To get a true impression of what talking trash means, you might consider spending some really casual time around Black people. Not that people in other cultures don’t talk trash. But in my experience, Black people have over generations, refined this social pass time to an extraordinary and comically unrefined level of verbal artistry. Of course this is simply my opinion based on experiences and observations that have been both incredibly humorous and also sometimes troubling, as a result of trash talking engagements gone wrong.
When I was very young, my friends and I used to constantly entertain ourselves playing a game called “The Dozens”. I have no idea where this ridiculous name came from or what the meaning might have been. All I can tell you is that the point was to literally make up disparaging comments about the family members of another person, and engage in a competition (that had literally no boundaries) to see who would be the most severely humiliated. It is important to note that the most effective target of insults when playing The Dozens was normally a person’s mother. A typical Dozens engagement might begin with something like: Your mother is so fat… or, Your mother is so stupid… or, Your mother is so Black… (I don’t dare provide the punch lines here, as readers of this work might be prompted to repeat them (which would definitely be a mistake). In any case, during our childish engagements, onlookers would typically be the judges of the verbal battles and their laughter and encouragement contributed to the excitement of the contests.
Now you have to understand that as kids, we did this almost daily and of course a very significant period of time the contests ended in a nearly harmless fight. We fought a lot too. And then, within a few minutes, we would all be friends again. I really can’t explain it any more substantively but that’s actually the way it was.
As I got older, through the natural social progression, we graduated from playing The Dozens. I think that was just because we developed an appreciation for the harmful nature of such things. But, armed with the skills we had developed as kids we learned that Talking Trash was a more mature form of entertainment among friends in the Black Community. It is not normally intended to be harmful in any way but in some cases (in sports for example) Talking Trash can be a real psychological weapon. At least that was my belief. And as an adolescent and teen, having immersed myself in the jock persona, I was a particularly well known and skilled trash talker. And that trash talking skill along with my urban daring, was the source of one of the funniest events of my sports life.
I was playing High School Basketball and this day, our team was playing a school in Cleveland, Ohio called Collinwood High. I suppose this would have been around 1969 because I was on the Junior Varsity squad. Growing up in Cleveland was not an experience in overt racism. In all of my life I had never experienced any measure of segregation, and as I recall there were few racially charged verbal clashes. There were some, but in truth, and given the presence and influences of many militant Black organizations in the urban center (Black Nationalists, Black Panthers and The Nation of Islam) the racial taunting was at the very least being initiated by both sides of the social and political arguments. That is my memory of it but in any case, it is not my intention to delve significantly into the social climate of the time in this story. The main point being, I never felt even the slightest bit of racial pressure or intimidation from Whites as a child or as young man. Certainly there was racism, but it was not a consuming social threat in my world. Nothing like it was in other areas of the country where people were being killed, segregated and publically humiliated. And in fact, I had a wide variety of friends (particularly sports teammates) of various cultural backgrounds along with many teachers, coaches and neighbors. As a result I did not grow up with a cautious nature about any particular group and certainly no substantial fears.
We had been warned by our coaches that the Collinwood game might be a tense one and that we should avoid conflict. This was an old and established –nearly exclusively working class White- area on the outskirts of the city (that I don’t think I had ever traveled to previously). The newspapers had been following some of the angry and racially charged rhetoric surrounding something that had taken place, and which had been initiated by Whites in that area. Given my parent’s sensitivities about such things, the situation in Collinwood had been discussed in our home. The interesting thing was, in the sixties, if I had a concern about any racial incidents taking place in Cleveland, it was not a concern about what any White person might do to me. It was a concern about being in the wrong part of town when the Black people got angry. Summer after summer, night after night, there was smoke and flames on the horizon, gunshots in the night and sirens in the distance.
And quite often, National Guardsmen were lining the streets on main traffic arteries. Black people -in large numbers- were not in the “We Shall Overcome” mode, they were in the “Burn Baby Burn” and “Black Power” mode. So to me, the whole Collinwood thing, by comparison, and from my limited teenaged vantage point seemed to me to be out of character for that time in our city. And rather limited in scope. But I was very young and therefore completely unconcerned.
