In my utopian vision, everyone listens to reggae music.
There's just something about it that you can't not love. The riddim bass beat taking control of your body, the rhythmic patterns getting your head nodding and your feet hitting the pavement in unison with the music ... if you ever see me walking around Grounds in extremely contorted strides with a big grin on my face, you know I have my iPod nearby.
But I've got to learn to crawl before I can walk the streets of my Utopia. That's why I've started small, lowering my target audience from 6,492,054,130 to three. Five-year-old Robert McHenry, ninth-grader Garland Parsley and second-year Virginia student Connor Booth are all protégés to one self-appointed mentor: Me.
We'll start with young Robert, my cousin and oldest godson (also known as "Putty in Bayless' Hands").
Just before Christmas, while on vacation in Jamaica, I found a light blue T-shirt with the kid's name written all over it ... literally. On the chest, displayed prominently beneath a smiling black-and-white shot of Bob Marley, were the words, "B is for Bob."
"I think we have a winner," I said.
When I gave Robert his T-shirt on Christmas Eve, it came accompanied by a 30-second debriefing that may have bordered upon mind control. (I actually prefer the phrase, "starting 'em while they're young.")
At the Christmas party the next night -- nearly 24 hours later -- Putty was still wearing the shirt, this time over a nice Oxford collar.
"Hey Robert, what does 'B' stand for?"
His response came in the same shy voice time and time again: "Bob."
Excellent.
Who needs Sesame Street, anyway ...
When you've got an older brother like me! That's what I keep trying to tell my baby sister, 15 and a freshman in high school, and now officially a "young woman" since it would be awkward if I saw her without a shirt on.
Garland was an apt pupil from Day One -- by age three, she had mysteriously come to the conclusion that "Char Barky" (Charles Barkley) was her favorite basketball player.
So you'd think it wouldn't have been so hard to rekindle her malleability -- although with enough heat, I know she will eventually bend.
The tie-dyed Marley shirt I gave Garland for Christmas three years ago might as well have been the annual "nice sweater" I get from my mother -- the little punk opened the box, flashed the standard meek smile and initiated an internal rolling of the eyes.
Now I hear that the "Legend" CD I gave her has been getting a lot of play on her iPod as of late ... allegedly. And she really likes the new Marley shirt I gave her this past Christmas ... allegedly.
I can't say that I fully believe the Queen of Deception just yet. But even if those statements are true, I don't expect to see Garland hopping down the stairs at St. Agnes to a one-drop bass beat. At least not anytime soon -- and that's perfectly okay with me.
Wanna know why? Because this isn't Al Qaeda I'm running here. I'm not looking for extremists, just a couple of CDs that get regular play. All I want is for my students just to humor me with some Marley, some Gentleman, some Alpha Blondy for Christ's sake.
Garland at least is on that path -- something I wish I could say in regards to my biggest failure to date as a mentor: Connor Booth.
This one hurts. It really does. You spend an entire school year trying to instill your values into a child in need of direction ... and what do you get out of it? You get nothing.
Connor won't admit this, but he knows the words to almost every Bob Marley song. He had no choice, riding shotgun 10 times a week in my old school Ford Explorer his sophomore year -- on the way to school and on the way home from lacrosse practice. I caught him one day, out of the corner of my right eye. He was bobbing his head and mouthing the words to some tune, but immediately stopped when he saw that I was looking.
What that says to me is this: "I really like Bob Marley and want to listen to him, but I don't want you to think it's because YOU made me!"
I thought it was a phase, a standard spell of a rebellion from a troubled youth.
I was wrong. It was because of that miscalculation that I let off on the full court press initiated during my senior year. The seeds so painstakingly planted did not bloom.
With Garland, the pressure has been a marathon. With Connor, it was a sprint. The former project has a lot of potential; the latter is all but dead. If I can't convert 100 percent of two, how am I going to be able to reach the rest of the 6,492,054,127 people out there who, like Connor, listen to some band called Fuel?
I won't make the same mistake twice. From now on, for all protégés, I'm starting 'em while they're young. That's why I wanted Robert to know: B is for Bob.
Bayless's column runs bi-weekly on Thursdays. He can be reached at bayless@cavalierdaily.com.
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