ConGRADulations

Yesterday I received an e-mail from my old friend Melinda Bogdanovich concerning the impending graduation of her son Alexander from his Austin area high school on May 31. It triggered memories of my own high school graduation that happened on this date 28 years ago.

Put your calculators down. My 30 year reunion is coming up in 2010.

Although I'm Class of 80, in reality my high school years covered the tail end of the 70's. We only spent a grand total of five months in the 1980's

So when I looked at Alexander's handsome face on his graduation picture, it took me back to that magical month when I (and his Aunt Melanie) were about to hit that milestone day. I'd turned 18. I'd just gotten my license after driving around on my learner's permit for two years. The All Night Senior Party at Astroworld had come and gone and I stayed until the park closed down at 6 AM. I was still pondering who I was going to take to the prom since two of my top five candidates now had boyfriends.

I had mixed emotions at that time. While I was happy on one level that my time in high school was coming to an end and was excited to be moving on to college, there was sadness as well on two levels. Those of us who had spent three years bonding together as 'The Class With Class' were about to go our separate ways and pursue our various dreams. For some peeps, that meant college. For others it was off to the military. And for others they were still trying to sort things out in terms of what direction they wanted their lives to take.

I will never forget seeing all of us in the caps and gowns in our school colors as we excitedly awaited the start of our ceremony at 7 PM. All 700 of us marching into the then Astroarena (now Reliant Arena). The choir singing and the band playing as part of the ceremony with the senior members participating in their caps and gowns.

Listening to our graduation speaker Judge Thomas Routt. Hearing the shouts of joy from the relatives and friends of people when their baby's name was called as they crossed that stage. Tearing up as we started singing our class and school songs. My classmates and I tossing our caps in the air after the benediction was said to close out our ceremony. The endless snapping of photos with various clusters of classmates before we turned in our caps and gowns.

Unfortunately, since ours was on a Tuesday night, we still had to go to school the next morning. (The school year didn't end until the first week of June) The only thing many of us did was go straight home and to bed. We still had other Senior Week events to go through including the prom that Saturday.

It's also ironic when you think about it, the world of May 1980 and the world of May 2008 have some interesting parallels. We'd just had the winter games in Lake Placid, but there was talk of a boycott of the Moscow Games because of the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Gas prices had spiked to a horrible $1.49 cents a gallon. We had inflation as a result of the gas spike and President Carter's popularity was plummeting because of the economy and the Iran hostage crisis. We were facing a crossroads presidential election with a charismatic candidate in November that I was going to be eligible to participate in. Texas had an unpopular Republican governor. The 'Disco Sucks' movement was gaining momentum.

Hmm, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

So to the Class of 2008, congratulations. Whether you're moving on to the next level of your educational careers or leaving college for the working world, may your dreams come true and you have a smooth and relatively pothole free road to success.

And the other issue that was bothering me at the time? Well, you know.

Whatever Happened To My Old Friend....

When I had my monthly newspaper column in THE LETTER, I wrote one commentary that was published in April 2006 about my philosophy on friendships and how I treat them like marriages. As far as I'm concerned they are till death do you part, they are valuable, and they take just as much work, effort and open communication to sustain them and have them continue to flourish.

Most of the time I do a good job of staying in contact with old friends, but for others its been a challenge.

Mes Deux Cents has a recent post on her blog which talked about an old friend of hers from first grade that moved away and from time to time she thinks about her and wonders how her life turned out.

That got me thinking about some the peeps I was friends with BT (before transition) and AT (after transition) that were close at one point, and they either moved away, I did or we drifted apart.

While I was living in H-town I did find myself running into my classmates that stayed in Houston to either attend college or still lived there. Some, like my fifth grade classmate Clyde Drexler (yes, that Clyde Drexler) it was impossible not to know what they were up to and how their life turned out. Others it hasn't been as easy to get that information.

Some of the people I knew in earlier grades I got reunited with in high school or college. Others I would see in a news story, like my old junior high school classmate Vonda Higgins who became a HPD undercover officer and was shot and left paralyzed after a 1998 drug bust went horribly wrong for her and her partner. Other I heard about when they ran for public office, or were featured in news articles good and bad.

Mes Deux's post had me reminisicing about a girl named Stephanie King who was in my fifth grade class as well. I frequently found myself during my airline days being reunited with my classmates from grade school, junior high, high school and college. There was one time I was reunited with a girl I had a crush on in elementary school during my uncle's wedding in 1990. She was the wedding coordinator, and I discovered she worked at the airport for US Customs when I went to work a few days later. There were others I ran into at various clubs during the 80's and early 90's. My junior high classmate Kimberli I used to run into when I was accompanying my mother on one of her shoe shopping forays at Wholesale Shoe Warehouse. Some of those reunions became even more interesting after I transitioned.

