Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One (9 page)

“Terry should have thrown the ball to Craig,” Coach said. “But that’s the way the world works. Some people don’t make the right moves. And we all have to pay.”

That was a major moment for me. Coach was someone I’d been told to follow. And his words simply weren’t true. It was yet another occasion when I realized I couldn’t always listen to adults. Sometimes they didn’t make sense.

The aftermath of our defeat was even worse. The next day the local paper ran a story that basically said: “Terry Crews had the last shot. He missed.”

One of my teammates believed Coach, and he called me out at school.

“Man, you should have passed the ball to Craig,” he said.

I looked at him. Hard. “What did you say to me?”

“Everybody knows you should have passed the ball. You cost us the game.”

“Dude, leave me alone.”

He got up in my face. I wasn’t having it. I hit him right in the mouth.
POW
.

He fell to the ground. As he scrambled up and away from
me, I looked down the hallway and locked eyes with the hall guard.

“Terry, I saw the whole thing,” the guard said. “Just go to class. I’m not going to report it.”

I was grateful for his kindness, but even if he had reported me, I wouldn’t have regretted my punch. I couldn’t help myself. Everybody knew I was feeling bad already. And truly, I was devastated. I wanted to be a winner so badly, and it just wasn’t happening.
Why do I keep losing? Why am I a loser? I’m a loser. I’m always being told I’m not good enough. That guy told me that I can’t go to Michigan. This guy told me I cost us the game
.

And then, suddenly, it was like this voice came out of nowhere.

“You took the shot,” it said. “The other guys didn’t. The whole year, you passed it to Craig. But when it came down to it, you took your shot.”

I did, didn’t I?

That changed everything for me. EVERYTHING.

From now on, I’m taking my shot
, I thought.
No matter what, I’m taking my shot
.

WELL, THE ONLY PROBLEM WAS THAT IN ORDER TO REALLY
take my shot, I had to get out of Flint. My senior year in high school was upon me, and it was time to make my move. Everyone in school knew me as an athlete, but my classmates were always asking me about whatever art project I had in the works, too.

“What’s your next painting going to be?” a girl asked me as we walked out of art class together. “Do a Jordan next? Do a Michael Jackson?”

I loved the attention. And I loved art. I wanted to go to the
Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, but there was no way they were going to give me a full-ride art scholarship. Such a thing didn’t exist. And they didn’t have a football team. So that meant no football scholarship, either. If I went there, I would need to pay my own tuition, and there was no way that was happening.

I had to find a school with a football team that would give me a chance to show everyone what I could do. My small magnet school, Flint Academy, was focused more on academics than athletics, so I had to do anything I could to get even one college to give me a look. I made a big list of possible colleges, and in the end, I wrote to more than a hundred schools in an attempt to gain a scholarship. And this was before I had a computer with a printer, so I wrote them by hand, one at a time.

Before long, letters started coming back to me:

Thank you for your interest in Penn State. We are sorry …

Thank you for your interest in USC. We are sorry …

They were all rejection letters, except for one. Illinois State actually contacted my high school football coaches and asked to see a tape of me playing. That was a good sign. It was an even better sign when their football coach called me.

“We love you,” he said. “We want to give you a scholarship.”

I was so excited. I had my Illinois State sweatshirt, and my Illinois State stickers, and I started telling everyone at school all about my future plans.

“I’m going to Illinois State. It’s going to be great.”

And then it was time for signing day, the day on which the college teams signed all of the high school players they wanted. That day came and went, but my phone never rang. So I called Illinois State and got their football coach on the line.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.

“Well, if you’d like to come and walk on, that would be great,” he said.

“But I thought …”

It turned out there was no scholarship for me. That was so awful. It really hurt. But I knew I had to scramble and try again. My art teacher, Mr. Eichelberg, had been one of the greatest champions of my art talent. He really believed in me as an artist and was as influential for me in art as Coach Lee was when it came to football. He started applying for everything he could on my behalf. We were coming down to the wire when, finally, Western Michigan University came back with a $500 art excellence scholarship.

