded to the auditorium to pick up homeroom 6-310, 21 of the smallest, baddest, sweetest, interesting kids this side of the mississippi. after leading them up to the classroom and going through a few introductions, i realized that the whole class either wants to be a chef, veternarian, or a professional baseball player for New York. First day routines took up most of the day and two seconds later, it was 3pm and we said goodbye.

when i looked at my phone at 3:15ish, i saw that i had about a dozen missed calls, about 7 voicemails, and countless new text messages. all of which were along the lines of "happy birthday". this was an initial surprise being that i haven't really talked to many people about it. but it was a pleaseant surprise nonetheless.

after doing some stuff to my classroom, i took a train to grad school around 5:30 where i got my next two birthday presents. i get to hop on the internet at the university, so my first present was facebook. and wow! my facebook friends showed me unexpected gargantuan love! my wall is now filled to about 3 pages of straight "happy birthdays" and my mailbox if full of birthday love and best wishes. i even got friend requests from people i haven't seen in years! then i go to my class, where i recieved my next gift. i was sulking in the front row, dreaming about how i didn't want to be in class on my birthday, and then, as the instructor got to the W's, my name was not called! she looked at me and said, "you're Wilborn right?" i said yes. she said, "didn't you send me an email saying that you wanted to be put in the Tuesday class?" my email stated that i wasn't going to be in class last week, i didn't say anything about a tuesday class. but hey, if she's throwing the ball, i'll catch it.

so i left class 3 hours early. a present from irony, one of my closest friends.

that messed things up for Momo though. she was planning a big surprise that would have been initiated while i was in class. so when i landed back in harlem at 7ish, she asked that i go to my apt for a while and wait. i, knowing i spoiled something, agreed and went to the apt to take a nap. when she did call, i went to her place, my mind going a thousand different directions to try to figure out what surprise was waiting for me. when i got there though, there was nothing but a bag on the bed, which she told me not to touch. i put all my stuff on the counter and sat at the cpu as she was still getting dressed. then she went to the corner store for one more thing, for her "surprise", and i waited at the cpu, looking at the facebook messages and birthday email.

20 minutes later, she came back, sad from not being able to find what she wanted from the number of corner stores she went to. i told her it was alright and gave her a hug. then we went to one of our favorite restaurants, accompanied by the bag that was on the bed. before dinner, we opened it and my present lay inside. a shaper image speaker system for ipods and mp3 players! something i really wanted but hadn't even told her!! my ipod shuffle will never be the same again.

we made it back to harlem around 10:45ish, and she suggested i get out of my work clothes and put on something more comfortable. i said ok, and walked back to the crib, feeling so loved from the countless phone calls, text messages, facebook shouts, voicemails, and my new portable speaker system. then as i walked into my room i was bombarded with ballons, ribbons, and a huge sign that said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" hanging on my wall. no one was even there! my roommate was cooking noodles in the kitchen and was just as surprised to see it as i was. she hadn't let anyone in! i was out with momo!! who crept in my room while i was gone, flooded it with balloons and ribbone tapers, and left nothing of a note or sign??!!!

as it turns out. when momo was "going to the store", she grabbed my keys off her counter and went to my place. she had hidden the ballons in a trash bag outside her place, which i thought was just trash. she decorated and hurried back to me before i realized my keys were missing, and then took me to dinner without the slightest hint of mischief.

i was amazed! i was dumbfounded! i was shocked! i was dooped!!

i ran back to her place to give her a huge hug and kiss. as she opened the door, her face glowed with a bright orange hue. in her hands, she held a sweet potato pie, topped with two candles that read "22". i blew out the candles, set down the pie and gave her the biggest hug my arms could manage.

goodnight, and happy birthday mr. wilborn.

it could have been all bad

"a young adult can be in high school until their 21st birthday," my professor said 2 months ago, "so if you would date a 20-year-old, i wouldn't advise you to teach high school." she was responding to a question about young teachers in high school. that one comment is what prompted me to pursue middle school.

on my second day of teaching, riding the train, i saw a group of black/latina 19-year olds and was really glad about my decision to adhere to that advice.

ms choi

i don't even know if that's her real name. and it doens't matter. what matters is that it's 9pm on wednesday night, the night before the first day of school, and i'm on the floor filling up giant sheets of chart paper with tomorrow's lesson all because of her. and maybe karma.

