Going Back to High School

So it turns out when you take a long sabbatical from writing it’s really hard to get back into it. Humph. Anyways I’ve been spending a lot of time at this high school in Brooklyn where I’ve been doing my research and so I’m trying to integrate myself into the community by doing things like going to basketball games, chaperoning high school dances (no joke!), going to after school events with the kids. It’s been really cool actually and i’m hoping that in the process I may finally heal the wounds of adolescence that have been gaping since I was 15. Here’s a rundown of my week there.

1. Basketball game: freshmen and sophomores are really tiny! They might technically be taller than me but they just look like kids. This actually makes me feel old.

2. I’m just going to come out and say this and I apologize if I offend anyone, but high school dances in the hood are WAY MORE AWESOME than high school dances dominated by white students. Imagine being in a real life Sean Paul Music video like this



mixed in with a little bit of this



yes, there was an actual vogue battle happening in the middle of the dance floor and it was AWESOME! I left before this happened but apparently during “I whip my hair” shit got real serious. Also instead of having a dj the kids just had a kick ass sound system and played music from their ipods so I got introduced to what is hot right now for instance have you ever heard of a song called “teach me how to dougie” cause I haven’t! And because most of them are Caribbean they were playing totally awesome music I had never heard from the islands like this




But someone who i guess is into "old school" music put in Shaggy "wasn't me" and it took me back to pimp and ho parties in college. it unfortunately did nothing for the kids so they quickly changed it. In addition "ignition remix" got NO response and was also quickly changed which was so shocking!! I thought that for sure R. Kelly would have withstood the test of time. S o yeah this is just my PSA to let you know that we are old.