“Okay, I’ll take it,” I said. “They want me.”

Well, after that, I looked into Western Michigan University’s football team and saw they’d had a superstar linebacker, John Offerdahl, who had been drafted by the NFL and was playing for the Miami Dolphins. To me, the fact that he could go pro from there proved that I could do it, too. It wasn’t the University of Michigan. It wasn’t Michigan State. Those were the two big schools. But I hadn’t even been able to gain entry to Michigan State’s high school football camp. So I had to be realistic about my options and accept that I was going to have to walk on to the Western Michigan University football team. That was my only way out of Flint.

I went home and told my mother they had given me this little bit of money. It wasn’t much, but I hoped it would be enough for me to at least get started.

“You have a year to earn your scholarship,” she said.

So that was it, I had one year. By that point, I would have done anything to get out of town, and out of my house. Before my high school graduation, we had an awards ceremony at my
high school. My relationship with Big Terry and Trish was so acrimonious by that point that they didn’t attend, even though I had invited them. I was voted most likely to succeed, and I was being given the school’s highest honor, The Spirit Award. As I heard my name announced, and I strode onto the stage to accept my plaque, all I could think was:
My parents are not here
. Maybe they didn’t realize what a big deal it was. Maybe Trish wanted to teach me a lesson. Maybe Big Terry thought I’d gotten too full of myself. That was it. I was more than ready to go.

NOW THAT I’D GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL, AND I
was almost eighteen, Trish couldn’t control me anymore. I finally got to go on a date. Throughout my last three years of school, I’d been close friends with three white girls who hung out together, and over the years, I’d had a crush on all of them at one time or another.

During my senior year, I’d been hanging out in the halls with all three when I was called into my high school guidance counselor’s office, about a matter of utmost importance. The counselor was a very pretty black woman who was the object of many adolescent daydreams among the boys of Flint Academy.

As I sat in her office, I measured her tone, which was very serious. She sighed.

“Terry, you have a very bright future,” she said. “I just want to warn you about one thing I see you doing that could become a big problem for you.”

I perked up in a major way. I couldn’t wait to hear what this life-altering problem was, and what I could do to fix it.

“Terry—stay away from white women,” she continued. “They are no good. They are just going to lead you down a path to destruction.”

“Really?” I said, trying to sound respectful.

“Yes. Listen to me. You have no idea how conniving and evil they can be.”

Wow. This was the biggest, best advice she thought she could give me about my future. And it was pure nonsense.

“I hear you. Thank you.”

I’d avoided her until the school year finally ended.

Now I was out of school. I was a grown man. I called one of the three girls, Sophia. “Would you like to go out with me?” I asked. “You know, why don’t we go to a movie and get some pizza?”

“I would love to,” she said.

I was totally freaked out because, even though I was seventeen years old and about to leave for college, it was my first date. At least we were already friends and used to hanging out at school together. We laughed and had fun during Rodney Dangerfield’s movie
Back to School
, and as we ate pizza, and then we parked in front of Sophia’s house. We were listening to Janet Jackson’s “Funny How Time Flies (When You’re Having Fun),” and I was so happy. Everything was going so well.

“Hey, Sophia, this is cool,” I said. “Thank you. I had a great evening.”

And then we kissed. It was my first kiss, and I was done. I was in love.

“Bye, Terry,” she said as she climbed out of the car.

“Bye, Sophia,” I said.

But what I was thinking was:
I would die for you
.

I floated home. There hadn’t been any sex, and I was glad. I didn’t want any of that to corrupt the way I felt for her. To me, pornography was dirty. And this was pure. She cared. I cared. I didn’t want to mess any of that up. Our kiss was perfect.

