Can’t Hurt Me_ Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds @betweencovers

For years I was obsessed with that story because he’d survived the impossible,
and I resonated with his survival. After Wilmoth’s murder, with all those racist
taunts raining down on my head (I won’t bore you with every single episode,
just know there were many more), I felt like I was free falling with no fucking
chute. Gearen was living proof that it’s possible to transcend anything that
doesn’t kill you, and from the time I heard him speak I knew I would enlist in
the Air Force after graduation, which only made school seem more irrelevant.
Especially after I was cut from the varsity basketball team during my junior year.
I wasn’t cut because of my skills. The coaches knew I was one of the best
players they had, and that I loved the game. Johnny and I played it night and
day. Our entire friendship was based on basketball, but because I was angry at
the coaches for how they used me on the JV team the year before, I didn’t attend
summer workouts, and they took that as a lack of commitment to the team. They
didn’t know or care that when they cut me, they’d eliminated any incentive I’d
had to keep my GPA up, which I’d barely managed to do through cheating
anyway. Now, I had no good reason to attend school. At least that’s what I
thought, because I was clueless about the emphasis that the military places on
education. I figured they’d take anybody. Two incidents convinced me otherwise
and inspired me to change.
The first was when I failed the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test
(ASVAB) during my junior year. The ASVAB is the armed forces version of the
SATs. It’s a standardized test that allows the military to assess your current
knowledge and future potential for learning at the same time, and I showed up
for that test prepared to do what I did best: cheat. I’d been copying on every test,
in every class, for years, but when I took my seat for the ASVAB I was shocked
to see that the people seated to my right and left had different tests than I did. I
had to go it alone and scored a 20 out of a possible 99 points. The absolute
minimum standard to be admitted to the Air Force is only 36, and I couldn’t
even get there.
The second sign that I needed to change arrived with a postmark just before
school let out for the summer after junior year. My mother was still in her
emotional black hole after Wilmoth’s murder, and her coping mechanism was to
take on as much as possible. She worked full-time at DePauw University and
taught night classes at Indiana State University because if she stopped hustling
long enough to think, she would realize the reality of her life. She kept it