Dr. Clare's Electronicorium Emporium

“Real Gs move in silence, like Obama” - Bassey Ikpi

There was a guy I was friends with in law school. I don’t remember when I met him, but I do know that every few months for some years, he would say something along the lines of “oh, why did I think you were born in Panama?”
I’m sure the first few times I’d shrug and say “mmiunnno, my parents are Panamanian, but I was born and raised in Brooklyn.”
He came to the law school graduation party my mom threw for me at my childhood home and as he looked around at my baby pictures, he once again asked “when did you move here?”
“When I was seven,” I answered because that’s when my mom and I moved to that particular apartment.
“Really? And you don’t speak Spanish?”
“Wait. What? Move where?”
“To the US.”
I didn’t know about the side-eye back then, but I would have been throwing it. Hard.
“I. Was. BORN. IN. BROOKLYN. NEW YORK. UNITED. STATES. OF.”
“Oh, that’s right, that’s right.”
TWO YEARS AFTER THAT, he made the same “mistake,” again. This time, I looked him square in the face and said:
“[Name withheld], I don’t know why you find it so incredible that I am an American citizen. But I am. I was born in a Brooklyn hospital, went to New York public schools, graduated high school from a prep school founded in the 1800s, I have a college degree from the second oldest University in the United States, which has produced five American Presidents, including the current occupant of the White House, I have a law school degree from a University founded by Alexander Hamilton, who wrote the constitution of the United States. The very same law degree you hold. I have worked at the White House. And stood in the oval office. I am not sorta American or almost American, I am all the fucking way American. Got it?”
“No… yeah…I didn’t mean anything by it. I just forgot. Why are you so mad?”
I don’t think we spoke after that, though we might be facebook friends.
*checks*
Yup.

So there I was, last Friday, taking a walk around lower Manhattan looking for a liquor store. I had decided to give the Trimbach Riesling another try mostly because the company rep on twitter made me laugh.

Yes, corporate America, customer service is that easy. I approached the counter at the liquor store and heard a black man angrily asking “if he looks like a fucking kid”?

I quickly gathered they were asking for ID.

“I ain’t a fucking kid. I come in this motherfucking store every fucking week and now y’all acting like I’m a kid?”

The clerk said something to the effect of “we ask everybody, Sir. It’s the law.”

By now, the black man had started rooting around in his jeans for his wallet. As he slams his driver’s license on the counter top, he says “this is some Obama bullshit.”

Indeed, it had been a little more than 24 hours since the President of the United States, a former United States Senator, had to hold a press conference to answer innuendos from the press and TV personalities that, and to be honest, I wasn’t following the news cycle all that closely, either he was born in Kenya or that Hawaii isn’t part of the union.

I wonder who broke the Donald’s google.

The so-called birther movement had been gathering steam since 2006. The President’s birth certificate became such a frequently requested document that Hawaii is trying to make a mint charging extra fees to all those asking for it. Years ago the Governor of Hawaii has signed affidavits attesting to the authenticity of the document. An army deserter who refused to deploy to Iraq because she didn’t recognize the authority of our newly elected Commander in Chief appealed all the way up to the United States Supreme Court with these ridiculous claims. Coming up with bubkis.

I laughed at birthers, much the same way I laughed at the crazy fringe who were all “President GOOORRREE, maan. He won the popular vote!”

Yah huh. As a former police captain friend of mine used to say “tell your story walking, pal.”

And then, I had a weird ass conversation with *my mother* a couple of weeks ago.

“Well, I don’t know where he was born.”

I swear, I caught whiplash swerving to avoid crashing my car.

The fuck?

So Donald Trump says he has a *witness* who will soon come forward, who says she SAW President Obama being born in Kenya, Meredith Viera doesn’t laugh in his gotdang face. Charitably, because she’s shilling for their shared network. Or she’s…well, let’s stay charitable. And once again this becomes a story? Despite the affidavits, the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of previously requested birth certificates AND A UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT DISMISSAL?

And now my mom “isn’t sure”?

Okay, one more time for the folks in the cheap seats, here’s my birth certificate, the President wearily says. We cool, now? Can I get back to work? Want to see my teeth, motherfuckers? He said that last part quietly so only the black people could hear. We hear real good.

See also: Dance, run.

