Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 223

“Our first date was going pretty well. I’d never been on a...

“Our first date was going pretty well. I’d never been on a date before, so I was pretty proud of myself. I was finding perfect little moments to reference our previous text messages. I put my arm around her during the movie. Well, my arm wasn’t exactly touching her, but I draped it across her seat, which actually really hurt my shoulder. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. But then after the movie we were crossing the street and I actually got hit by a car. I fell on the ground and all the stuff flew out of my backpack. It was really embarrassing. My leg was killing me for the rest of the date and I had to pretend like it didn’t hurt.”

“I first met her in church last October. I wanted to talk to...

“I first met her in church last October. I wanted to talk to her for months but I was too nervous. I’d never gone on a date or had a girlfriend before. All my friends kept helping me think of strategies to ask her out. But I kept saying that I’d do it later. I kept saying that I was too busy with college applications to have a girlfriend. But really I was just too scared. After my applications were finished, I ran out of excuses. So I asked her to sit next to me in church. When the service was over, I walked her to the door and asked her out. My friends were all watching and they snapped this picture. I was crossing my arms because I was so nervous. I’d never had a conversation with a girl for that long.”

“I’ve been hyper-cautious my whole life....

“I’ve been hyper-cautious my whole life. I’ve never done a controlled substance. I had extremely limited participation in the sexual revolution. And there’s a thousand people that I should have told off but never did. And with all that caution, my life didn’t even turn out all that well. At least I can say I never got an STD.”

“This is my frog. It’s a girl frog and her name is...

“This is my frog. It’s a girl frog and her name is Colt. She likes hopping and going on the wrong side of the bed. Every time I wake up she’s always on the wrong side of the bed. She hops over there when I’m sleeping because she knows she’s not allowed and that makes her curious.”

“It was so hard to get out from under his shadow. He was so...

“It was so hard to get out from under his shadow. He was so known in the community that I couldn’t do anything without people saying: ‘That’s Sharif’s son.’ I couldn’t try and fail and be a fuck up, because it was always his name that I was representing. He lived life on his terms. That’s who he was. The allure of being a public figure was always greater than the allure of being a present father. I remember him leaving the house at 6 AM and coming back at 3 AM. There were a lot of times when I looked into the stands at a track meet or a football game, and there was nobody there. Only when I was old enough to join his fight did I finally start spending time with him. If he was organizing a protest against the Board of Education, my brothers and I were the ones setting up the tent cities. He once told me: ‘I’d love for you to love me. But as long as you grow into a man who provides for his family and cares about his community, I don’t need you to love me.’ It took me a long time to stop resenting him for not providing the things that I wanted. But eventually I had to accept I couldn’t choose who he was. But I could choose to love him.” (3/3)

“He was a public figure. He was the chief aide to Newark’s...

“He was a public figure. He was the chief aide to Newark’s first black mayor, and president of the Board of Education. I remember being sixteen or seventeen, and attending a speech that he was giving, and the whole crowd went silent the moment he stepped up to the podium. And I remember thinking: ‘How does somebody do that?’ That’s how big of a person he was. And seeing him get so frail really flipped me out. Two days ago I walked into his hospital room and he was unresponsive. They had him hooked up to IVs and they were draining blood from his stomach into a jar. I had to leave the room, and I couldn’t go back for several hours.” (2/3)

“It’s looking like my dad isn’t going to make it. So I’m...

“It’s looking like my dad isn’t going to make it. So I’m sitting here trying to figure out what life is going to be like without him. He was my North Star. Everything I know about being a man was because of him. This morning I went on a long run, and I began to feel tired. Suddenly I remember being thirteen years old, jogging alongside my father, and having him say to me: ‘As long as you can take one more step, take it.’” (1/3)

“The first time I tried to kill myself was when I was twelve...

“The first time I tried to kill myself was when I was twelve years old. It just didn’t feel like I had a space in the world. It seemed like everyone hated me. When I got my first period, the other students found my pads in my backpack and threw them around the school. Another time everyone got together and threw rocks at me. When I’d get home, I’d go straight to my room to avoid my father. I moved to New York when I turned eighteen because I felt like I needed a drastic change. And the move has given me much more confidence in myself. But I still feel very alone. Loneliness has become such a big part of me that I always migrate towards it. It’s like a person who’s always sitting next to me. And I’ve learned to like it.” (2/2)

“My father moved back in with us when I was nine. He was an...

“My father moved back in with us when I was nine. He was an alcoholic. And he was a very big man. I remember being too intimidated to look past his neck. The first couple of weeks he was very nice. Every night he would put me to bed and tell me a story of a hopping bunny. Those are my happiest memories, but he got bored with that pretty quickly. When I was sixteen, he punched me in the face so hard that he shattered my front teeth.” (½)

“I’d always been an overachiever. I graduated at the top of my...

“I’d always been an overachiever. I graduated at the top of my class in high school. I got straight A’s. I got accepted into 14 of the 17 colleges that I applied to. But when I got to Harvard, everyone around me was just as smart or smarter. My grades fell, and suddenly I was no longer exceeding expectations. All that external validation that I’d become accustomed to suddenly stopped. And I crumbled. I felt lost. I learned that I hadn’t formed an identity beyond making people proud of me. So I left school for a while and took a hard look at my life. I learned to cope with failure. I learned that it was OK to rely on other people and ask for help. Eventually I went back and graduated. I’m still not exactly sure who I am. But I’m working on it.”