When Stephanie's father's job transferred him to San Antonio, she ended up moving there just before our Christmas break. One day in 1989 between flights we'd been having one of those 'I wonder what my old classmate is doing' conversations in the breakroom and I excused myself to start working a San Antonio flight.

During a little down time in the flight I found myself wondering what happened to her when this beautiful tall, sister walked up to check in. She mentioned she was visiting relatives and old school friends in Houston. When I asked her what school, thinking she'd moved in high school, she mentioned she moved in fifth grade.

I remarked to her as I checked her in for the flight that I had a classmate who'd moved to San Antonio in fifth grade when I was at Frost Elementary. She raised an eyebrow for a moment, then called me by name. I glanced at the name of the passenger record on the computer screen in front of me. It was Stephanie. I didn't recognize her at first because she used to wear glasses in elementary school and the stylishly dressed sistah standing in front of me wasn't.

She and I exchanged phone numbers and we talked off and on for about two years before I lost track of her because I lost her phone number when I moved to my new apartment.

There are others I haven't seen since high school and in some cases junior high school. There are others I met during the early stages of my transition that I find myself thinking about as well. I find myself wondering how their lives turned out, and hope they are happy and healthy. I even find myself wondering about some of my old teachers as well at times. It's a major reason I don't miss a high school reunion and the big 30 year one for my class is coming up in 2010.

Well, if any of my old classmates, co-workers or friends happen to be surfing the Net and stumble across this post, hollar at me. As you can see by this blog and the number of posts I have on it, I have much to tell you.

Phi Slama Jama

Well, since UCLA declined to schedule UH for a game commemorating today's 40th anniversary of 'The Game of The Century', I'm going to give props to another historic Cougar team that's celebrating a bittersweet anniversary, Phi Slama Jama.

25 years ago, the brothers of Texas' Tallest Fraternity slam-dunked their way through NCAA competition during the 1982-83 season all the way to a return trip to the Final Four. We Cougar fans (and the city of Houston as well) were fired up over the possibility that this team may finally break the championship jinx that Houston sports teams on the college and professional level were laboring under.

They were a homegrown bunch, Everyone with the exception of Hakeem (then Akeem) Olajuwon and Benny Anders were either from Houston or the 713 area code.

They were an entertaining team to watch as well. Think the collegiate version of the LA Lakers 'Showtime' team. They'd run you to death, play trapping, smothering defense, and heaven help you if they blocked your shot or stole the ball from you. The fast break would quickly go the other way and end with a basket as they dunked around, over and through you.



The last team to beat them before they started their monster run through the NCAA was a Dwayne 'Pearl' Washington led Syracuse one at the Carrier Dome in December. The Coogs swept undefeated through the Southwest Conference, finished the regular season ranked number one in the AP poll, won the SWC tournament title, and secured the number one seed in the 1983 NCAA tournament.

They defeated Maryland (at the Summit), Memphis State and Villanova enroute to Albuquerque and a high-flying showdown with the 'Doctors of Dunk' from Louisville. I remember we were extremely nervous on campus that week about facing the number 2 nationally ranked Cards. After that dunk filled 94-81 victory we felt good about our chances to take home the title after NC State knocked off a Georgia team that featured Dominique Wilkins.



I felt good about it as well. The campus electricity was fired up and so was the city. A local club DJ named Captain Jack did a rap song about the Coogs that was in heavy rotation on Majic 102, Love 94, KYOK and KCOH. In our campus bookstore that Monday the Phi Slama Jama t-shirts were already being stacked and prepared to press the words 'National Champions' on them.

One of the girls who worked back there was from North Carolina and a major Tar Heel fan. I was teasing her about Georgia knocking off North Carolina, and told her I'd be back tomorrow morning to pick up my championship shirt.

Well, everybody knows what happened to my boys that night. I still get sick to my stomach every time I see the replay of that damned Lorenzo Charles dunk and how agonizingly close Benny Anders came to stealing the ball and going the other way for an uncontested dunk.

I had to pick up a novel for an English class and was trying to get in and out before my NC friend got there. She was lying in wait for me as she asked, "You still want your championship shirt?"