But no, we weren’t cool. The press cut away from the President’s conference to ask *Donald Trump* if that was good enough. And what did Mr. Trump say? “I don’t know. I have to look at it. I’ll get back to you guys.”

And did the press ask him about his witness? Did anybody say “Mr. Trump, could it be that you are full of shit, Sir?”

Nah, it was on to the next thing. Why was the President yukking it up at a thousand dollar a plate dinner with the beltway elite while the poor Americans are unemployed and getting robbed at the gas pumps. Doesn’t he have important work to do…you know, until a year from now when we’ll need to see his birth certificate again.

Boom. President Obama takes a little time out of his Sunday night to mention that “by the by, US forces have shot Osama bin Laden in the face and dumped his body in the ocean.” Um…according to Muslim law.
Chants of U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A ring out across the land. The New York *Post* runs the headline “We Got Him!”
Oh, word? We a “we” now? Thought he was the Kenyan, Indonesian Muslim Socialist?
Ah, but the President’s detractors regrouped. Within a day, he was criticized for using the first person pronoun in his speech. Rush Limbaugh was sarcastically congratulating the President on a good job. Sarah Palin, and God forgive me for violating my own rules about quoting the idiocy of this hack, said “And we thank our president . . . We thank President Bush for having made the right calls to set up this victory.”
You thought it was bad that she couldn’t name foreign leaders? She doesn’t even know who the President of the United States is. Never mind that President Bush flatly said bin Laden wasn’t a priority. Or that Senator McCain stated he wouldn’t chase bin Laden into Pakistan. Nope, President Obama didn’t do squat. Except you know, give the kill order and produce the body of the so-called most wanted man.

All of this to say, I sit here tonight in awe of the President of the United States. The American President. I dismally shake my head at those who see nothing wrong with a man being hounded, for years, about an issue that has been open and closed so many times it even makes Kim Kardashian blush. Every President tells his story… President Bill Clinton was “the man from Hope,” except he wasn’t and the name on his birth certificate wasn’t even Bill Clinton. President George W. Bush, the Texas cowboy was born in Connecticut and went to boarding school in Massachusetts. Don’t dare ask any questions about his military service. You’ll lose your network TV job and end up on HDNET, whatever that is.

Now that the birth certificate issue has been put on temporary hold, Pat Buchanan has questions that President Obama is “affirmative action all the way!” Yup, he probably is and you did mention that the program was signed into law by Richard Nixon, right?
Hello? Tap tap is this thing on?

The White House is a fishbowl. It always has been and probably always will be, but I’ve never seen the biography of a President so persistently poked and prodded as that of President Obama. Never mind that, with TWO autobiographies published before he even took the highest office in the land, where he ADMITS to cocaine use for jeebus sake, no President has probably been as transparent as this man. At 30 he wasn’t drunk driving cars into ditches, but yet he gets derided for “community organizing.” And yet our press, in the name of the AMERICAN PEOPLE ask the AMERICAN PRESIDENT to “just show us one more time that you are in fact American.” Then ask some dude with a Russian wife, if that’s “good enough”?
Get.
The.
FUCK.
OUT.
Cocksucking.
Motherfuckers.

There are those who claim the President’s ego is too large and his speeches are littered with “I” and “me.” Well, fuck yeah, nobody else is giving him credit for anything — oh, except the deficit and the bailout plans which were instituted in 2008, months before he took the oath of office in 2009 — but you know, whatever, President Obama is magic.

I can remember the rage I felt at one asshat repeatedly questioning my legitimacy and I ultimately handled it with my temper and profanity. That President Obama doesn’t even break a sweat and just keeps it moving, is why I’m riding with him in 2012 and in 2013 we’ll start work on the Michelle Obama ’16 campaign.

Ask about me.

My friend Alex has a new book out today by that very title, go buy it on amazon! Dooo ittt. I’ll wait.

*taps foot*

Done? Ooh, how about you buy one for your mom too! Don’t worry, I won’t start my post till you get back.

*files nails*

There! Now isn’t that better than that awful Jane Seymour necklace?! I thought it would be.

Anyway, so while reading Geeks, a book which follows 7 “outsiders,” through their high school experience, I seriously kept curling up in a ball of post traumatic stress disorder. I wasn’t just a geek in school, I was apparently all of these geeks. Except the popular one. I hate her so much.

