Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One by Terry Crews

coming down to the wire when, finally, Western Michigan University came back with a $500 art excellence scholarship.
    “Okay, I’ll take it,” I said. “They want me.”
    Well, after that, I looked into Western Michigan University’s football team and saw they’d had a superstar linebacker, John Offerdahl, who had been drafted by the NFL and was playing for the Miami Dolphins. To me, the fact that he could go pro from there proved that I could do it, too. It wasn’t the University of Michigan. It wasn’t Michigan State. Those were the two big schools. But I hadn’t even been able to gain entry to Michigan State’s high school football camp. So I had to be realistic about my options and accept that I was going to have to walk on to the Western Michigan University football team. That was my only way out of Flint.
    I went home and told my mother they had given me this little bit of money. It wasn’t much, but I hoped it would be enough for me to at least get started.
    “You have a year to earn your scholarship,” she said.
    So that was it, I had one year. By that point, I would have done anything to get out of town, and out of my house. Before my high school graduation, we had an awards ceremony at myhigh school. My relationship with Big Terry and Trish was so acrimonious by that point that they didn’t attend, even though I had invited them. I was voted most likely to succeed, and I was being given the school’s highest honor, The Spirit Award. As I heard my name announced, and I strode onto the stage to accept my plaque, all I could think was:
My parents are not here
. Maybe they didn’t realize what a big deal it was. Maybe Trish wanted to teach me a lesson. Maybe Big Terry thought I’d gotten too full of myself. That was it. I was more than ready to go.
    NOW THAT I’D GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL, AND I was almost eighteen, Trish couldn’t control me anymore. I finally got to go on a date. Throughout my last three years of school, I’d been close friends with three white girls who hung out together, and over the years, I’d had a crush on all of them at one time or another.
    During my senior year, I’d been hanging out in the halls with all three when I was called into my high school guidance counselor’s office, about a matter of utmost importance. The counselor was a very pretty black woman who was the object of many adolescent daydreams among the boys of Flint Academy.
    As I sat in her office, I measured her tone, which was very serious. She sighed.
    “Terry, you have a very bright future,” she said. “I just want to warn you about one thing I see you doing that could become a big problem for you.”
    I perked up in a major way. I couldn’t wait to hear what this life-altering problem was, and what I could do to fix it.
    “Terry—stay away from white women,” she continued. “They are no good. They are just going to lead you down a path to destruction.”
    “Really?” I said, trying to sound respectful.
    “Yes. Listen to me. You have no idea how conniving and evil they can be.”
    Wow. This was the biggest, best advice she thought she could give me about my future. And it was pure nonsense.
    “I hear you. Thank you.”
    I’d avoided her until the school year finally ended.
    Now I was out of school. I was a grown man. I called one of the three girls, Sophia. “Would you like to go out with me?” I asked. “You know, why don’t we go to a movie and get some pizza?”
    “I would love to,” she said.
    I was totally freaked out because, even though I was seventeen years old and about to leave for college, it was my first date. At least we were already friends and used to hanging out at school together. We laughed and had fun during Rodney Dangerfield’s movie
Back to School
, and as we ate pizza, and then we parked in front of Sophia’s house. We were listening to Janet Jackson’s “Funny How Time Flies (When You’re Having Fun),” and I was so happy. Everything was going so