Walking around campus that somber Tuesday was like being at a funeral. Even the pep rally that was held at Robertson Stadium for the team later that day was an anti-climactic disappointment. We students were even more upset after we found out that had the Coogs won the game, the administration was going to cancel classes that day.

But I did finally get to see Hakeem and Clyde win a title in a Houston uniform. It was as members of my beloved Houston Rockets, not the Houston Cougars. While I reveled in the joyous city wide celebration of that second Rockets title, I dearly would have loved to experience that feeling of having a team you root for win a title in 1983, not 1994.

The Christmas Assembly

Every time I hear the song Angels We Have Heard On High during the holidays, I start chuckling to myself and my mind drifts back to a Christmas assembly during my junior year of high school.

It was a JJ tradition to have the band and choir perform a Christmas concert just before we departed the school for winter break. The Mattel electronic football games were the ultra hot toy at the time and some of my friends already had them. Although I didn't know it at the time, I'd be getting one of my own in a few days. Mine was wrapped under the tree along with the Mattel electronic basketball for my brother. (We failed to find the hiding place in the house for our Christmas gifts that year)

My high school served breakfast in the morning, so we congregated inside the cafeteria before school started, especially during the winter months. (yes, Houston has winter weather)

That morning I'd been playing a game with James McCulloch. He was beating me badly before the opening school bell put a premature end to the electronic butt whipping he was administering.

That assembly happened after we got out of homeroom around second period, so as we were filing into the school auditorium we bumped into each other and grabbed seats together in the back.

The concert was turning out to be a long one, so James whips out his game and challenges me to play. He thought he was going to repeat the butt kicking he administered earlier that morning, but I had a new trick for him and decided to play ball control instead of the aggressive pass-happy style I normally employed.


The game makes loud noises when you score either a touchdown or a field goal and a double beep noise at the end of the half or the game. So in order to not be detected and have the game confiscated we used the cover of the concert to play.

We start playing, this is a tight game and so far so good. We're being careful to make sure that much of our game playing coincides with either the choir or band performances. The band is playing loud enough during their segments where no one more than five rows away from us suspects what we're up to. We're also benefitting from the fact that the auditorium is dark except for the stage lights and the couple sitting next to us is more concerned about kissing each other (no mistletoe required) rather than being annoyed about our titanic electronic football battle.

It's in the fourth quarter of the game and we're tied. I decide to try to eat up the entire quarter while scoring the touchdown that would win the game for me. So as I'm concentrating on the game the choir starts singing Angels We Have Heard On High.

I'm so focused on killing the clock and timing my drive so that I score with no time left that I'm not noticing that Mr. Addison (the then choir director) is directing the choir to sing the song softly at a low volume. Just as the choir gets to the 'Gloria' part of the song, I score and the double beep sound reverberates over the entire auditorium.

I look up and see our principal Mr. Pace and the assistant principals Mr. Henry and Ms. Broussard craning their necks from the front row along with several teachers trying to ascertain where the noise came from. They'd confiscated a bunch of them over the last two months and knew exactly what that sound was. They also knew at that moment some electronic shenanigans were going on somewhere in the auditorium. I see to my horror Mr. Henry get up from his seat with a not too pleasant expression on his face to begin his search and confiscate mission.

Fortunately for us when I scored the game was over. I quickly handed James his game with a satisfied smirk on my face as he put it away in his jacket pocket before Mr. Henry reached our section of the auditorium a few moments later. We were also fortunate we weren't ratted out by our fellow Falcons, otherwise we would have been spending a few minutes in the Principal's office.

But hey, I beat him. And James, if you're reading this, if you still have that game I hereby challenge you to a rematch at our reunion in 2010.

Domino!

One of the things I miss about home is sitting down with a group of my friends and playing dominos.

Dominos is as much a part of African-American culture in Texas as strawberry soda, barbecue, football, and Juneteenth. I first learned how to play the game watching the seniors in my old Sunnyside area barbershop. They would be there for hours even after they'd gotten their hair cut playing and talking trash to each other.

My barber Charlene Washington taught me how to play. I wasn't in a hurry to go home after she cut my hair one hot summer afternoon and she needed a partner to help her whip up on some trash-talking old men. Once I figured out the rules and strategies involved after a while I became as lethal as she was.

The basics are that you play to 150 or 250 points and can play with up to 4 people.

The game starts after the dominos are shuffled and all players select seven dominos to make up their hand. The person holding the highest double domino starts the action. That domino becomes the 'spinner', the only one you can play on four sides. Every other subsequent play in the game you have to match one of the dominos on the open ends with play proceeding to the right.

