Tim King - A Change of Plans

 

I'm an educator. I had a student once who had to give a big speech in front of a bunch of people, and I asked him if he had it written down. He looked at me and he said, "No, Mr. King, I'mma do it acapella." [audience laughter] He meant extemporaneously, of course. I'm a guy that writes things down. But the folks at The Moth insist that you don't write this story down. And so, today, you are going to hear a story from me and I'm going to do it all acapella. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] 

 

I had this really, really, really great childhood. I grew up in a wonderful home with both my parents. They gave me every single thing I could ever imagine. It was really elaborate holidays, and great vacations, and just everything. They wanted to expose me to the world. They had me out there showing horses, horseback riding. I was the only brother at the stable out there riding a horse. That's what I was doing when I was 10 years old. They wanted to make sure that I knew the world was my oyster and I could be or do anything I wanted. It was a really, really nice, perfect upbringing. 

 

They had a plan in mind when they gave me this upbringing. And that plan was for me to go to college, then go to law school, and go off and get a really good job. And the really good job in my parents' mind was for me to be president of the United States. [audience chuckles] That's right. The guy who was Barack Obama before he was Barack Obama is standing here before you right now. [audience chuckles] I was supposed to be the first black president of the United States. That was the plan. And so, I bought into this plan. It was a good plan, right? Who doesn't want to be president? [audience laughter] 

 

So, I went off to college, majored in international affairs, went off to law school after that, and graduated from law school, and then had this opportunity to run an inner-city school in the city of Chicago. While being an educator or taking that road wasn't really part of the plan, I realized that it could really help me when I started pursuing this political career. I mean, who's not going to vote for the guy who stands there in the ad with his hands on his hips looking like Superman in front of the classroom of kids? You know, "Vote Tim King. He changes the world. He educates kids." So, I figured, "Okay, I'll take this job and maybe it'll lead me to some other things that follow along with the plan."

 

One day I was walking into the school. It was pretty early, around 07:00, 07:30 in the morning. I unlocked the door, and there was a kid sitting outside waiting to get in. His name was Keith. I said, "What are you doing?" He's like, "Oh, I'm working here, painting during the summer." "Okay, so, come on in." And Keith certainly was painting with a bunch of the other students at the school that summer. He would stay really late. The next day, showed up very early, stayed really late. And the summer eventually melted into the school year, and Keith was still coming to school really, really early and staying at school really, really late. And I just figured, "Okay, this guy just likes school," although I didn't understand how anyone could like school that much.

 

But I started kind of keeping an eye on him, because there was something up with this young man. And eventually, he started talking to me and having conversations throughout the course of the day. He'd stop by my office and say, “What was up?” He talked to me after school, and then he started doing things like asking me if he could borrow a couple bucks. I'd give him the money. I really didn't pay much attention to the reasons why he needed the money. In fact, I really wasn't all that interested in knowing, because I didn't really want to know that much, right? I just, "Here's the money. You stay in your world, it's cool, I'm in mine. You go right ahead with your business.”

 

Step by step, though, he started asking for more money more frequently. He started hanging out in my office a bit more. He started talking to me more, coming out of his shell, and I was coming out of my shell a bit with him. And one day I asked him, "What did he need this money for?" And he said, "Oh, I've got to go do my laundry." And I thought, this kid's lying. I mean, what 15-year-old needs money to go and do his laundry? But I gave him the money anyway and just said, "Okay, go do what you have to do."

 

] One night, I got a call from Keith. He was in hysterics. He asked me if I would help him, if I'd come get him from his house. And I said, "Sure, what's going on? What's wrong?" And he said, "My mom just died." So, I go over to his house. It's not a house, it's an apartment over a liquor store. And I walk in. It's pitch black in the apartment, just the light from the street lamps coming in the window. From that light, I see garbage bags, some bags with garbage in them and other bags with his stuff. No lights, not because he had turned off the lights, but because the electricity was off. There was no power in this apartment. It was cold, and he was just in hysterics, because his mother had just died. She had been battling, unbeknownst to me, drug addiction. And she lost that battle and the drugs won and she died.

 

And so, we grabbed Keith's stuff and the garbage bags, put them in my car. And then, I was faced with, where do we go? So, I said to him, "You got a friend you can stay with?" And he said, "Sure." I drop him off at a friend's house, and I went back home to my house. The next day, Keith was at school. We talked and tried to work through where he was going to live, and we found another place for him to stay temporarily. And then, I started getting closer to Keith. We started talking more. Obviously, this kind of experience brings people together.

 

And so, we would go out. I'd take him out to eat after school, or we would go to the movies, or we'd go to a basketball game, or something like that. Every time after we'd go to dinner or go to the game, I would drop him off at someone else's house and I would go home to mine. One day, Keith and I were sitting in the car after we had gone out or something, and we were trying to work through where he was going to go. He just looked at me and he said, "Why can't I just live with you? Why can't you be my dad?" And in that moment, I thought, are you crazy? [audience chuckles] Of course, you can't live with me. Of course, I can't be your dad. You don't fit into this plan. I'm going to be the first black president of the United States. [audience laughter] You can't move in with me.

 

I had put Keith in this box, this box that said, "Poor black boy inside, handle with care." And I put that box far away from me. I didn't allow myself to get close to that box, to get close to Keith. All of that went through my head in a matter of seconds, quite literally. When I came out of this kind of fog and he was still sitting there in the car, looking at me, asking if he could live with me, asking if I could be his dad, and I looked at him and I looked and I said, "Yes. Yes, you can live with me. Yes, I will be your dad." And at that moment, I changed. I felt right. I just felt right. 

 

Now, what I should have felt was terrified. [audience laughter] Because when Keith moved into my house, [audience laughter] it wasn't like one elephant coming through. It was a herd of elephants. He took over. As a matter of fact, when I met Keith and he moved in, I had a full head of hair. We're talking giant afro [audience laughter] from the 1960s, 1970s afro. You know what I'm saying? He ran it all away. It was really, really, really hard living with him. He had been used to living by himself, living on his own. I had been used to living by myself, living on my own. While living a life that was like an adult as a child, he all of a sudden had an opportunity to be a kid again, and I had lived this life like a kid with a bank account, and all of a sudden, I had to be an adult.

 

Keith and I managed to make it through our time living together. He calls me dad. I refer to him as my son. He graduated from high school, and he went on to Georgetown University, my alma mater. [audience applause] 

 

He graduated from Georgetown, moved back home to Chicago, and right now, this very moment, he works with me at a network of charter public high schools that I started called Urban Prep. He's a teacher. I started Urban Prep, because I wanted to make sure that all the Keiths in the world were taken care of. He works at Urban Prep, because he wants to be a part of changing lives, like his life was changed. When Keith and I lived together to this very day, what I wanted to do was make sure that he had a life that was filled with love, the life I had when I was growing up. People always say to me, "Aw, Tim, you changed Keith's life." And I say to them, "He changed mine." 

 

As we walked down that road of him going from being a boy to becoming a man, while I was helping him grow from boyhood to manhood, he was helping me grow. He was helping me become a better man. A little while ago, I got a text message from Keith. And the text message read, "Our family's at the basketball game. Where are you? You should be here." And I smiled, because Keith was berating me. [audience chuckles] And then, I got a little teary, because as I looked down at that text message, I realized that Keith had written "Our family." Our family. Thank you.