All the people I’m friends with now are self proclaimed geeks/nerds/weirdos/murderers…wait… I think I promised secrecy on that last one.

Please don’t kill me. No, really. Don’t kill me.

But I’m also friends with the smartest, funniest, cleverest most talented people in the world, so, I’m pretty much all-in on the premise of the book that “geeks” are pretty awesome.

Alas, as I relived the horrors of finding a place to sit at lunch or fighting with a faculty adviser over the direction of one of my afterschool clubs, I decided the story I wanted to blog about is one that takes place long after high school.

Well, 1999, so not that long, but I was 2/3 of the way through law school, I had lost all the high school weight and I was making about $2000 a week, so it was as far away from my high school experience as you could get without a time machine.

I went to a rich prep school in the predominantly white neighborhood of Bay Ridge. I was black and dirt poor and, given that Yusef Hawkins had just been murdered for being a black boy in a white neighborhood, totally terrified. My mother, God bless her, would warn me every day to “be careful of those white folks.” Awesome. Great. Terrific. 95% of my classmates were white, 100% of my teachers were white.

I didn’t find much comfort in the black community at my high school either. They were athletes and I wheezed at the mere thought of gym. Plus, I listened to Billy Joel, not “rap music.”

So, my friends were other geeks and nerds, mostly frail white boys I would boss around and make join the clubs I founded. I won President of Debate club every year in a landslide. I founded the chess club and the golf club and the Manifest Destiny club and the German club… yes, there might have been a six step “take over the world plan” involved.

We kept to ourselves and frankly, except for when I was plucked out of my comfort zone for the annual President’s fitness test or homeroom, I had a happy high school existence.

On this particular evening, six years after my graduation, I was at a law firm sponsored event at a fancy Times Square restaurant when I spied “Becky,” at another table. Becky was my high school opposite. She was white and rich (well, probably middle class, but I was dirt poor and anyone who had a car was pretty much Bill Gates in my eyes.) and popular and, it goes without saying, a cheerleader. She had a car and probably dated. I did not speak to Becky. EVER. But, my graduating class only had 93 kids in it, so it wasn’t like we didn’t know each other.

So, there I was, I see Becky at this other table. I’ve been eating and drinking on my corporate account, and did I say drinking? God, I miss the 90s! So I’m in a great mood. I decide to send over a round of drinks to Becky’s table and say hi.

“Stephane! Oh my God. Thank you so much.”

“No problem!”

And then she hugged me, and said “I always thought you hated me in high school! You would never speak to me or anything.”

Whoa.

Dude. Of course, I never spoke to you! You were a cheerleader! What on earth would I say to you? Why would you even want me to speak to you?

But she was right. I would see her and her friends in the hall and pass them by as if they didn’t exist. When one of the guys in her clique made it into AP American history, MY DOMAIN, so far as I was concerned, my friends and I totally didn’t speak to him. And we kinda laughed when he screwed up the exam. That’s what he gets for trying to be “smart.”

I didn’t hate them though, I just sorta assumed that they didn’t like me, so I wasn’t going to like them either! I saw Carrie, I know what popular kids are about! No one was pigs blooding me, I tell you whut!

I made assumptions about what they were assuming about me and acted accordingly. Read: Ignore. Who knows, maybe I could have been friends with the popular crowd. Maybe Becky would have loved the opportunity to join Model UN club. I don’t know, I didn’t ask.

So much of my high school life was about protecting myself from hurt or rejection, that I automatically eliminated even acknowledging about 85% of the people I met, and then being really really mean to the remaining 15% to see who’d stick around to be my friend anyway.

It worked for me, my people were MY PEOPLE and we had a shit ton of nerdy fun playing chess, watching Monty Python movies and ditching prom to go see Jurassic Park, but that night I discovered that maybe…with just a little bit more of an open mind, I might have been able to have an entirely different high school experience.

Or, I might have just been leaving myself vulnerable to a face full of pig’s blood.

One or the other.

Tell me your GEEK story in a comment or email to dawnsummers3000 at yahoo.com this Friday, May 6, 2011.

Best tale gets an autographed copy of Geeks will Inherit the Earth! Did I mention it’s in stores now?

I was an expert mimic when I was a kid.

