I don't understand why people give so much of a fuck about what people think of them. I mean, to a certain extent it makes sense. Sure. You should definitely care a little bit: you don't want to be smelling like shit at a job interview or farting in the elevator or acting inappropriately or lacking basic self-awareness. You obviously don't want to be the guy with a beard down to his ballsack and mumbling about capitalism or blaming the white man for your problems or some shit and walking down Yonge and Dundas asking people for favours. But on a lower level: why the fuck are people so paranoid what people think of them? People be WEAK. People are gonna hate you no matter what you do, you don't have a say in that. So why fucking worry? There will always be someone that will hate you for whatever it is you do, so just carry on. Fuck 'em.
I learned this valuable lesson when I was fucking 9 years old. I wrote,
"IVERSON
6"
with a black sharpie on the back of a white t-shirt. I hate sports, but to me watching Allen Iverson play was straight up magical. I could not believe this guy existed. And I have to say this again: this is coming from a person who is a nerd and hates sports. To this day I don't really get the appeal of sports, but I loved watching Allen Iverson play. I fucking hated seeing the Lakers win, and even when they did they weren't magical to me. They were just winning because they had the gigantic anomaly that is Shaq; nothing surprising there. It would be like me winning a boxing match with someone's newborn baby: how is it impressive when I'm unnaturally bigger? Shaq wasn't cool to me, and I was never a Kobe guy (no disrespect). Iverson on the other hand was an authentic dude who stayed true to himself, overcame all these insane odds, and went on to transcend his shitty surroundings like I wanted to…he was a god to me. I decided I needed to have his jersey.
Of course all the kids at school gave me shit for that. Although my parents spoiled the shit out of me from time to time, they were not people who would buy me whatever I wanted on a whim. They were practical gangsters: one year they bought me a Game Boy Colour for my birthday, but I acted like an asshole one day so they just took it back to the store and got a refund to teach me a lesson about acting out (as they rightfully should have). Brown parents don't fuck around: you only get nice shit if you've earned it.
So that DIY jersey with a white t-shirt and the sharpie marker was the best I could possibly do at the time. My parents would definitely not buy a jersey for me. It wasn't in their budget and I had no right to complain. Everything else was taken care of: food, shelter, toys, love. That's it, anything more was me being greedy. I couldn't afford a real jersey obviously because I was fucking 9 years old and they were over $100 at the time. Even if I could afford that with my little ass allowance money there's no way my parents would allow me to actually drop that amount of cash on something as frivolous as a jersey.
It would be a couple years until I could afford to do stuff like that because I didn't get my first job until I was 12, writing for a children's newspaper. I was a not very well-off kid from Scarborough, and a fake ass jersey was the best I could do. If you're unfamiliar with Scarborough, it's the place Mike Myers was inspired by to create the loveably trashy characters Wayne and Garth (before Lorne Michaels made him change it to Aurora, Illinois to appeal to an American audience presumably). In interviews Myers has called living in Scarborough being all about, "No money fun." He is exactly right: that's what was behind my jersey idea and my stupid kid-logic.
All the kids at school laughed at me and called me ghetto and all these horrible names and shit. I vividly remember one kid in an older grade laughing so hard he felt absolutely compelled to grab his friend so he could share the laugh as well. It became a whole thing: that guy would tell another guy he had to see what this loser kid did, and that guy would inevitably laugh and call another person to see. Shit, I think even a couple of the teachers laughed at me that day. That's the public school system for you…By the way, I am not bitter or sad about this at all as I'm writing this. I am completely unemotional as I write this, and I totally understand it: most people are shitty and it's human nature for most people to be awful to each other. That's just how people are.
I wanted to die at first, but then I had an epiphany in a bathroom stall: it didn't change the fact that I liked the shirt and still admired Allen Iverson's basketball playing abilities. At the end of that school day I was still the same guy who wrote the name of my favourite basketball player on the back of a white Wal-Mart Fruit of The Loom shirt that morning. The only variable that had occurred from morning to 3:15PM was OTHER PEOPLE. So I thought, "Fuck it," and just fucking kept wearing it. For the rest of the school year I did not give a fuck. When I washed the shirt, I would rewrite Iverson's name and number on the back with the black sharpie. I was committed to showing those motherfuckers that my poorly executed DIY jersey was there to stay. There was a huge "fuck all of you" mentality in me I felt I had to live up to. This was years before people started overprotecting kids and cyberbullying was cared about. It was way before some kid got bullied for wearing a pink shirt in school and then it became a national thing where everyone now wears pink in solidarity: no, this was 2001 and I was on my fucking own, baby!
But here's the thing: the jokes eventually wore off. When you're that committed and you show people you really and truly do not give a fuck with every authentic molecule of your soul….you're untouchable. Words obviously hurt, but only if you give a fuck about what other people say. And who are other people really? Just some guy's 9 month old cum. That's it. No one is special (except for Allen Iverson). Everyone dies eventually, and nothing matters. Nothing is sacred. Even hot women take shits. No one's perfect, and at the end of the day I live for me. This website doesn't even get that much traffic and I still fucking write because I like my own shit.
…By the way, my father ended up buying the real jersey for me eventually as a gift. And when I finally had enough money from writing I bought other cool ass jerseys too, like Lebron's (my other basketball hero, but that's another post for another day). Money buys happiness. Love yourself and fuck everyone that isn't you.