———

I’D RECEIVED A FULL SCHOLARSHIP TO A PRESTIGIOUS SUMMER
arts program, Interlochen Center for the Arts, located in northwest Michigan, and I left for six weeks soon after my date. Interlochen was a seismic shift for me. So many talented, creative people have gone there, from Dermot Mulroney to Mike Wallace to Norah Jones, and it meant a great deal to me to be in such illustrious company. Interlochen was also my first immersion in another culture. I was living outside of the city for the first time. I met people from California and Germany. I also took my first video production class, in which I made a rap video with my Flint Academy classmate Ron Croudy, who is still a close friend to this day. After this experience, I was more convinced than ever that I’d make it to the world of entertainment someday. On top of that, during a group competition among ten of us young artists, a judge from the Art Institute of Cincinnati picked my drawings as the best. That was a really important affirmation of my artistic talent, and I savored the joy of receiving his praise. But before I could turn my attention to my love of arts and entertainment, I had a college football scholarship to win. And before that, I had a girl to see, and maybe kiss again.

We had no cell phones back then, so I wrote Sophia long letters all summer. She sent me one letter, and then, just like that, I didn’t receive any more letters from her. I kept writing, but she didn’t write back. When I was able to call her from the pay phone, she was always busy. But I didn’t let that dampen my feelings, or my hope.

As soon as I got home from Interlochen, the first thing I did was go to the phone and call Sophia. I was so happy just to hear her voice.

“Hey, I’m home,” I said. “Can we go out? I figured we could do something.”

She paused for a long moment.

“I’m sorry. I have a date. We can’t go out.”

“But I thought—”

“No, Terry, we’d be better off just being friends.”

I was crushed. I mean we’re talking about the first girl I’d ever kissed, and six weeks of buildup about all of the things we were going to do together, and how I would see her on my school breaks and visit her when she went away to college the following year. I had a whole scenario laid out in my mind, and in my heart. Because I’d never gone through this when I should have, at age thirteen, or sixteen, I was very naive. I was stunted. And then, just like that, my heart was broken.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but as I hung up the phone and went back to my room, all of these horrible feelings from my childhood were being stirred up inside of me, feelings that I was worthless and unlovable, feelings that if I wasn’t absolutely perfect, then no one would ever love me. All I knew at the time was that I felt unwanted. I hated it. And I never wanted to feel that way again. So I made a vow to myself:

I have to be someone. I have to get out of Flint. I have to make it so somebody will want me. And then I’ll show everybody
.

Soon after that, my father drove me up to Western Michigan University, and I set it out for him just as clearly as if I were reading directions from the map.

“I’m gonna be a pro football player,” I said.

“Well, you know, only one in a million makes it,” he said.

“I’m one in a million,” I said. “I’m one in a million.”

“Okay,” he said, not exactly sounding convinced.

“Yep,” I said, rolling my eyes at him and his doubts.

I had no use for anyone telling me the odds. I didn’t care. I
knew I was going to make it because I knew I would do whatever it took. Not only that, but I decided to use any bit of rejection I’d ever received as fuel. Looking back, I’m not sure how healthy that was. But at the time, it worked. It made me work out harder, lift more, and strive to be somebody. And I never, ever stopped, even when it got tough—and let me tell you, it got a lot tougher for a long time before it started to get easier.

WHEN I HIT WESTERN MICHIGAN AND TRIED TO GO
right into football camp, the coaches told me I had basically missed it while I’d been at Interlochen. They let me join the team as a walk-on and be a part of the practice squad, but I had to really fight my way up from the bottom. And so I got beat up, literally. But I didn’t care. I had my little art scholarship, and my mother was paying for the rest for a year, and I was just so happy to have my pads on.

I knew it was up to me to earn a scholarship to cover the rest of college. From my first practice, I was doing my thing, hitting people.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM
. It was a challenge, but I loved it. Like I said, I never minded hard work when there was a clear purpose and something to be gained.

Football was great, but the rest of my college experience was a major disappointment, almost immediately. After being under my mother’s strict control for so many years, I was sure I was going to go crazy as soon as I tasted my first bit of freedom. That lasted for about a week, and my version of wild was tame compared to what we’ve come to see as the normal college experience. From my first night at school, it seemed like everyone around me was falling-down drunk. I immediately thought of Big Terry and knew I didn’t want to be that foolish.