i once had a whiteboard. it was beautiful in it's splendor. it's magnificient glow was to be envied by the common man. as i walked into my room on the first day for teachers (two days ago), a light shined upon it, and a mystcial choir sang in the distance. and butterflies laid eggs along its rim, to birth small worm-like creatures that would soon too fly away like their bastard fathers and bitches of moms. insects. my whiteboard freed me from the nuisance of chalk, from having to erase all the damn time, from the bored colors of green and white. i would be able to splash the board with red, blue, green, brown. whatever colors i could afford. my classroom was great, with bookshelves, cpus, air conditioning, and the precious whiteboard.

then she came. ms. choi. apparently ms. choi was in my room last year and thought she would be back in the same room this year. she had left all her things in the closets (which i initially thought was trash), and had some decorations still on the walls. let her tell it, she was crying all tuesday about the disturbing news that she had been placed in another room and had to move her shit out by thursday. i tried to be accommidating. but truth be told, i didn't know what the hell was going on. later, i figured out that she was fighting to get her room back with the administrators, to no avail. tuesday was the day she pissed and groaned around the hallways, nothing more.

i offered to help her, as her new room was a hellhole. everyones room was a hellhole though, so i can't say i had much sympathy. i mean, mine had mystical choirs and all, but it was still pretty fucked up. as wednesday came though, she said nothing about the help. said nothing about the stuff in the closets. said nothing about the room. later, when i saw her, i gave her an update. i had taken the liberty of talking to the administrators myself to make sure all was ok with the room before i began to decorate. they informed me it was all alright for me to decorate and that she should be getting her things by thursday. this we both knew already. what she didn't know, though, was that furnishings in the room belonged to the room, not the teacher - including the whiteboard. and by that news she was distraught.

she proceeded to debate me for the board under the argument that "i had it last year and leased it under my name". then, "i had it for a really long time, a full year, and really need it to teach". then, "i left the board here with my other books in the closet and need to collect it so it won't be in your way. then, "can i please just have the board". all of this i responded with "no, sorry".

to cut to the chase - this mother fucker waited until i went to lunch, then crept in my room and walked out with the whiteboard.

to cut to the chase - i informed her that i was about to clean out the closets myself, and that if there was anything important she needed to get them in the next hour.

to cut to the chase - her and her helper cleaned the closets as i stoodby, refusing her requests to keep this here and that there.

yeah. i was the asshole.

there's some more stuff that i have to leave out though. a mere conversation or two in which i shared my feelings, she shared hers, we became enemies and swore bloody horridous death on each other. more or less.

at the end of the day though, i can't hold a grudge for anything. i went upstairs to her hellhole room where the mystical choir and butterfly eggs newly resided. i had to get my eraser initially. but as i saw her cleaning, i said, "listen, we got off to a bad start. how bout we apologize to each other and call it a day." i've always wanted to say that anyway. she agreed, hugged and walked away.

when i got back downstairs, i saw that the fucker had also taken my bookshelves.

so here i sit, writing out visual aids to post during my lesson plan tomorrow so that i don't waste time on a chalkboard.

i look forward to my first day.

www.

so what sucks is that everytime i get on the cpu and begin to write a blog, i get halfway through before i have to leave again. i end up saving them as "drafts" or finishing them abrubtly with a bogus elipses at the end of the last sentence. it's never my cpu. i'm either at the library or a friend's place or something. anything. either they have to use it, or i run out of time and have to get somewhere, or the library is closing early because some gap-toothed slut has to catch a date before her work study hours are over.

i apologize. i should have called her gap-toothed.

regardless of how you want to portray the orally handicapped, i find it outrageous how one can be so handicapped without fair access to the internet these days. its nothing that is ever truly noticed when it's easily available. at least not by me.

you name it. phone numbers. networking. business transactions. university protocal. organization updates. apartment hunting. directions. restaurant menus. pornography. weather. fashion trends. it's all internet. from the department of education to facebook.com, so much releys on the internet that it's more popular than library cards. hell, on an urban grand scale, you'll find the internet more often than mayonaisse, trash bags, and mops in the average household. although, the Swiffer accounts moreso for the last one.

so with all that said...

my baby

she gets shy sometimes, but i love her.

one may not be able to tell it here. and one may not hear it in every conversation i have or every blog that i write. but its there. i love her. she doesn't like it when i take pictures of here when she's not ready. she squinches up her nose and whines, "reggie!" and truth be told, i try to respect that, but sometimes i sneak one in anyway, because it's those pictures i like the most - the ones where she's not ready. when she's about to pose, when she's about to smile. when she's laying on the grass in the middle of a sneeze or in the process of covering her face.