This talent often led to awkward moments when I would deliver, verbatim, whole sections of Eddie Murphy’s “Raw,” because I watched whatever my mother watched, adult content ratings be damned. Or the nervous laughter at the 1985 company picnic when I flung my bat to the ground and  charged the pitcher on the mound when he hit me with the softball; it’s what Keith Hernandez would do.

My ability obviously served me well in school, particularly in French and social studies where I could fairly accurately repeat my teachers’ lessons in class and on exams. It was less useful in math because the numbers kept changing. Well, except for multiplication. Oh, how I loved the multiplication tables weeks!

Anyway, to the extent that I am a writer today, I credit the hours a day spent in the public library reading. I read everything from Beverley Cleary to Aldous Huxley. To quote my obnoxious second grade teacher, I was a “latch-key kid.” I lived with my mother, who worked at a hospital in Manhattan from 8:30 – 4:45 five days a week. I had school in Brooklyn from 9-3. I’ve had my own set of keys since I was seven years old.

I received them without much ceremony. “Here. If you lose them, I will beat your ass. If you let anyone in, I will beat your ass. Do not turn on the stove or…”

“You will beat my ass.”

“Good, you understand.”

I didn’t get to use them right away, though. In elementary school, I’d wake up every morning at 6:30, get dropped off at Mrs. Brown’s house by 7:15 and watch cartoons till the school bus collected me.

In the afternoon, I got dropped off at Mrs. Hall’s house, because Ms. Brown had dialysis most afternoons. I would wait there until my mother came home at 6.

The thing about staying at Mrs. Hall’s in the afternoon, though, is that I hated it. She babysat seven kids from the neighborhood from babies to kids about twelve. Everyone called her “Grandma” because her grandson lived with her, that’s what he called her and he was the oldest of us. Of course, if that’s what everyone called her, I would call her that over my cold dead body. I had my own wretched grandma, thank you very much.

Plus, Mrs. Hall would constantly call me Steph.
“How would she like it if I call her Mrs. Ha?”
My mother’s glare indicated that I shouldn’t attempt to find out.

The other kids my age, her grandson included, went to the local public school; I went to the school for gifted kids – information which was awesomely stamped on the inside cover of all my textbooks. So, you can imagine my popularity.

I was never bullied about it, though, because the only thing faster than my mouth, in those days, was my fist. Plus, the girls were very conscious of their hairdos and dresses and I was a hair puller.

So, come 3:30, I’d get off the bus, trudge to Ms. Hall’s, sit at the kitchen table doing my homework and wonder why my real mom, Diana Ross, had consigned me to this existence.

However, the best thing about Mrs. Hall’s was that it was across the street from my house and the public library a few doors down the block from me.

One day, I had a flash of sheer brilliance.

“Mrs. Hall. I have to get a book from the library.”

“Okay, pull in the door tight behind you.”

Apparently, $20 a week doesn’t get you much in terms of adult supervision.

I sat in the library and read until it closed at 5.

Then, I went back and sat at Mrs. Hall’s till six.

Genius.

Eventually, I’d get off the bus and head straight to the library and only go to Mrs. Hall’s in time to meet my mother.

And now we come to the dreaded Scooby Doo ending. The one where I would have gotten away with it too…except for… on Tuesdays the library stayed open till 8 pm and I lost track of time.

When I realized my mistake, I ran, literally ranacross the reading room floor, down the two flights of stairs and broke into a dead sprint for Mrs. Hall’s building.

I was too late. I could hear my mother’s voice. I have no idea how long she’d been there. I was a chubby asthmatic girl, so I also couldn’t breathe by this point. Of course, given the tone of my mother’s voice, death seemed like my best option.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

“The…li…bra…ry. For…school…I needed…a…book…for school.”

“Where is it?”

Um.

“I finished it there. That’s why I took so long. It’s a reference book…they have a chain on it so you can’t take it out.”

I am a genius! Children everywhere will sing songs of the girl who came home late, yet escaped an ass whupping. I would pose for statues and sign autographs!

“Mrs. Hall says you go to the library everyday. For months. They don’t give you any books in school?”

“No. It’s the same book. It took a long time to read cause it’s long. And I had to ask the librarian questions and I only finished it tonight.” (This was the day I learned that bad lies have lots of “ands” in them.)

