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

even without Wilmoth, we made the move to Indianapolis. My mother set me up
for entry exams at Cathedral High School, a private college preparatory academy
in the heart of the city. As usual, I cheated, and off a smart motherfucker too.
When my acceptance letter and class schedule came in the mail the summer
before freshman year, I was looking at a full slate of AP classes!
I hacked my way through, cheating and copying, and managed to make the
freshman basketball team, which was one of the best freshman teams in the
entire state. We had several future college players, and I started at point guard.
That was a confidence boost, but not the kind I could build on because I knew I
was an academic fraud. Plus, the school cost my mom way too much money, so
after only one year at Cathedral, she pulled the plug.
I started my sophomore year at North Central High School, a public school with
4,000 kids in a majority black neighborhood, and on my first day I turned up like
some preppy-ass white boy. My jeans were definitely too tight, and my collared
shirt was tucked into a waistline cinched with a braided belt. The only reason I
didn’t get completely laughed out of the building was because I could ball.
My sophomore year was all about being cool. I switched up my wardrobe, which
was increasingly influenced by hip hop culture, and hung out with gang bangers
and other borderline delinquents, which meant I didn’t always go to school. One
day, my mom came home in the middle of the day and found me sitting around
our dining room table with what she described as “ten thugs.” She wasn’t wrong.
Within a few weeks she packed us up and moved us back to Brazil, Indiana.
I enrolled at Northview High School the week of basketball tryouts, and I
remember showing up at lunch time when the cafeteria was full. There were
1,200 kids enrolled at Northview, only five of which were black, and the last
time any of them had seen me I looked a lot like them. Not anymore.
I strolled into school that day wearing pants five sizes too big and sagged way
down low. I also wore an oversized Chicago Bulls Jacket with a backward hat,
cocked to the side. Within seconds, all eyes were upon me. Teachers, students,
and administrative staff stared at me like I was some exotic species. I was the
first thuggish black kid many of them had seen in real life. My mere presence
had stopped the music. I was the needle being dragged across vinyl, scratching a
whole new rhythm, and like hip hop itself, everybody noticed but not everyone