You really had to know and understand a young Leon Walker to fully appreciate what transpired in the gym of Collinwood High that day. I remember my -White- coach being particularly nervous in the locker room that day as I put on my uniform, laced up my Converse All Stars and checked my considerable afro in the mirror. And when our team took the floor for warm-ups I was surprised at the boo’s that rained down on us. There was a nearly all White crowd in the viewing stands, but their team did include one Black guy (which I found bizarre). My team was about fifty-fifty in terms of the racial mix and we had a much better record than their team so I was composed and expecting a fairly easy win. I was in my game mode and totally unfazed by what was going on around me. Then at one point during the pre-game warm-up session as I was standing at the end of the layup line near mid-court, I heard someone say to me: “You’re never going to get out of here alive.”
My reaction was one of puzzlement as I turned to face a White player from the other team. I remember thinking, is this what these dudes call talking trash? What in the world is he talking about? In retrospect, I now know that the guy -at least in his mind- was serious.
When the game began, the guy who had made the earlier threatening comment to me was also playing defense against me; he was being abnormally physical and the White referees were obviously letting him get away with it. But by comparison to the playgrounds that I learned to play basketball on, it was a stroll in the park. I played well and our team secured a significant early lead. That’s about the time I screwed up. Well, maybe screwed up is overstating it.
I was standing along the free throw line when things got crazy. I was feeling a bit cocky, having already scored a good many points and the guy who was guarding was lined up to my right. I was leaning over with my arms resting on my knees -which was my habit- holding on to my shorts, catching my breath. A ritual I undertook before preparing to get in position to rebound if the free throw was off the mark. Then the angry White kid whispered to me: “There’s going to be blood everywhere when you try to get out of here”. That’s when my “Trash Talk” trigger just automatically tripped. Without hesitation I said to him: “I have your mother’s panties in my locker, I’ll give them to you after the game”. And then I simply ignored him. I do want to point out that given my propensity for talking trash, I would have made such a comment to most any sports adversary (just to get into their head). So I was not really focused on getting a reaction from that guy. I still wonder today what he must have been thinking. Was he Trash Talk illiterate, and therefore stunned that I had been bold enough to say something like that to him? Or did he just get mad over the nature of the comment? Or perhaps he got upset because the comment came from a Black person.
In any case, after a few seconds delay -apparently having absorbed what I had said- he leapt on me like a madman. He could have punched my lights out because I was standing right next to him, unafraid, and I was not paying any attention to him and therefore totally unprepared. But he was either not a very good fighter, or he was just so crazed and incensed by my comment that he just went berserk. He never actually hit me; he just jumped on my back, almost like he wanted a piggy back ride (flailing and screaming obscenities). Of course both teams responded and the benches cleared. But at the end of the encounter, nobody got even a scratch. But the White dude got ejected from the game. Which was fine with me. After all, getting your opponent to lose it was the goal in talking trash.
My coach was so pissed off at me that I can’t even begin to describe it. He benched me for a few minutes but then later put me back in the game. I think he was fed up with the antics of the people there as well. Coach had repeatedly asked me what I had said to the kid but I lied and said nothing. Of course he knew better because as I said, I was well known for talking trash. The coach was not buying the innocent routine from me of all people. I can’t tell you the effort it took me to suppress laughter as the coach grilled me on the sideline in the middle of that pandemonium. But I have laughed about that day many times over the years. My team departed after the game that day (with a win) and without further incident.
A couple of weeks later, my team played Cleveland East Technical High School. An all Black inner city school that was a basketball power (imagine the veritable Black Board Jungle). Our Jay Vee team won our game, but their varsity team beat our varsity team like dogs. Their gym was a cracker box. I recall it was exceptionally hot and there were lots of warped boards in the basketball floor. And worst of all, the stands were very close to the playing surface. East Tech’s Black students rained vitriol and threats down on my White teammates and they also had a good many choice words for me too. Their coaches and teachers were obviously having a very difficult controlling the crowd. Unlike at Collinwood, this time I really felt threatened. And as it turned out, I felt that way for good reason.
When the games were over, our bus was driven up to the street directly outside of their gym door. Their players were commanded to line both sides of the sidewalk (creating a protective path) and we walked through their players to the bus. The Black students (some holding bottles, sticks and bricks) were being held at bay by the faculty as they shouted obscenities. When we had safely boarded the bus, the East Tech players and coaches lined up on each side of it and each of them placed one hand on the side of the bus and walked beside it as we slowly crept off of their campus.
As an urban kid you know that there is a time for talking trash. That was not the time.
Yankee Doodle Daddy is a historical Appalachian Family Saga. The story follows a mother's reckoning as she struggles to survive and keep her four daughters alive.
