My primary school teacher once poured a bottle of curdled school milk forcefully down my throat. Then I threw it up all over her suede shoes. I'd rather have drunk from the spittoon in Barney's barber shop.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My mother, who grew up in Pennsylvania, literally washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, 'Shut up!' to my sister. She would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially when she wasn't around.
In fact I was slightly badly behaved at school and got in trouble. I would get a bee in my bonnet about something I thought wasn't right, and I would ape about too, to make everybody laugh. That was my way through my girls' school, because I wasn't very academic.
In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible.
I was something of a prankster. One time I put a ski mask on my head and used a fake gun on the school secretary so that I could get some of my friends out of detention.
And I began to tell little anecdotes that had happened to me, and people would laugh. And I began to like that, you know. But I knew that, 'cause I'd do that in school, but I wouldn't do it out there in front of all them people.
I used to be a drinker but I found out how bad it was and I let it alone.
Making my class laugh and getting in trouble. I was the class clown.
I had a hard time with bullying. I ate lunch in the bathroom.
The fact that I was black and desirous to do my work, the other kids would call me a coconut, as if I were somehow attempting to be white. The bullying was real: I'd get punched, spat at, terrible things.
When I was 5, I did a commercial for Whirlpool sitting on a tree stump eating a popsicle that dripped all over my clothes.