Recently, while speaking at a conference for drug-free kids, I met a young lady who was concerned about one of her friends who happens to have a drug problem. Her friend is a fifteen year old, male, high school sophomore. Unfortunately, he has started smoking weed, drinking and occasionally a few other drugs. She wanted my opinion on how she might help her friend. I tried to give her some good advice. Let’s hope I did.

The bananas part of what happened that day is that I was actually surprised. I can almost say I was pleasantly surprised. In too many cases when I’m on the road and kids stick around after a program to talk to me, they come up to talk about the adults in their world: Their parents, their uncles and aunts. Their grandparents even! A little while back, I met a kid at a juvenile detention center who was a recovering meth addict who told me he started using at 12 years old and initially got his stuff from his “grandfather’s brother.” The really insane part is that he was a little uncomfortable with his great uncle knowing he was using, so he gave his money to his father (his dad, his old man, his pops, his role model) who then copped from the great uncle.

Now, is it just me or is that insane? Don’t misunderstand. I am not saying that it is a good thing that the fifteen year old was using. What I am saying is that hopefully that young man-and any other fifteen year old-has a mom and/or a dad at home who will be willing to do anything and everything possible to help him get his life together. Again, maybe it is just me, but I think there is something terribly wrong when we have mommas and daddies doing the same stupid stuff and making more bad decisions than their kids. THAT IS NOT HOW THE WORLD IS SUPPOSED TO OPERATE!

What in the world is going on??

Most of you know that I speak to more teens than anyone else in America and yet sometimes I feel like I’m talking to the wrong crowd. The more I talk to teenagers, the more I want to say to some of their parents: GROW UP. Have you noticed how we seem to have an abundance of adults who do not act their age? It’s like they still want to be teenagers. A couple of months ago, I was coming out of a Wal-Mart store and I saw this kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. He had his pants sagging to the point that the crotch area of the pants was maybe two or three inches above his knees. He actually had to hold them with one hand while he walked to keep them from falling. Personally, I always chuckle when I see young brothers dressed like that. I also often wonder why their parents let them dress like that. In this case I didn’t have to wonder very long, because at the door the boy stopped and waited for his dad. I couldn’t even chuckle. His father, who was at least forty years old, was holding his pants up too. His dad had an earring in one ear, his hair was braided in cornrows and the man actually had a grill on his teeth. The only thing that kept going through my mind was, how old did this man think he was. Forty year old fathers aren’t supposed to dress like teens. Forty year old fathers aren’t supposed to act like teens. Thirty year old teachers aren’t supposed to try to date teens.

I happen to be Christian, yet you will find that every major religion says that it is the parents’ role to teach the young how to live as adults, primarily through example. If you happen to be agnostic, then a cursory look at the animal kingdom will make it clear that the adult of the species is supposed to teach survival skills to the young. The animal kingdom also shows us that often without the involvement of the adults, the young will make decisions that could lead to their death. Growing up in a tough, gang infested community, there were things I learned from my parents that helped me survive. The million dollar question is what happens to the species (us) when the adults have either lost the ability or the will to teach their young? We even have condos and housing subdivisions being designed specifically for grandparents who now have to raise their grandkids because their parents are either: strung out, incarcerated or just not interested in raising their young. WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON?

My new video is out! Check it and let me know what you think. The song is What’s Goin’ On, featuring vocals by Sam Salter and starring Isaiah Washington.

Have you ever honestly wondered about this thing called honesty?  Well I have before and I still do.  Forever and a day we have said things like, honesty is the best policy.  We have often said well just tell the truth.  But what about when the truth may do more harm than good?  What about when telling someone the truth is like in the movie where Jack Nicholson says, “you can’t handle the truth”?  In this age of political correctness and spin mastery that we live in today, I really wonder if most of us can handle the truth or not.  For my part I have been guilty of thinking that others could not handle the truth and so in many cases I gloss over the truth not wanting to hurt their feelings, but then I get frustrated and sometimes upset when they can’t read between the lines and glean the truth.  How insane is that?  For me, part of my problem with the truth has been that I always want to be seen as the good guy and so I don’t want to be the bearer of really bad news, so again, I either imbed the truth in a long eloquent explanation that confuses the heck out of them or I do my famous disappearing act.  Where instead of delivering the blow of truth and candor I simply disappear.  Not to be heard from until after they have figured out the inevitable.  How dumb is that?  I had a good friend once that I lost as a friend because I didn’t want to tell her that she did a lousy job on a project I had hired her for.  I paid her, but then did not talk to her again or answer her calls or return her calls for a long time, because I didn’t want to tell her the truth about her performance.  How wrong is that.  I have friends who have stayed in unfulfilling relationships -for years -simply because they didn’t want to tell the truth about how they felt.

What do you think about this honesty thing?

I am so excited!  On the 16th I will be in Chicago for the opening of the new Harold Ramis movie, Year One!!!  It opens nationally on the 19th.  Jack Black is the star of the movie.  During some of the filming I sat next to Jack’s mom.  A really nice lady. My buddy Harold, the director and producer thought it would be funny to have me as an extra in the film and if I say so myself, the make-up people made me look marvelous! Hit me up once you’ve seen the movie and tell me what you think.

Earlier today, my youngest daughter and I were having breakfast together at the local IHOP. Halfway through our meal a large family took the two tables closest to us. Clearly, they were a little different from us. Almost everyone of them had multiple tatoos. Alexis and I were dressed for church and these folks looked like they –well I don’t know what they were dressed for, but all of the men had on Nascar t-shirts. They were white and of course my daughter and I are black. All of those differences aside the thing that seemed to picked my interest the most was their conversation. Alexis and I had basically been talking about a camp she’s going to later in the summer and what movie we were planning on going to see. Our table neighbors talked a lot about people being in jail and who was not going home so they could avoid the police. One guy said he wasn’t avoiding the police because he had just finished doing all of his time. One guy kept telling another guy to drive within the speed limit so the cops wouldn’t stop him. A woman then admonished him that if the cops stopped him, they’d “pull out all of your charges”. I guess the thing that really amazed me was that they were talking about going to jail like it was no big deal. They also had a baby, still in a baby seat and one of the guys said to the baby that he too would be able to handle jail. I guess my question was, how would all of this impact the child? and how do we get to a point that criminal activity is just no big deal? Oh, and by the way before we left, we had spoken to each other and they seemed to be basically okay people. But our values were soooooooo different. All I could say was wow.