Exploring the impact of literary icon Flannery O'Connor's noted legacy on the cultural realities of modern-day America, the world, and a certain author.
Exploring the impact of literary icon Flannery O'Connor's noted legacy on the cultural realities of modern-day America, the world, and a certain author.
To get a true impression of what talking trash means, you might consider spending some really casual time around Black people. Not that people in other cultures don’t talk trash. But in my experience, Black people have over generations, refined this social pass time to an extraordinary and comically unrefined level of verbal artistry. Of course this is simply my opinion based on experiences and observations that have been both incredibly humorous and also sometimes troubling, as a result of trash talking engagements gone wrong.
When I was very young, my friends and I used to constantly entertain ourselves playing a game called “The Dozens”. I have no idea where this ridiculous name came from or what the meaning might have been. All I can tell you is that the point was to literally make up disparaging comments about the family members of another person, and engage in a competition (that had literally no boundaries) to see who would be the most severely humiliated. It is important to note that the most effective target of insults when playing The Dozens was normally a person’s mother. A typical Dozens engagement might begin with something like: Your mother is so fat… or, Your mother is so stupid… or, Your mother is so Black… (I don’t dare provide the punch lines here, as readers of this work might be prompted to repeat them (which would definitely be a mistake). In any case, during our childish engagements, onlookers would typically be the judges of the verbal battles and their laughter and encouragement contributed to the excitement of the contests.
Now you have to understand that as kids, we did this almost daily and of course a very significant period of time the contests ended in a nearly harmless fight. We fought a lot too. And then, within a few minutes, we would all be friends again. I really can’t explain it any more substantively but that’s actually the way it was.
As I got older, through the natural social progression, we graduated from playing The Dozens. I think that was just because we developed an appreciation for the harmful nature of such things. But, armed with the skills we had developed as kids we learned that Talking Trash was a more mature form of entertainment among friends in the Black Community. It is not normally intended to be harmful in any way but in some cases (in sports for example) Talking Trash can be a real psychological weapon. At least that was my belief. And as an adolescent and teen, having immersed myself in the jock persona, I was a particularly well known and skilled trash talker. And that trash talking skill along with my urban daring, was the source of one of the funniest events of my sports life.
I was playing High School Basketball and this day, our team was playing a school in Cleveland, Ohio called Collinwood High. I suppose this would have been around 1969 because I was on the Junior Varsity squad. Growing up in Cleveland was not an experience in overt racism. In all of my life I had never experienced any measure of segregation, and as I recall there were few racially charged verbal clashes. There were some, but in truth, and given the presence and influences of many militant Black organizations in the urban center (Black Nationalists, Black Panthers and The Nation of Islam) the racial taunting was at the very least being initiated by both sides of the social and political arguments. That is my memory of it but in any case, it is not my intention to delve significantly into the social climate of the time in this story. The main point being, I never felt even the slightest bit of racial pressure or intimidation from Whites as a child or as young man. Certainly there was racism, but it was not a consuming social threat in my world. Nothing like it was in other areas of the country where people were being killed, segregated and publically humiliated. And in fact, I had a wide variety of friends (particularly sports teammates) of various cultural backgrounds along with many teachers, coaches and neighbors. As a result I did not grow up with a cautious nature about any particular group and certainly no substantial fears.
We had been warned by our coaches that the Collinwood game might be a tense one and that we should avoid conflict. This was an old and established –nearly exclusively working class White- area on the outskirts of the city (that I don’t think I had ever traveled to previously). The newspapers had been following some of the angry and racially charged rhetoric surrounding something that had taken place, and which had been initiated by Whites in that area. Given my parent’s sensitivities about such things, the situation in Collinwood had been discussed in our home. The interesting thing was, in the sixties, if I had a concern about any racial incidents taking place in Cleveland, it was not a concern about what any White person might do to me. It was a concern about being in the wrong part of town when the Black people got angry. Summer after summer, night after night, there was smoke and flames on the horizon, gunshots in the night and sirens in the distance.
And quite often, National Guardsmen were lining the streets on main traffic arteries. Black people -in large numbers- were not in the “We Shall Overcome” mode, they were in the “Burn Baby Burn” and “Black Power” mode. So to me, the whole Collinwood thing, by comparison, and from my limited teenaged vantage point seemed to me to be out of character for that time in our city. And rather limited in scope. But I was very young and therefore completely unconcerned.
