Barack or Plaxico: Pick Your Role Model

Man, the pickin's sure seem thin out there in the dialogue-o-sphere lately.

I've plumbed theroot.com, afronerd.com, essence.com, blackpressusa.com and way too many others seeking inspiration. (Watching the soaps and "Big Brother..." on The Africa Channel hasn't helped one bit. Grimmacing at snippets of The Bravo Channel's "Real Housewives of the ATL" only numbed the senses. Sadly, C-SPAN's coverage of shabbily-staged summit on older black activists' and officials' reviews of the election lulled me to sleep. Here's the best I could come up with....


(VIDEO: YOUTUBE)

NO! Not the scary prospect of Junior emulating Yo Gabba Gabba's DJ Lance (above). I mean this piece of work in nymag.com's Nov. 9 Intelligencer..."Revenge of the Black Nerd".

It says nothing never uttered before really, except to the reactive reference to Obama's recent election.

Still, it got me thinking slightly. It helped in that constant assessment of priorities. I'd entered the Thanksgiving Weekend (rather, five days away from Pre-K) with a faint sense of dread. How would I keep Junior occupied that long? How would I nurture his inner nerd (so the charter school takes him next year) as well as his inner jock (the great inducer of naps)?

Turns out we did a lot of counting: of Hot Wheeels cars, checkers pieces won (because I let him), basketball jerseys (7), times Ping clubs were spotted as I thumbed (on demand) through golf magazines while he pooped.

I totally lost count of how many times we viewed a DVD compilation of "Little Rascals" episodes that I borrowed, on a whim, from the local library. And I know not a waking hour passed all weekend when I didn't fret over Junior's "skills evaluation" tomorrow night for the Y's 4-to-5 year old basketball league.

How much does it really matter how the volunteer coaches rate him at Target Passing, Ten Meter Drilling and Spot Shooting at his age? In an age when Super Bowl stars like Plaxico Burress are shooting themselves in the proverbial foot, and NBA stars like Stephon Marbury are portrayed as dodging the competition they're paid insanely to engage in; the doping, the baby mama drama, the DUIs, etc.

At least we spent as much time gorging on the Noggin and Sprout channels as we did ballon-sword fighting and tossing the Nerf (rainy weekends suck). But if I'd had my priorities in order, I'd have carved out some serious reading time with him as well.