“Well, we’re going over to the library right now and you can show me.”

Oh no. My Stephane statue crumbled before my eyes. My adoring fans faded into oblivion. We put death back on the table.

Then she turned to Mrs. Hall. “What am I paying you for if my child is staying in the street all night?”

Here, I should note that Mrs. Hall was a billion years old, 4’9 and maybe 90 pounds soaking wet. My mom was 5’10 and about 270. The old woman wisely held her tongue.

“Get your things.”

I grabbed my knapsack from the kitchen and spied Mrs. Hall’s grandson snickering at me from the bedroom.

I glared at him.

“Hurry up!”

We walked in silence to the library. There was only one chained book in the place. A dictionary. Still, if I pointed at it from afar, I might…

“Which librarian was helping you?”

Oh balls.

“Um. She’s not here. She doesn’t stay late.”

Dear Mr. Death,

My name is Stephane Clare. I am 8 and a half years old and live in Brooklyn, New York. I am in very big trouble and if you could possibly come get me right now, I would be eternally grateful. Sincerely, Stephane

What? Rich kids write to Santa, poor kids write to Death.

My mother walked up to the reference librarian and asked her if she had seen me.

“Yes, she just ran out of here like a bat out of hell and left a big mess out of the Encyclopedias.”

(I was working on this project where I would learn all the knowledge in the world, leave school and go on tour with Michael Jackson. Also, I started with ‘A’ but it was too thick, so I skipped to J. Go on, ask me anything about jade, juicing or Jupiter! Go on!)

My mother looked down at me and sent me to put all the Encyclopedias back. And then she asked the librarian if any other books needed to be put away. I was given a cart to load them on.

Then they made me put away the newspapers.

“Apologize for being a slob.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that’s quite alright, sweetheart. You have been very helpful.”

To my mother, she added “your daughter is always in here reading. She must be a very smart girl.”

You. Are. NOT. HELPING. My increasingly panicky eyes flashed at her.

We walked home in silence. When my mom was really mad she threatened to a) Drop me off at the police station where they would take me to juvy for children who don’t know how to behave b) make me join the army so I could learn discipline or c) send me to live with my grandmother in Panama where I could learn to appreciate what I have. I wasn’t sure what kind of transgression going to the library was, but I was hoping it was the “don’t know how to behave kind,” cause I didn’t like doing jumping jacks and I couldn’t speak Spanish.

The cord of my TV got wrapped around the rabbit ears, I was beaten within an inch of my life and I was forbidden from leaving Mrs. Hall’s kitchen table once the bus dropped me off.

No jumping jacks or Spanish! All in all, not too shabby for Stephane. The weeks after that were spent doing homework and writing stories at Mrs. Hall’s kitchen table. I invented child detective “Brittanica Brittany.” Every day she solved the mystery of grandmama’s boy who got punched in the face. Now, see you think Brittany did it, right? WRONG! Turns out he had annoyed another girl years before, who grew up and came back to Mrs. Hall’s to punch him in the face! It was was a twist ending! I also made up historical events and countries and wrote pretend entries about them. I swear almost my whole life I thought I made up “President Harding,” until I got to Prep school and found out he was real. The real one didn’t have any of my awesome adventures though like liberating all the children and giving them candy. I was very big on children’s rights and candy.

Anyway, I’m currently working in a white collar factory downtown. The floors are open 12 hours a day, but we can only bill for a maximum of ten hours and the company mandates a one hour break for a total of 11 hours “at work.” My method of coping with working in these factories is to put on the most uplifting music I can, choreograph lip sync numbers in my head until I can’t bear to be seated anymore. My breaking point is usually around five or six in the evening, which is good because when I get back, it’s almost quitting time.

I used to roam around the streets of lower Manhattan, near Ground Zero and the big Wall Street bull or sit down in T.G.I. Friday’s and have a delicious french onion soup, but then my friend, Alceste, pointed out the Borders bookstore a few blocks away from my office. For the last few days, I’ve spent my mandatory hour break reading books in their cracked faux leather chairs. Today, as I took the escalator up pass my usual spot on the floor with the movies, a wave of de ja vu struck me looking around at all the books. Here I was again killing time with fine literature. I went back downstairs, to my usual chair and started writing.

Dear Death…