Thursday, May 31, 2007

Last night while I was out, I reconnected with Mark, a friend of mine who I consider to be one of my first mentors after my father. I met him back in '95, when I was working as a teacher/counselor at George Mason University. There was a summer program for high school students whose grades were not quite good enough to get into college, so in order to gain admission, they had to pass the summer course. It was my job to assist the professor, and sometimes teach during the day, and at night I played the RA role to the young men on my floor. Mark hired me to work this job, and he never missed an opportunity to recommend a book, an exhibit, or a new cd I needed to hear. I was only 19 at the time, so I would have bouts of self-doubt about who I was in the world, and what I wanted to do, and Mark was a good person to vent to about such things. And how did I repay Mark for the good work he did for me as a person? I slept with one of the female students I was teaching(she was 18, I was 19 in my weak defense) and he had to fire me. He said it was one of the hardest things he ever had to do, and I remember having that feeling that I let my father down. He never said anything about that incident, he just said, you know what you did, and I have to let you go. Because my mother also taught at George Mason, I had to hear an earful from her too, except she DID yell, and it was not a good time for me. I had to write an apology to everyone and justifiably so. I hadn't seen Mark since then, so it was definitely good to see him last night. He said he had some work for me, and to give him a call, and when I joked about him firing me, he joked right back about it, so all is well with the world.

I've started wearing cologne to work now, because I am paranoid about smelling like smoke. I don't even have on anything that was in the house, but every now and then I feel like I smell or smell like smoke, so I bought some cologne to rescue me from my own paranoia. You think I'm crazy? see the url.

Scenario(remix) - Tribe Called Quest

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

smile Rashad...
This was excellent, and the song ties it all in!!!!

Unknown said...

You know your blog readers love scandal! What is it about scandal that makes people smile?

BewRadley said...

hahah..scenario..

Jo said...

LOL! See the URL! LOL! I like that one! Glad you and Mark could joke about the sex incident. Too funny!