Nation Time!!!! (excerpt)

....Mental Note: My School Days – circa late Post Jim Crow Era, P.O. (Pre-Obama)

“…We refer to this sound as a Tarzan yell. Class, this concludes our discussion of African history….” The schoolmarm pronounced definitively.

Memoir: September 14, 2035 (continued)

I once saw a picture in a Life Magazine of little African boys going to school. They had on navy blue short pants, crisp white shirts and blue and orange rep ties. They looked so European that I could imagine their British accents jumping off of the page.

I was looking rather Euro-American myself in my Izod-Lacoste shirt and some Calvin Klein jeans. Yet I always remembered how much I was affected by the man wearing the blue Dashiki who brought the big drums to class for show and tell. I was so excited by the soul stirring sounds they made, that the teacher had to tell me to stop acting a like a fool and quit dancing. I felt something that at the time, I didn’t really understand. Something shall we say - Behind the Music.

As much as everybody tried to literally and figuratively beat the "Black" out of me, I always felt the call of that drum, even though there was no place for it in my world of advanced placement classes, debutante balls and Baptist church junior usher boards. So I made good grades, did what I was told, stayed in school and didn’t act a fool. I finally marched down the graduation aisle and that Summer I partied a while. Then I went to “the House“.

Here I would try to make my mark amongst the most progressive young minds our race had to offer to the world. “….Dear old Morehouse…Dear old Morehouse…”

“….Can you tell me how to get to the Liberation meeting my Brother?”…

“Naw man, but I can show you how to get to the career placement office.”…

“I am sad to announce that Jesse Jackson will not be speaking tonight because we could not pay his fee….On a brighter note there will be a CIA job fair after chapel services have ended, so please tuck in your Africa medallions… and don’t forget the Greeks are stepping tonight.”

The Greeks are coming?!?!?!?! The Greeks are coming?!?!?!?!

“I must have read the wrong brochure....”