You really had to know and understand a young Leon Walker to fully appreciate what transpired in the gym of Collinwood High that day. I remember my -White- coach being particularly nervous in the locker room that day as I put on my uniform, laced up my Converse All Stars and checked my considerable afro in the mirror. And when our team took the floor for warm-ups I was surprised at the boo’s that rained down on us. There was a nearly all White crowd in the viewing stands, but their team did include one Black guy (which I found bizarre). My team was about fifty-fifty in terms of the racial mix and we had a much better record than their team so I was composed and expecting a fairly easy win. I was in my game mode and totally unfazed by what was going on around me. Then at one point during the pre-game warm-up session as I was standing at the end of the layup line near mid-court, I heard someone say to me: “You’re never going to get out of here alive.”
My reaction was one of puzzlement as I turned to face a White player from the other team. I remember thinking, is this what these dudes call talking trash? What in the world is he talking about? In retrospect, I now know that the guy -at least in his mind- was serious.
When the game began, the guy who had made the earlier threatening comment to me was also playing defense against me; he was being abnormally physical and the White referees were obviously letting him get away with it. But by comparison to the playgrounds that I learned to play basketball on, it was a stroll in the park. I played well and our team secured a significant early lead. That’s about the time I screwed up. Well, maybe screwed up is overstating it.
I was standing along the free throw line when things got crazy. I was feeling a bit cocky, having already scored a good many points and the guy who was guarding was lined up to my right. I was leaning over with my arms resting on my knees -which was my habit- holding on to my shorts, catching my breath. A ritual I undertook before preparing to get in position to rebound if the free throw was off the mark. Then the angry White kid whispered to me: “There’s going to be blood everywhere when you try to get out of here”. That’s when my “Trash Talk” trigger just automatically tripped. Without hesitation I said to him: “I have your mother’s panties in my locker, I’ll give them to you after the game”. And then I simply ignored him. I do want to point out that given my propensity for talking trash, I would have made such a comment to most any sports adversary (just to get into their head). So I was not really focused on getting a reaction from that guy. I still wonder today what he must have been thinking. Was he Trash Talk illiterate, and therefore stunned that I had been bold enough to say something like that to him? Or did he just get mad over the nature of the comment? Or perhaps he got upset because the comment came from a Black person.
In any case, after a few seconds delay -apparently having absorbed what I had said- he leapt on me like a madman. He could have punched my lights out because I was standing right next to him, unafraid, and I was not paying any attention to him and therefore totally unprepared. But he was either not a very good fighter, or he was just so crazed and incensed by my comment that he just went berserk. He never actually hit me; he just jumped on my back, almost like he wanted a piggy back ride (flailing and screaming obscenities). Of course both teams responded and the benches cleared. But at the end of the encounter, nobody got even a scratch. But the White dude got ejected from the game. Which was fine with me. After all, getting your opponent to lose it was the goal in talking trash.
My coach was so pissed off at me that I can’t even begin to describe it. He benched me for a few minutes but then later put me back in the game. I think he was fed up with the antics of the people there as well. Coach had repeatedly asked me what I had said to the kid but I lied and said nothing. Of course he knew better because as I said, I was well known for talking trash. The coach was not buying the innocent routine from me of all people. I can’t tell you the effort it took me to suppress laughter as the coach grilled me on the sideline in the middle of that pandemonium. But I have laughed about that day many times over the years. My team departed after the game that day (with a win) and without further incident.
A couple of weeks later, my team played Cleveland East Technical High School. An all Black inner city school that was a basketball power (imagine the veritable Black Board Jungle). Our Jay Vee team won our game, but their varsity team beat our varsity team like dogs. Their gym was a cracker box. I recall it was exceptionally hot and there were lots of warped boards in the basketball floor. And worst of all, the stands were very close to the playing surface. East Tech’s Black students rained vitriol and threats down on my White teammates and they also had a good many choice words for me too. Their coaches and teachers were obviously having a very difficult controlling the crowd. Unlike at Collinwood, this time I really felt threatened. And as it turned out, I felt that way for good reason.
When the games were over, our bus was driven up to the street directly outside of their gym door. Their players were commanded to line both sides of the sidewalk (creating a protective path) and we walked through their players to the bus. The Black students (some holding bottles, sticks and bricks) were being held at bay by the faculty as they shouted obscenities. When we had safely boarded the bus, the East Tech players and coaches lined up on each side of it and each of them placed one hand on the side of the bus and walked beside it as we slowly crept off of their campus.
As an urban kid you know that there is a time for talking trash. That was not the time.