If a person doesn't possess a domino that will match any of the open ends they are passed or as we called it 'knocking'. First player to get rid of all their dominos wins the hand and the process starts all over again until they reach the target score.

Scoring is done in multiples of 5 with the maximum for one play being 30 points if you're playing with a Double Six domino set.

I understand Latinos and peeps in the Caribbean are as crazy about the game as African-Americans are. Some have elaborate tables made specifically for playing the game with cupholders built into them to hold drinks.

During my freshman year at the University of Houston me and my running buddies discovered one day when we didn't have the funds to bowl that the UC had a set of dominos we could check out to play. For the next three years we got a group together on a regular basis and started playing dominos on our lunch periods, some early mornings before class and sometimes after class.

And what entertaining games they were. We took trash talking to a new level when we playing. It got so raucous sometimes that we had other UH students watching our antics.

Of course, you know yours truly and her friends would come up with creative monikers for our domino games. I called all-out scoring in which points were scored in escalating fashion up to the big 30 point play 'Run and Shoot dominoes' after Mouse Davis' high-powered high scoring football offense. 'Four corners dominoes' was what I called it when somebody tried to limit scoring and 'lock up' the hand.

When it was your turn to shuffle the dominoes for the next game it was called 'washing the dishes'. Sometimes one of my friends would mimic pouring dishwashing soap into the mix or make pithy comments after selecting their domino hand like 'I can see myself' after the Joy diswashing liquid commercial of the early 80's.

Even when we scored we had comments for it. A five point play was a 'nickel'. A ten point play was a 'dime'. A fifteen point play was greeted with the term 'three's please' or 'her name was Trina' and a twenty point play was 'four on the floor'.

I used to mimic James Brown when I scored 25 points and say,"Heyyyyyy, hit me five times." If we made someone pass, it was 'who's that knocking at my door?' If you scored repeatedly in five point increments you hear that player say "fish and bread keep po' men fed." If somebody laid out an obvious sucker play in order for their team to score bigger points, your partner would warn "all money ain't good money." There were also the naughty erotic references made as well.

There were people like Craig and Raymond Jolivette who liked to add to your embarrassment after a loss and make you sign the score sheet after they beat you. They would write, "I got my azz thoroughly kicked by Craig and Raymond at the bottom of the page and make you and your partner autograph it. Of course if they lost, they had to eat crow and do the same thing.

Raymond Jolivette was definitely the most entertaining one of our bunch. He graduated from Smiley High and arrived at UH in the fall of 1981. He earned the nickname of 'Smurf' from us because of his 5'5" height and after the popular cartoon of the time.

He took the nickname and ran with it. His 5'1" Black Filipina girlfriend Victoria was called 'Smurfette' by us and he was a fun person to be around. I'm still telling Raymond Jolivette stories to this day.

There was one game we were playing in which I made a boneheaded play that was not only going to result in me and my partner suffering a thirty point blow, but cost us the game as well. Raymond took the scoring domino out of his hand, went to the back wall of the UC pool room where we were playing, ran to our table hollering 'Banzai' all the way before slamming the domino onto the table to heighten my embarrassment.

Ah, those were the days.

School Days II-Falcon Quest

Our Gold and White we love so dear
We'll remember through the years
Courage, love and loyalty
True to our school we'll always be
Falcons stand out among the rest
Meeting each and every test
Cherished you will always be
In and hearts and memories.

I recently renewed my Classmates.com subscription after getting numerous e-mails about peeps checking my profile. Being on there the last few days I've seen the names of some of my old classmates. Its triggered a flood of memories for me about the Class of 1980 that made me pull out my senior class memory book and yearbook.

Ah, the memories. Beating Jack Yates my sophomore year. The great state-ranked Falcon basketball teams. That heartbreaking last-second basketball district championship loss on a dunk we suffered against Wheatley in 1979 that eerily replicated itself for me at UH in 1983. The dances. Beating Sterling on a last second field goal during the 1979 'South Park Super Bowl'.

The Vanguard beach parties in Galveston and some of the other wild-and-crazy things about life in Vanguard. The costume day during homecoming week in 1979 when Charmaine Tolliver came dressed as Wonder Woman. She had the body to pull it off and was followed through school by drooling brothers hollering "Save me, Wonder Woman, Save Me!" Me and Lonnie Prothro cutting up during tennis practice and running laps for it.

