(recently, slightly revised by Muhammad)
I was born in Camden, NJ, that was where all my grandparents lived, and we have much family there to this day we don't even know of. I only lived there for 2 years, then my sister was born (Kameelah) and shortly after that we left to go to California because my Dad was getting his Masters (or Doctorate??) degree at Stanford. Most of what I know about my years in California is what my mom told me, she told
me that I was a bully, and that I used to take kids toys and hit them on the head with them. She said I stopped doing that when she spanked me for pulling this girl's hair out. I also remember that there were many catepillars there, and that I used to play with them and catch them and step on them. We lived there for two years until we moved to Somerset, NJ, (right next to New Brunswick), it was while we lived here that Talib was born, I don't remember much about living there, except that it was very peaceful, and very beautiful. I remember we had a hammock, and I used to lay there and just stare up at the sky and the trees, they seemed humongous to me back then, but made me feel in some way at total peace with nature. Back then I can remember the innocence I had, not even realizing that there was evil in the world. The reason we were able to live in this beautiful area, was because of my father. My father was the extremly intelligent, and caring man towards me, he was the man I looked up to, he was my role model. He worked with computers (I'm not exactly sure what he did), but he always took the time to show me computers and teach me them, and because of him my goal in life was to become a computer scientist. He was a great provider (actually he spoiled me), and a kind and caring person, in short, he was a in every way the definition of a father. Unfortunatly, that was short lived, for we only lived in Somerset about 2 years before moving to Willingboro, NJ, in the park called Country Club. Now here is where I went to school, and I remember being kind of popular back then, especially during recess, when me and only a few other guys dominated the games. (Actually one of those guys who dominated things with me was Ryan Toby, he was the Afro-centric guy from the movie Sister Act 2 and I believe he's signed to a record label and will be comming out, not sure when though). I also had a lot of friends around the area, we had some of the greatest times going exploring in the woods. Kameelah and I would usually go off together sometimes with friends to ponds and lakes to catch tadpoles, we had a small pond in our front yard where we would put them along with our fish (both Kameelah and Talib fell in the pond and cried at least once at front of me but probably more when I wasn't around, and I never once fell in, but I sure did laugh when they did). We always loved it when we caught anything large, but almost anything bigger than our thumb was always caught and eaten by raccoons, and for this reason we lost our greatest catch ever, a huge tadpole over a foot long and a head about the size of my fist. I used to rough house with my friends a lot too. We always were wrestling and play fighting, I was actually quite good back then. Anyway, for some reason, I'm not even sure why (I can't remember), I was held back in first grade. Since I had to repeate a grade that I already knew all the work in, I did very good that year. Since I did so well that year I was put in a program for academically talented students (P.A.T.S) in second grade, and with my well established knowledge of first grade, second grade was a breeze. I did so well that my mother decided to do something that would alter my thinking and change my life forever, she decided to homeschool me. At about this time my youngest sibling was being born, Jameelah, she is the only one I remember as a
baby. I even remember the first day she was brought home, I remember that
I thought she was really cute and I used to sit around and watch her a lot. Through out the years, I have noticed that there is undoubtably a similarity between me and Jameelah. It's something I can't really put my finger on, our physical similarities were probably greatest when we were young, and also, our temperment is very similar. We were both shy for much of our lives, while Talib and Kameelah were more outgoing for most of theirs. This didn't mean we always got along though, we were siblings and we had our rivalries. Me and Kameelah used to make Talib cry when he was really little by stareing at him when he came downstairs for breakfast. As soon as we saw him we would just look at him, and after about 10 seconds of this he would just start crying (he was very young back then). Jameelah was the tattletail of the house, and constantly got me in trouble, she wouldn't even really be upset, but she would cry for my mother, so that meant she HAD to be sincere. I remember one day when I pushed her or something (not hard at all), and she began to cry and went to tell, and came back downstairs crying with my mom, my mom yelled at me and punished me and Jameelah was crying this whole time like I had broken every bone in her body, but as soon as my mother left Jameelah stopped crying totally and looked at me and smiled. Although we fought a lot, it was never really anything serious, and we all still loved each other. My most enjoyable times were with my dad though, I was