(2/12) “I tried to stay friends with Koreh when he came out of prison, but he was full blown.
(2/12) “I tried to stay friends with Koreh when he came out of prison, but he was full blown. He didn’t seem like a kid anymore. There weren’t as many jokes. It was always: ‘What’s the next move? What’s the next play?’ He started saying crazy stuff, like: ‘If you want to be with me, you’ve gotta hold this gun.’ And he’s getting annoyed with me. Cause I’m like: ‘I can’t do this, bro.’ By that time I had my geek squad. These was cool kids on the debate team. A couple of the seniors were getting full rides to Ivy League schools. Debate seemed like it could be my ticket out. Some days we’d be in practice for four hours. In the beginning I was inconsistent. I didn’t like to research. So if the topic was about taxes or something, I’d do OK. But if it was personal, if it was ‘poor people this,’ or ‘drug addicts that,’ I’d destroy. On weekends we were going to tournaments all over the state. Nobody ever came to see me compete. My mom would keep saying: ‘I’m gonna be there baby,’ but she never came. At baseline my parents are the nicest people ever. But they were never at baseline. Ms. DiCo would give me these articles on drug addiction, and she’d be like, ‘Your parents do love you. They aren’t bad people. Let’s read this together.’ If she ever saw that my clothes were wrinkled, she’d offer to wash them. And when I didn’t have any money, she’d cover my tournament fees. Ms. DiCo knew that home was hell for a lot of us, so some nights she would stay until 8:30. She taught us how to focus and study. Don’t get me wrong, we was kids, so there was a lot of jumping on tables and stuff like that. But I got to where I could read twenty pages in fifteen minutes. At night I’d go home and stand in front of the mirror with pencils in my mouth, just to practice my articulation. Ms. DiCo had this quote that she loved, from Victor Frankl: ‘He who has a why can endure almost any how.’ She would say it at the beginning of every practice. Some nights when we were finished she would take me out to pizza, and she’d speak life into me. She’d be like: ‘What is your why?’ I never had a good answer to that question. All I knew was that I wanted to be like Ms. DiCo.” -- source link