Words matter: ‘You’re not like the rest of these guys’ was a powerful prompt I needed
During a recent meeting of the editorial board, Mara’ Rose Williams told the rest of us about a moment in her childhood that hurt her confidence for years to come. We were all struck by how powerful even a few stray words from a near stranger can be, either to bolster or to belittle, and how important it is to remember that. Over the next few days, we’re going to be telling several stories about those times when either a little encouragement or discouragement had an impact beyond anything the speaker could have imagined.
Words are powerful and can change lives. I was thinking recently of something a close friend offered more than 33 years ago that left an indelible impact on me.
“You’re not like the rest of these guys,” Tiffany Ford Yeast, a classmate, told me in 1989. She was a 16-year-old junior at Eureka High School at the time. I was an impressionable 15-year-old sophomore running with the wrong crowd. “Do something with your life,” Tiffany said.
Chase goals and dare to dream? The son of a pair of high school dropouts matters? Damn, I thought. Who knew?
Tiffany is married now and lives in Kentucky with her husband and two teen children. The seeds she planted in my head years ago never left. Even at my lowest. And trust me, there have been some trying times over the course of the last three decades and a half.
“Do something with your life,” plays continuously in my head.
Words spoken by another close friend are forever ingrained in my soul.
“Take your ass back to Warrensburg,” my lifelong friend, Rory Watkins, said during a tumultuous summer in 1995. “These streets ain’t for you.”
I lost a full football scholarship in 1992 as a freshman at the University of Central Missouri. I was mentally and spiritually broken by the time I flunked out of UCM the following year. I was back home on the mean streets of St. Louis shortly after that. Gang activity and drug dealing were at an all-time high in my neighborhood. I was a broke college student with no money. The lure of street life was tempting.
I enrolled in a local teacher’s college in the fall of 1994 but left before the fall semester ended. I played baseball at a community college the following spring but quit the team before the season was over. I was done with school, I told myself. Three universities in less than one year was too much to overcome. I need to make some quick cash, I thought.
The year I spent straddling the fence between school and the streets was challenging. It all came to a head in the summer of 1995 when I got into a verbal confrontation with a guy I didn’t even know. The temporary beef was short-lived.
A tough conversation with Rory followed. He reminded me that jail or death was on the other side of just one wrong choice. I was back at UCM in Warrensburg within two weeks to continue studying journalism and creative writing.
Rory’s advice took on even more meaning when I got the call that he’d been murdered on the streets of north St. Louis in 2008. He was 33. The news crushed me, but those were the stakes we faced for years in our hometown.
I wouldn’t trade the journey from struggling college student-athlete to wannabe thug to opinion journalist. The words of encouragement offered by two lifelong friends were priceless. They empowered me to believe that I could contribute to society in some way.
We should all have people in our lives that inspire us to be better.
This story was originally published January 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
