Did I Hear Him Right?

Did I hear Roger Clemens say he started taking B-12 shots because of his mother?

For real Momma made you do it?

I don't know if he's lying or if his trainer McNamee is lying.

What I do know is that the belief that the lives of athletes and celebrities affect the lives of children is well founded. I know from working with kids but from also once being one that you do aspire to be like the people you see and recognize as successful.

I also know that I'm grateful growing up I had a balanced list of role models.

My mother surrounded me with examples of positive African American people. I had family who I admired and respected. I had my teachers. Yes, I respected Michael Jordan, was in love with Serena Williams and Marion Jones, and was saddened by the death of Arthur Ashe.

Thank God I saw these athletes, these accomplished individuals as successful, but in a more fundamental, much more basic way I saw them as people.

Anyone I ever aspired to be like which growing up was Thurgood Marshall when I aspired to be a federal judge, was Walter Massey former President of Morehouse College when I wanted to work in education, and was Ed Bradley/ Ed Gordon/ Tavis Smiley when I said I want to grow up to be an anchorman, I recognized as a person first.

When I think of what it means to embrace one's personhood I think of something I read in a fortune cookie the other day.

"A human being is a deciding being."

Yeah we make choices and we live by them. Sometimes we're right, sometimes we're wrong, and sometimes we're damn lucky it didn't matter one way or the other.