its because she's my baby. and where nothing i can write could ever fully describe the emotions and relationship we share, i write this now because i really like this picture and she's in the living room now dancing to jodeci in a cute outfit.

at the end of the day, isn't that all we have?

run out of imagination

on the train yesterday, i had the strongest urge to pop a man with a newspaper.

he was an old white man. very distinguished and very poised. he wasn't the CEO type at all, but rather looked more like a door to door salesman that had done well enough to retire. the top of his head was bald, and the sides were covered with white/gray hair. the light that glistened off the top of his head is what attracted me to him and was the sole source of my urge.

don't get me wrong, i don't usually have the urge to smack people with newspaper. it had just so happened that on this occasion, i had two newspapers given to me on the street. and with them folded together in my hand, i couldn't help but realize how capable they were to swing with great force.

his head was calling me.

and there he stood. in front of me, an arms length away. leaning against the train doors in a light brown and battered suit and solid gray tie. he was reading a magazine, oblivious to how i was staring at the shining spot at the top of his head, the eternal glow that called to me, beckoning me to give it attention that it so desired. his glasses occasionally slipped down his nose and every now and then he sniffed back the allergies that have haunted him since 3rd grade.

my right hand tightened its grip around the newspapers. my left hand held steadily to the standing pole in the train car. my heart and mind begged me to just give one solid blow to the top of this man's head. soley for the sake of curiousity. all i wanted at that point and time in live was to know what he would do. how he would handle it. i had to know his response! for i couldn't, for the life of me, see him fling his hands in the air in outrage, storming towards me ready to fight. i couldn't envision him ranting and raving pointless threats to the top of his lungs to save face. no. as i saw it, i would have smacked him over the head with the newspapers, caused a stir in the train as everyone turned to look at this man turn red, he would be furiously looking back and forth from me and the dozens of eyes upon him, and then he would have stared at me a while trying to figure out what to do.

"it's too dumb of an act to get off at the next stop to tell the police", he would have thought, "but at the same time, it was an assult that can't possibly go ignored."

and so he would have stared. and quite honestly, as vivid as my daydreams may be most times, thats where my imagination ends. i cannot figure what he would do after the stare! nothing? something? i don't know! i have no guess or earthly idea!!

and that is why i felt the need pop a man with a newspaper yesterday.
surely, anyone in the same situation would have done the same thing.

pick your artist

i think john legend sounds like a ballad blessed carl thomas.

rolling in dirt

i was playing around with the camera. everybody does it.

either you have played with the camera, are playing with the camera, or will play with a camera in the near future. and no, i do not mean in the perverted sense. i am not referring to taking a picture of your buttcrack or studying the porportion of your penis. i am not referring to examining yourself naked or trying to view the uncharted region under your tit, and i do mean tit. no, i am simply talking about playing with the camera. taking a picture of your hand because you never really looked at it without thinking of it as YOUR hand. i am talking about taking a picture of your eyes, because you never stared in them before. tonight, i was taking pictures of the left side of my face, my eyebrows, my inner ear, my facial expressions, and my fingers.

then i discovered the timer.

i was taking shots from the viewpoint of the floor, with me looking down. i got some shots from the ceiling, with me looking up. and vice versa. it had me entertained for i don't know how long. most i deleted. others, i kept. all and all, the event served its purpose of allowing me to gain a new perspective of myself, and kill some time.

however...the picture here was something of an exception. i really liked it at first. i set the timer, then i just started doing stuff. jerking this way and that way, walking back and forth, singing and acting - just trying to get a good action shot. i don't remember what i was doing when the flash went off, but the picture here is the result.

in my fascination with the picture, i went to show the significant other...often referred to as MoMo. and the first thing out of her mouth was, "nice pic, why is your shirt so dirty?" and when i went back to look at it, my shirt WAS dirty!! but then i looked back down at the shirt (because i was still wearing it), and it looked clean. i went to a well lit room, held it up close, smelled it...everything was fine! why did it look dirty??? why did the camera say i was a dirty shirt wearer???

but why?!

even now, as i type this, i have no answer. sure i wore the shirt once or twice before, but that's no reason why it looks dirty only on camera. it doesn't make sense!! it doesn't make sense at all. not at all. not at all.