I felt pretty cool for the first time in my life when I was about 10 years old. Mark Greenland (who was my best friend) and I were listening to the album “License to Ill” by the Beastie Boys. We used to listen to it over and over, again and again. We thought we were kings, listening to this cool, rebellious musical style. It was by far the most influential album of life up until that point.

Mark was who got me into ordering shit from Columbia House, it was awesome, you’d look at the list of albums with the corresponding thumbnail photos of the album cover, check off a few, send off the form and a month later you’d receive your cassette tapes wrapped in cardboard. It was like unwrapping a Christmas present.

Oh the possibilities.

I once ordered the Milli Vanilli album “girl you know it’s true”, I sure as hell never told anyone that I was a fan, because it wasn’t cool - for guys anyway. I never admitted that I had an album either. I remember watching the Grammy Awards in 1990 when they won for best new artist, I was so proud of them. I wanted dreadlocks back then too because of them. I thought those guys were cool!

Anyway, Mark had a tape with the Bobby Brown song entitled “My Prerogative”, I’m assuming it was a mixed tape because neither knew the name of the song. Neither did we know what the hell he was saying, because in listening to it we thought he was saying “my barakus”. Don’t ask me what that means because I don’t know, it was the only thing we could discern from the poor recording quality not to mention it didn’t have the whole song, rather a snippet of it.

It was a catchy tune and we certainly enjoyed the little bit of it that we did have. We used to go around the house singing “my barakus “ like fools, thinking we were singing the right words. Marks brother Robert didn’t know what the hell we were saying either, so when we asked we told him it was a new swear word. Unfortunately for us Robert held it over our heads so that when he wanted something and we didn’t give in he’d threaten to tell his Father that we were swearing.

One day Robert decided to tell on us, and Eric (their Father and my Godfather) punished us by sending us both into separate rooms for half an hour or however long it was.

We thought we had something cool going on that only Mark and I were a part of, an inside joke if you will. I guess that backfired on us.

Looking back I wish I told Eric the difference, that it wasn't a swear word, but it was worth Robert not knowing. I wonder what Eric thought it meant, surely he hadn't heard it before. At that time he was a science teacher at Coley's Point Elementary and must have been up on his swear words.