Slopoke

Growing up in Detroit’s inner city, my friends were neighborhood kids, the kind of kids who made their fun on concrete. We didn’t have the luxury of green lawns or flower boxes in front of our homes. Instead, we made do with what was around us—an empty parking lot became our baseball field, the cracked walls of abandoned buildings our chalked-up strike zones. Kick the can in the alley was another favorite. These were the games we played, a patchwork of make-do creativity. It was how we spent our days, feeling like we owned the streets, like this was *our* world. 

I suppose that's what most kids do—play with what they have around them. But we weren’t oblivious to our surroundings. We knew the truth of where we lived. We weren’t in some idealized neighborhood like in "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" where the houses were neat and tidy and everything had a place. No, we lived in the “ghetto,” as people called it then, and sometimes we wore that label like a badge of honor. We might’ve been poor, but we were street smart. And in our heads, that made us cooler, tougher, savvier than the suburban kids we imagined lived on soft grass with perfect smiles.

That idea worked fine, as long as we stayed in our world. As long as we were in the comfort of our own neighborhood, surrounded by friends who understood the rules. But the moment we crossed those invisible borders into the suburbs, everything changed. We were no longer the cool, confident ones. We were lost. And when you found yourself alone among suburban kids, without your tribe, well, you might as well have landed on another planet.

I was a little jealous of those suburban kids, but mostly I was prejudiced against them. I didn’t understand their world, and that frightened me in a way I didn’t want to admit. My parents, however, had different ideas. They were true believers in the inner city, but they also wanted something better for us. They believed that education was the key, so in fifth grade, my sister Margaret and I were enrolled in a school out in the suburbs—Saint Frances de Sales. The school had once been a Catholic school, but by the time we attended, it had been converted into a public school. Not that it mattered much. The suburban kids gave it their own name: Ludington, after some donor who had given the school books.

I wasn’t one of the hip kids at Ludington. I looked like I could fit in—my skin was white, my hair neatly brushed—but my mother, bless her, had a habit of overdoing it when it came to clothing. She held tight to her puritan values, and while the cool boys were rocking silk shirts with wide collars, I was always in a button-down, the top button fastened tight. I was a nervous, shy kid, one of those boys who admired girls from afar but never quite found the nerve to talk to them.

I remember there was this one girl, Mary Lovely. I had a crush on her, though I don’t think we ever exchanged more than a few words. When her family moved away, I did muster up the courage to tell her, “We’re going to miss you,” but that was the extent of my bravery. Not exactly Romeo.

Then came the day that stands out as one of the most embarrassing of my childhood. A suburban friend, John Amberger, invited me over to his house to play. John was one of the cool kids—suburban cool, at least. This meant I’d be venturing into unfamiliar territory, and I was nervous. To make things worse, John casually mentioned that we’d be playing with the mayor’s children. Yes, the *mayor*—someone I’d only ever heard my parents talk about in reverent tones. It felt like I was stepping into a different universe.

When my father dropped me off at John’s house, I remember feeling out of place from the get-go. The mayor’s kids were there, and we were all set to play a game of four square. The court was drawn in chalk on the street in front of their house, something I felt comfortable with—finally, a game I knew well. But just as we were getting ready, the mayor’s wife came outside with a treat for all of us. She handed each kid a large caramel lollipop called a Slowpoke.

Here’s where everything went downhill. I was holding my Slowpoke, waiting for my turn in the game, and I had no idea what to do with it. Everyone else seemed perfectly at ease, but I panicked. Instead of setting it down or, I don’t know, just holding it in my hand, I stuck the sucker, candy side down, into my shirt pocket. 

The moment I did it, I knew I had made a mistake. The other kids looked at me like I had just committed some unspoken social crime. “Gross,” they said, wrinkling their noses. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. I’d been trying so hard to fit in, to blend into this world that wasn’t mine, and now I had blown it. The suburban kids, with their easy smiles and their confident air, knew I didn’t belong. I knew it too.

I never played with the mayor’s children again after that. The incident solidified what I had always feared—that suburban kids were somehow better than me. Or at least, that’s how it felt in my young mind.

Later that day, when I finally returned to the familiar streets of the inner city, I was relieved. I ran to find my neighborhood friends, and we played kick the can in the alley like we always did. There, I could be myself. No one cared if my shirt was buttoned up to the top, and no one would’ve blinked twice if I put a sucker in my pocket. It was a world where I understood the rules, where I didn’t feel the need to apologize for who I was.