The mornings we spent cracking jokes in the cafeteria or in front of the school auditorium before school started. Sneaking off campus to go to Popeye's and Mickey D's for lunch. The Max and Kyle Living Singleesque dissfest that me and Jocelyn Woodard used to engage in before she transferred to another school my senior year. Peeps used to accuse both of us of having feelings for each other which we both heatedly denied.

To be honest, I was a little jealous of her. Jocelyn was a beautiful girl, smart, never had a hair out of place and we rarely saw her in anything but dresses, heels and hose. Before she left for Lamar I had the pleasure of beating her butt at Mattel electronic football.

The girls that were interested in my 'twin' I kept at a distance because I was afraid that if I fell in love and that relationship progressed to marriage plus kids one day the gender issue would blow everything up and I'd have three or more people's feelings and lives hurt instead of just my own.

It was also torture for me to watch my female classmates blossom into womanhood. I felt like I was on the wrong team, I was being cheated and a cruel cosmic joke was being played on me. Little did I know at the time that I had a fellow Vanguard classmate that was going through the same feelings from the female to male aspect of it.

My time at my high school alma mater was a mixed bag. I'm very proud of my classmates in 'The Class With Class' as we're known in Jesse H. Jones lore. Many of them have gone on to greater success or are still working on it like I am. Sometimes when I get nostalgic about my time at JJ there's a little bit of residual sadness that washes over me because of the internal gender conflict I was dealing with and felt I couldn't tell anyone about.

That senior year seemed almost magical when I look back at it. I ended up going to TWO proms that night, ours and Sterling's. Ross Sterling was the high school my neighborhood was zoned to and my junior high Albert Thomas was a feeder for. I was at JJ for the Vanguard magnet program and many of my junior high friends ended up at Sterling. I spent almost as much time around Sterling events as I did at Jones and it was ironic that we held our prom the same night at two different Galleria hotels. We kept trading peeps back and forth between the two events.

The All Night Senior Party event at AstroWorld was the bomb. I got my license on my 18th birthday just a few weeks before graduation and recall the mixture of relief and sadness I felt during Senior Week. I also remember the last day of school of my senior year. It felt like that day took ten years to pass. Now ten years passes by in a week.

However, there are times I wish I'd just dealt with the gender issues then. I could've walked across that stage when I picked up my diploma as the person I am right now and I'd be in a better position life wise. Then again I'm also talking about the late 1970's as well.

I also have to consider the fact that if by some miracle I'd been able to do teen transition, would I be the same person I am now? I probably wouldn't be as open about my life since the advice gender therapists were giving then was to blend in and not let anybody know you were transgender. But then again I had buried it so deeply that when I finally did come out, the weight lifted off my shoulders was so liberating that I didn't care if peeps knew or not. I probably would've had the same reaction then as I did in 1993.

I managed to graduate with honors, but when I look back on it there were some things I would do differently if I could. I'd be more active than I was. I was on student council, part of the Model United Nations group my junior year but I feel I could've done more. I realized several years ago that I have a God-given talent for writing. That's something that should have clicked when I was one of my junior high school's winners of that NASA writing contest. I would've spent time on the school paper, joined the yearbook staff and went out for the tennis team sooner instead of my senior year. One of the side effects of the gender issues conundrum was that I spent so much time and energy trying to play 'boy' and eradicate any hint of my female persona that I didn't leave myself time to focus on what I really wanted out of life. I didn't have the self-confidence built up to fearlessly go for it.

I'm still the premier trash talker bar none and opposing fans who made the mistake of walking over to our side of Barnett Stadium or Barnett Fieldhouse found out the hard way. One night we were playing our bitter rival Jack Yates my junior year and they were trashing us 40-0 in response to the buttkicking we gave them my sophomore year. This loudmouth comes over to our side of the stadium and yells, "What's wrong Jones? Y'all couldn't program the computers to beat us?"

I shot back, "At least we have people at Jones smart enough to program computers, unlike you future TDC (Texas Department of Corrections) residents." Homeboy went scurrying back to the Yates side of the stadium with our laughter ringing in his ears.

I am blessed to still have in my life some of the friends I made during my time there. Some have remained so through my transition. I have gone to our reunions in 1985, 1990 and 2000 and plan to be there in 2010. I'm hoping I'll get to see at the 2010 reunion some classmates I haven't seen since we left JJ. I'm hopeful that while I'm on Classmates.com I get to reconnect with some others and reminisce about our times walking the halls of Jesse H. Jones.

By the way, me and 'errbody' else in Vanguard are still pissed about that Animal House like double secret senior trip some of y'all took to Dallas-Fort Worth and didn't tell us about until y'all got back. ;)