Dazarreon — See Me Because

The most important people in my life right now are my siblings, my mom, and my dad - my whole family basically - people that encourage me, my teacher, for helping me get to the next grade. And in less than a year, I’ll be in high school. Just the people that encouraged me to do right. If it weren’t for my teacher, Ms. Mabon, I wouldn’t be sitting right here doing this interview. But now that I’m here, I thank her for that. ‘Cause I’m actually getting to like art. Usually, I just want to play basketball all the time. But now that I’m experiencing art, I actually want to do art. It’s fun - just a world where I can come, and I ain’t being judged, being called out by name, and stuff like that. It’s just getting away from all the negative energy, getting away from all the negative stuff. ‘Cause if Milwaukee could do something about all this violence. Here in Milwaukee, you could go spend a night in the ghetto and hear 25 gun shots. Ain’t no telling what you might hear. It might be peaceful one night, then next week, it’s just chaos.

When I was younger, I always was, like, a bigger kid. Like, I always was taller than most of the kids in my class. I always had maybe bigger feet. Most people may think, “Oh, he gonna play football.” Like, I like sports, but maybe one day, I might just try something new like tennis or golf or something. I don’t know what makes me, me. I’m still figuring that out, man. Most people are like, I’m this, I’m that. You never know, you might discover something new one day.

Most kids nowadays, you’ll never hear about, I want to be a doctor. I want to be a scientist, a biologist, all that other stuff. Nowadays, it’s just about basketball and football. If you want to do that, it’s not about training. You got to actually do your work, pass all your grades. You got to go to school to play basketball. Maybe just a couple of months ago, before the beginning of the school year, they said I was reading at a lower grade level. Then, my test scores doubled. I learned don’t just be skipping through the test. Actually, read the question. Because if you take your time right now at this minute, it ain’t hard at all, if you actually read through it. It just takes time and patience.

My grandma, she came all the way down here from Atlanta, GA. She had came down here for Christmas. And she had come up to my school. I was doing bad. And my grandma she was just encouraging me to do better on my tests. Don’t be skipping through it. Just take your time. And that’s what I’m doing now. Every time I take a test, I’m going up like that. I keep going up.

It would mean a lot to me to help people. Every time I see a homeless person, I get them something, because they need it more than I do. Once I seen this homeless man, and he was absolutely trying to do something with himself. I seen that. He was actually working. And he had on him some regular old shoes, and he had him a coat and that other stuff. He was standing on the island. And that was the day before my birthday. And I had a granola bar. And I knew I wasn’t going to eat it, so I just gave it to him.

I’m Dazarreon. I describe myself as me. If you got negative energy, don’t come around me.

Milwaukee, 2019