Every time I tell this story, I feel that as if it happened yesterday, it’s a very tough experience that I will never forget as long as I live. This career day was a big day at the school, it was a day where parents and the auditorium was filled with teachers sitting around the sides of the auditorium. It was all sixth graders and it was a large school, over Nine-hundred students.
Nine-hundred in the school, so our sixth grade class was quite large, so teachers sitting around the sides of the auditorium, parents in the back and on the stage were people from different professions. And they were all there to tell us what they did and we were excited. And so there became a point in the presentation, where it was question and answer.
We got a chance to raise our hands and say what we wanted to become. Little Charlie Shoemaker, on the end of the row raised his hand and said that he wanted to be a doctor. A doctor responded and he got this attention that I was seeking and I’m like wow, this is cool, let me raise my hand, so I raised my hand.
I was sitting next to the teacher because I always had to be next to the teacher, I was that kind of kid. So they picked me and when I raised my hand I said that, only when those chose me, I said, I want to be a lawyer. Now the reason I said I wanted to be a lawyer, because I wanted to get the same attention that Charlie got, but instead the whole sixth grade class, teachers included, laughed.
They laughed so hard that the lawyer on the stage never responded to my question. Not only did the students laugh, as I said, the teacher laughed. So the whole auditorium was filled with laughter because of me. And for, at that point in my life, I realized that I had become the laughingstock of a school and I did not want to become that.
But they had every right because all the showings or at least of myself, not the best of myself, but for a child at that age to have that, you never forget that. So that was the beginning of a change. Then my uncle came in at the right time in my life and it turned me around. So, when I went to school, to Temple, I basically graduated you know, my cumulative was 3.94 average.
I was the laughingstock of the elementary school and ended up graduating in the top of my class in college. I’ve been on that quest ever since, striving for excellence and that’s what I do as I go out and try to get children, motivate them to become the best that they can be.
