Free Maybe You Never Cry Again by Bernie Mac

everybody liked you better when you were a clown?”
    â€œI’m not sure. I guess maybe.” I was confused. I’d been wearing my ignorance like a badge of honor.
    â€œThink it’s cool to be a fool?” she was asking me now.
    â€œNo, ma’am.”
    â€œYou are so talented, Bernie Mac. But you’re scared of success. You’d rather belong. You’d rather be one of the gang.”
    I didn’t say anything. I hung my head.
    â€œLife ain’t about cool, son. Cool changes every day, but smart is forever.”
    Woman was right. Woman knew what she was talkin’ about.
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    There were seven hundred kids in my class, and I was always right near the bottom of the heap. But by the end of the year I’d made it almost halfway to the top. I still had a long way to go, sure, but I’d come a long way—and it felt good, brother. I ain’t lyin’.
    Had good friends, too.
    Senior year, I hooked up with Geri Duncan. She was a fine-looking girl, and I really liked her, but I got to make a confession here: Sports came first, followed by comedy. Girls were a distant third.
    Every day after school, if I didn’t have to work, I’d be on the courts. First-draft pick, motherfucker. Never say die. Havlicek, Clemente, Reggie Jackson, Pete Rose. Stand up and be counted, brother. That’s one thing I learned from those men: You don’t give up. You never give up.
    After that, it was TV. And sure, I probably watched too much TV. But I wasn’t neglecting my schoolwork anymore. And that was a good thing. Because doing well was changing me. I had more self-respect. I was feeling more confident.
    Weekends, I’d hook up with Geri and the gang and party. And you know those stories I used to tell in Friday class? Well, I was telling them now. Only I was telling them at parties, at friends’ houses; I was telling them waiting in line at White Castle. I was the got-damn entertainment.
    â€œYou the funniest guy I know,” Billy Staples told me.
    Getting up in front of people, it was nothing to me. I liked it. I liked the attention. I liked the spotlight. I liked it going all the way back to the day I got my ear pulled at the Burning Bush Baptist Church. I liked making myself heard at choir. I likedpeople watching me on the basketball court. I liked standing up in front of the class, every eye on me.
    Most of all, though, I liked making people laugh.
    â€œYou think you a clown or something?” Geri said to me one weekend. We were at a friend’s house, eating pizza, and I’d just done one of my crazy riffs.
    â€œNot a clown,” I said. “A comedian.”
    â€œThat don’t pay the bills, Bernie.”
    â€œTell it to Richard Pryor,” I said.
    â€œHa!” She laughed at me. “Ha!” Just like that. Then turned her back to show just what she thought of that.
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    Geri was a serious girl. Where I come from, the serious girls try to find serious men fast. They want to build something and get the hell out of the ghetto. I felt like Geri was always watching me, maybe trying to figure out if I was the type of serious man she wanted for herself. She had a habit of seeing things that weren’t there.
    â€œWhat you lookin’ at Rhonda for, then?” she asked me one day.
    â€œRhonda?”
    â€œDon’t act all innocent with me, Bernie Mac! I saw you looking at her!”
    She meant Rhonda Gore. Rhonda was a year younger than us, a junior, and—now that Geri had pointed her out—pretty damn cute. But until that moment I hadn’t really noticed her. Honest. I wasn’t like that. Never have been.
    â€œI ain’t lookin’ at Rhonda.”
    â€œYou think she’s pretty?”
    Man, that’s like a woman asking if you think her ass looks big. “Pretty? Rhonda? What you talkin’ about?”
    â€œBernie Mac, don’t give me that shit. You know what I’m talkin’