constantly with him when he was home. He had detailed knowledge of astronomy and I remember many nights we would go outside, bring 2 chairs and a telescope, and we'd sit in the chairs and look at the stars all night. He would point out constellations to me, tell me which stars were actually planets or galaxies, he even showed me Haley's Comet. When we got bored he would talk about his childhood, and the things he did, and I would listen with the fascination of a child hearing a story of his favorite superhero. But the best nights were the meteor shower nights, he knew when they were scheduled to occur, and we'd sit in the chairs with blankets, and stare at the heavens all night. It was totally majestic, it's beauty can not be described with words, and those were some of the happiest moments of my childhood, just me and my father, and those were my nights. My days were spent with my mother being taught at home, I was homeschooled for 3rd and 4th grade while my sister was being homeschooled at the same time, and it was during this time that I got the morals that I still have today. I was given a lot of individual attention and that helped me learn alot. My mom also taught what schools don't teach, and that was my Islamic beliefs and morals that I would follow, and this is why to many of my friends I'm known as the "nice guy" (sometimes too nice for my own good). But homeschooling had it's severe drawbacks, the major one was lack of social interactions. When I went back
to school in 5th grade I was extremly naive, and was taken advantage of a
lot, because I thought that people were good people, like my mom taught
me how to be. My sister was a grade behind me, so at that point the kids weren't that critical of her, and she learned how to fit in before they became critical. But for me, it was hell, I wasn't up on style or slang (who would I learn it from, my mom?) so I was teased, and people knew that I trusted what they said, so they would trick me a lot. This happened 5th and 6th grade, so by the end of 6th grade, I started to become a different person, I now thought that people were cruel and evil, and I didn't like or trust almost anyone. I put up a mental shell over myself so that I didn't
care about anyone or if they cared about me. I could make friends, but most of my friendships weren't real, like they used to be. I only BEGAN to think this way in 6th grade, most of this kind of thinking happened after sixth grade, right after the worst possible event that could have happened to me, did, the event that possibly had the most negative impact in the long run on my life, my parents split up. Because of that my mother couldn't afford the house and we moved to a different part of Willingboro, in a smaller house away from the few friends I did have, most of my others friends had already moved away. Unfortunately, I took a lot of my anger out on my siblings, and became meaner to them, I also became extremely overprotective of them because I didn't want them to become like the "bad" people, I wanted them to stay "good" like my mom taught me. I tried to force them to be "good" and that was my mistake and I regret that now, but the damage is done. I didn't conciously realize at the time what I was doing or why, but now that I'm older, have contemplated my life and am a psychology major in college I realize it. Although I didn't really like many people and only had a few friends (only one of whom I trusted because we became friends right after I moved and I still hadn't totally put up the shell, he moved away a couple of years later though), this one annoying kid kept bugging me and trying to be my friend. I didn't like him that much, he had a big mouth, was always lying, and was very annoying, but this guy ended up being my one true friend in the world. He had his own share of problems, but he didn't let people get close to the real him. He wanted lots of friends but he would try to adapt so that others would accept him, once he realized that I didn't like people like that and if he wanted me to accept him, all he had to do was be himself, we became best friends. He opened up to me, and I got to know how he really thought, vice-versa. We gave each other advise and became a sanctuary for each other. He helped me get through some of my most stressful moments, and we became like family. I had some of my best times with this guy, we did everything from playing video games and just hanging out together, to volunteering to work at a theatrical play together, to tying bugs to firecrackers and blowing them up, D'wayne Holston, you're a lifesavor (well not to the bugs)! Unfortunatly, having D'wayne as my only trustworthy friend didn't pay the bills, my mother needed money and her dream was to become a singer, but she felt she was becoming to old to make it in the music industry so she passed her dream on us, her kids. She had already started us in music lessons a few years earlier, so she put me and Talib together and got a singer and started us up together as a kids band. I played keyboards, Talib played drums (yup, he can play drums, but not on the level of Jamal), and a girl name Niomi Nixon was our singer. At our first gig we won 1st prize of 500 dollars at a talent show. Later on the singer quit, and my mother added my sister Kameelah to the band and we became a instrumental band. We were called "The Kareems" because we were Kareems and we were good for a kid's band. The problem was that being in the music industry was my mother's dream not all of ours, me, Kameelah, and Jameelah, who joined later and did background things, like playing the tamborine, didn't really want to be in the band that much, only Talib liked it. Because of this and also because of the stuff that was affecting me that I mentioned before I began to rebel against my mother. I know I was wrong for that but I was a teenager going through a lot that I didn't even realize back then. My father's presence was decreasing more and more, my parents divorced 3 years after the separation, and his bitterness towards the break up had planted the seeds of hate within his heart, and it was consuming him at an astonishing rate. My only comforts were D'wayne, who was always there for me to calm my temper and with advice for me, our 2 cats that we got, Cheetah (my cat, a male) and Crunch (Kameelah's cat, Cheetah's sister, and yes, my sister named her cat Crunch), and my older halfbrother Clifford, who was 10 years older than me and was the
closest thing to a father figure I had and I became very attached to him and began to look up to him even though he was mean to me as a kid, but I discovered he was going through much of the same thing too, as our father didn't have much to do with his life at the time either. But even with the problems we were going through our band continued to get better. Also our band was getting well known in the immediate area and we were becoming more and more requested, and people started wanting to work with us. One person in particular would be very important, his name was
Bert Price and he had a singer he wanted us to perform with, this singer's name was Jamal (yup, from Imajin). Although it didn't work out, Bert still stayed in contact with us. Eventually our band grew, I moved from keyboards to bass guitar, Talib moved from drums to keyboard we got a singer and a drummer, and finally my best friend D'wayne joined as a rapper. At this point we were very good, we changed our name to "The Kareems and Positive Image" (it was going to eventually be changed to just Positive Image). At around this time Bert Price came back to us and let us know he was forming a group of his own and wanted Talib in it, my mother let him join and he was in both groups for a while, but soon it became apparent that my mother would have to make a choice as to which group he would stay in. Our family group was getting very well know and requested, in fact we were starting to audition for record companies. It looked like our group was finally going to make it, but then fate played it's fickle hand. In the summer of '96 both the drummer and singer had to quit because of personal reasons, to make matters worse I was leaving for college the fall of that same year. What would happen to the band, with such uncertainty concerning our band, my mother made a difficult decision. The Kareems and Positive Image were disbanded and Talib was placed in Bert's group, called ProDaGee at the time. The remaining members of our band got with their friends and formed their own groups, which went through various changes, there are still reminants of the various groups today. By then end of my senior year in high school I was feeling great, my friend D'wayne helped me grow out of that shell and I looked at life with a new optimism. I had a girlfriend in the summer, and my life finally looked up for a change. Then I went to college. Well actually, my optimism on life actually dropped right before I went to college. Out of all the many great truths I've discovered in my life, on of the greatest is that life is like a rollarcoaster, with constant ups and downs. What people try to do is achieve the highest point possible, and then never come down, but what many people don't realize, some never realize it, is that there is no constant high, it never happens. You can go up but everytime you think you reached the top, you realize that there is a higher point, but you will never reach the highest point and you will eventually come down. The only solution to this is to either be happy with not attaining the top, or realize that there may be a top not in this life, but in the next. But at this point in time, I, like many other people didn't realize any of this. I thought I was at my the top, I was happy, but at Six Flags how long do you stay at the top of the rollercoaster, not very long right. It started when my girlfriend, tried to pressure me into taking our relationship to the next level (I'm sure you know what I mean). Although I thought I was in love, I didn't want to do that. So right before I went to college, she cheated on me, and for the first time in my life I was heartbroken. I was a naive teenager who mistakenly thought I was in love, so that really hurt and when I got to college, things went from bad to worse. I felt very out of place, I had lived almost my whole life in a Black community, but when I got to Rutgers, almost everyone was white, it's not that I didn't like them, but I felt really out of place because their culture was VERY different from what I grew up around. I lived on a Black special interest floor, so because of my feeling so out of place, I wanted to attach myself to the special interest section, because they reminded me of what I was used to. I thought the other members would think the same way, but I was wrong. That year was terrible, there was so much pettyness and bickering among the members that it was stressful living there. In the beginning of the year things started out bad, not only did I end things with my girlfriend, which hurt, but some of the trifling members of the section started rumors about me. In a way, I gave them a reason to. For one thing, my father was finally consumed by his hatred and, after having less and less contact with us over the years, just stopped all contact with us in Dec. of 96, changed his number moved and stopped calling, that really hurt me bad. I was very cold, because of what had just happened with me and my girl, and watching how petty the people of the section were made me feel very out of place, so I was so cold to people that they made jokes about me being evil, or crazy, or one of their favorites, the Terminator. Also they said that because when I was upset, I would go off on my own and play the piano, I would usually play something really sad, and that gave them more reason to say that about me. Now it wasn't everyone who did this, it was mainly a select group who were extremely petty and gossipy about everyone. There were people that did become my friends, and these people helped me grow and mature. I wasn't doing that good in my major, which was computer science, and as I finally began to understand things in life, I realized that I didn't want to be a computer scientist, my reason for loving it so much was because my father did it, and I wanted to be just like him, but now, he was the person I wanted to become the least. I decided I wanted to major in something I liked, and that was psychology, so as the school year ended I changed my major. As the year ended the drop in the rollercoaster did too, and things started picking up. People started seeing who I really was, and not who some fools were trying to portray me as, I ran for President of my section and was elected. When summer started I began to feel better about life, all the petty people were leaving the section that I was returning to, I was going to be President of that section, also I was elected treasurer for another club too. During the summer, my father, who had disappeared, popped up again (I won't go into the circumstances as to why, they are personal). He called and he told me he was going to talk to me later and explain everything that happened, and why he wasn't in my life. That was the last I ever heard from my father. I realize now how much my father not being there affected me, but in the past I didn't, I decided I wanted to be there for Talib. I wanted to be a good big brother to him like Clifford was to me, I tried to become closer to him, and I think we did a little, I just don't really know if I'm helping him, or if he even needs the help. I know my dad leaving affected me a lot because he was my favorite person in the world when I was younger, but I don't know if he was Talib's. I had no idea at all how to react to Jameelah or Kameelah about that situation. But anyway that summer was alright, I went back to school determined to do things right, and not make the mistakes I made in the previous year. But something funny happened to me in the beginning of that year. For almost all of my previous life, girls had always seen me as a good friend, I was that nice guy that they could trust and talk to, but nothing more. This school year started out the same I thought, but then in a rapid fire succession, some of the females I knew started letting me know they liked me. Four in all let me know, and to make matters worse, they all lived on the special interest section. Although I was learning about life, I didn't have much experience at all in relationships and made some stupid decisions. I won't go into detail about that in order to protect the privacy of the females involved, but when the first semester ended I ended up with one of the them hating me, and getting many others to hate me, one of them as a friend, another was driven off the section because of the effects of jealousy of the female that hated me, and the last one, our friendship just totally ended. I also was heartbroken again, because one of the four females I liked even more than my previous girlfriend I spoke of. I was now at an all time low, but just as winter break started, the Islamic holy month of Ramadan started to. I decided to learn more about my religion during this month, and that was definatly the best decision I have made in my life. I studied the life of the Prophet (peace be upon him) that I am named after, and his teachings and sayings. The wisdom of Islam became very apparent to me, I understood so much and it was the only thing that gave me peace. When I went back to school I was a new person, unfortunatly I began to slip for a little while from being around all that corruption, but I regained my strength and followed my faith again. For the rest of the year, Islam was the most important thing in my life, I left the females on the section alone, and tried to do right. As of now, I'm thinking of adding religion as a second major, as that is the most interesting subject to me now. That is my life. "Verily, there is a part of the body, which, if healthy the whole body is healthy, and if diseased, the whole body is diseased, that part is the heart" (Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him).
