"FOURTEEN" PART ONE: INTRO & FROM THE BEGINNING

"FOURTEEN"

   What caught the eye of Craig Hughes was the sight of the jukebox, placed unobtrusively in the corner of the inviting student union known as Der Rathskeller. It sat there, unnoticed by the few students wandering around with drinks and ever-present backpacks and all Craig wanted to do at that moment was to reach out and select some music to fit the mood, to set the proper soundtrack to the scene he was witness to. But, there was first the matter of not having any money and secondly, the greater matter of having the courage to ask his parents to give the money to him. Thelonious and Exzine Hughes were not irrational or unreasonable people. Just formidable ones and Craig often knew their responses before ever asking the questions. Yet, optimistically, he decided to ask anyhow.

“Mom?” he asked knowingly and tentatively. “Would it be OK if I played a song on that jukebox over there?” Just get that main question out of the way, Craig thought to himself... The money will follow…hopefully.

“You are not about to go to college and play music on a jukebox,” said Exzine with her typical finality. “That is not your purpose,” she continued. “You are going to college to study and to work. Not to sit around listening to music all day and night. I don’t make that much money for you to lounge and I am not about to waste it now on some jukebox!” she concluded with the harshest of verbal exclamation points. Thelonious said nothing. He didn’t have to. Thelonious and Exzine Hughes were of one mind on almost all subjects and on the subject of Craig’s education and future, there was no discussion.

Thelonious and Exzine Hughes were employees of the vicious beast known as the Chicago Public Schools, as a high school principal and high school Science teacher, respectively. Craig had spent his life listening to their endless stories from the educational trenches every afternoon upon arriving home from school and every evening during late hour dinners. Weekends were spent observing his Mother grading paper after paper, exams and quizzes, one after another, wounding most with her red marker. He listened to her grumble about how so many students simply didn’t apply themselves and her frustration grew with each passing “C-,” “D” and “F”. As Craig grew into adulthood, he realized that his mother’s disdain was not entirely grade-related. It was the apathy of the students that ate away at her and her profession.

For Thelonious, it was the apathy of members of his teaching staff, not willing to try themselves if their students wouldn’t. It was the apathy of many of the students’ parents, not willing to support or engage themselves in the lives the children they chose to have. And if these parents didn’t choose to have these children, they have them now and not accepting the responsibilities that followed didn’t just anger him, it ate away at his faith in the most general aspects of human decency. He understood the anger of the teenagers. Their hurt, cynicism and inevitable apathy filled his hallways but the politics of the school system eventually took away his uncanny ability to try and know and help them all. In the minds of Craig’s parents, apathy was a mindset they could not afford to take currency in and damned if their only son was going to take part in this form of sleepwalking, even if they feared they were losing him to it. They were raising him the best way they knew how and purposefully sent him to a private school knowing the lacking nature of the public school system they worked in. Although, they couldn’t understand what exactly had happened to Craig this past school year. He had changed and although they didn’t know exactly into what he had changed into, any form of apathy was unacceptable.

Craig Hughes had changed. The past year marked his final year of middle school and in three months, he would be entering high school, and somehow, it all felt like a storm brewing with the darkest of clouds slowly approaching him. At this point in time, Craig was not the increasingly introverted soul he would become but he was especially perceptive. Eighth grade was not a tortured existence by any means. He had his share of good times, yet there was a duality to every experience.

FROM THE BEGINNING

Craig Hughes lived in a middle class black neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side. He spent much of his childhood running with five boys, a group in which he was the second oldest. Therefore he was second in command to Tyrese, the oldest, most athletic, and a natural leader. The adults in the neighborhood took to calling this leader “Adonis” behind his back due to his vain nature. It was a period where much time was spent racing around on bicycles in a nearby vacant parking lot, rounds of kick-baseball (with trash cans representing the bases and home plate) in the alleyway that separated the houses of this sextet, sewer rainwater leaf races and snowball wars. As the boys grew older, they undoubtedly grew apart and Craig became more insular, happy enough just to listen to music on his new headphones and ride his bicycle in solitude while other neighborhood kids saw him as weird, aloof or to some, an “Oreo,” due to the “white school” he attended, his usage of “proper” English and his studious habits.

Craig attended the University Of Chicago Laboratory Schools in the Hyde Park community, a predominately white college-preparatory setting. While Craig’s gregarious nature, doubled with his “Not Ready For Prime Time” crossed with “Monty Python” sense of humor, gained him many friends, he felt emotionally close to few. By not having the virtue of living near his school friends, he was often left out of events. By the time he reached adolescence, Craig felt increasingly like an outsider in the only places he knew.

To find ways in which to remain a part of his own life, Craig became the drummer of a rock band. Nihilistically named “Ground Zero” (complete with self-designed mushroom cloud t-shirts), Craig immersed himself in his musical expression with friends, including an immensely talented songwriter/guitarist whose gifts would grow fearsome in the coming high school years. The band mixed several self-penned compositions by this prodigy (who generously announced at every performance that the songs were written collectively), with straight-on versions of The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” and The Cars’ “Shake It Up”. As energetically as they played, there were a couple of clunkers including a deathly slow version of “Riders On The Storm”. Whether good or bad, Craig and his band mates loved performing yet there was always some white kid, either classmate or member of a different school’s student body, that questioned Craig’s ability due to the idea that “black kids can’t get into the metal.” Craig would enjoy shoving his drum sticks into the faces of non-believers and skeptics by summoning everything he had learned from listening to Keith Moon, John Bonham, Neil Peart, and Phil Collins and blast them through the back walls of school dances and auditoriums. It gave him a thrill to see shocked faces and the raised fists of “ROCK!” but how tiring it was to keep proving himself to white kids who had no knowledge of rock history and his inherent right to play it.

Also tiring was the double standard presented to him by his very teachers who would praise him to his face, compliment him on his accomplished abilities and then telephone his parents to say that if he only spent this time studying instead of playing the drums. If these teachers were so concerned about his academic progress as they claimed to be, why did none of them ever speak to him personally, ever ask to see him after class, ever provide some guidance or indication that they felt he wasn’t applying himself? All those telephone calls did, was to confirm and fuel the worst fears of Thelonious and Exine Hughes; that their only son Craig becoming an apathetic teen and they only came down harder upon him. They could not even fathom that their son, who knew he had to perform five times as good as his white counterparts to even be considered equal, could seem to not care.

The standard “A-F” grading scheme didn’t become official until students reached high school at Lab, yet Craig’s eighth grade year ended with several marks of “Unsatisfactory,” one step shy of failing. In a sense, Craig could understand the marks. He did feel somewhat apathetic this past school year sitting in classes with teachers who never seemed interested in the subjects they were teaching. His Algebra teacher assigned homework and gave exams to which even she couldn’t explain how the answers came to be right or wrong. His English class (a favorite subject of Craig’s) was a morass of muddled ideas filtered though the most dispassionate of windows into the world of language and literature. His Social Studies teacher all but ignored him and often called him by the wrong name during the entire school year. If they don’t care, Craig rationalized, why should I? But, one did care and the duality of this school year presented itself in the form of Mr. Richard F. Seldin, Craig’s Eighth grade French teacher.

Copyright 2014 by Scott Collins All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights.