“You leave him alone!!” she said, pounding her fists on the dude’s back. “That boy is going to be a ballplayer!!!”
I was going to be someone special. That’s what my mommy always told me.
I was going to be Superman.
My full name is Shaquille Rashaun O’Neal. My mom, Lucille O’Neal, was on her own when she had me. She was seventeen years old when she got pregnant. I never knew why my
mother gave me a Muslim name. I guess it might have been because she felt like an outcast, or thought nobody loved her.
Shaquille
meant “little one” and
Rashaun
meant “warrior.” I was her little warrior. It was going to be me and my mom against the world.
My grandmother Odessa Chambliss was a Christian woman, so she insisted on calling me Shaun. My grandma was the one who always told me, “Believe
in yourself.” Odessa always talked in a low voice, kind of like I do now, and she was always smiling.
Grandma Odessa looked like the perfect church woman. She
wore a dress all the time. She never cursed, never raised her voice, always had a Bible nearby. I never really saw her hair because she wore these curly wigs all the time.
Grandma was a dreamer, and she let me know it was okay for me to
dream, too. I always felt safe when I was with my grandmother. Of course, she used to sneak up on me and give me cod liver oil. I hated that stuff, but she swore by it. She was sure it would cure everything. I’d be filling up a big bowl of Trix cereal in the morning and just about to dig in when she’d slip that teaspoon of cod liver oil under my nose. A perfectly good breakfast ruined.
For the
longest time I didn’t understand why my last name was different from everyone else in the family. My mom and dad were Lucille and Philip Harrison, but I was O’Neal. So how does that work? Turns out that O’Neal was my mother’s maiden name. When my mother married Philip, she took her husband’s last name, but she kept me as O’Neal. I really didn’t care too much, I guess, but one day in school one of
my teachers asked me, “Shaquille O’Neal? How come your name is different from your daddy?” I went to my mom for some answers.
She decided I should go meet my biological father. His name was Joseph Toney. I think I was about seven years old. I remember he was tall, a nice-looking guy, but he didn’t have a whole lot to say to me. They told me he had a scholarship lined up at Seton Hall to play
basketball but he got into drugs and blew his chance.
The day I went to meet him he was nice enough. He said, “What’s up? Hey kid, how are you doing? I’m your daddy.” I wasn’t really sure what to think. I had this other guy at home who sure acted like my daddy. Philip Harrison had given me a place to live, some toys, and even though I got in trouble a lot, I was cool with my life. When you are
a kid, all you know is what you’ve got. After I met my “real” daddy, I went home with my mom to Philip, who as far as I was concerned was the only father I was going to pay any attention to.
The area of Newark that we lived in was poor, with mostly black
people on every corner. It was dangerous, there was lots of crime, and it was the greatest place on earth if you were a drug dealer. Business
was always booming for those cats.
I was born five years after the Newark riots, which was one of those memories that all the grown-ups talked about in real serious tones.
The riots apparently started after this guy named John Smith—like the English guy who loved Pocahontas, only this cat was a black taxi driver—passed two cops driving on Fifteenth Avenue. The two cops are white, and they arrest
John Smith because he passed them on a double line, so they drag him down to the precinct, which is right across the street from the Hayes Home housing project. Everyone in the projects is watching the police beat this guy as they haul him in, and they’re convinced those white cops are about to kill a black man for a traffic violation.
The place explodes.
For the next six days Newark is a war
zone. There’s rioting, shooting, and looting. People are throwing rocks through windows and tipping over cars. Too much poverty, anger, drugs, and inequality.
My parents were in the middle of it. They couldn’t leave their house because it was too dangerous. They had relatives who were killed during the riots and some uncles and cousins who were arrested and thrown in jail for no good reason at
all. But even so, they never talked about racism too much with me. I didn’t grow up in a home where white people were the enemy. My parents didn’t feel that way, and they didn’t teach me to hate anyone, even after what they had seen with their own eyes.
Besides, do you think when I am eight years old that I care about the Newark riots? All I want to know is how do I get myself a skateboard.
I didn’t know I was poor. I guess I should have. We moved all the time because we couldn’t make the rent. My mom tried to feed a young family of six on Chicken a la King out of a can. We ate a lot of franks and beans and noodles. Lots of noodles. I was hungry all
the time, but I figured that was just because I was so damn big. Every morning that I woke up it seemed like I had grown another couple
of inches.
That was a problem for two reasons: shoes and clothes. I kept growing out of everything. I had to wear the same stuff to school over and over again because we couldn’t afford to keep buying me new threads all the time. I heard about it. Kids would say, “Hey dawg, didn’t you have that shirt on yesterday?”
Nobody was shocked that I turned out to be a big guy. My natural father was tall
and my mom is six foot two. Lucille O’Neal is my best friend. My mom has always, always, been there for me. She learned to be tough at a very young age. Life wasn’t always very kind to her, so she did her best to protect me from all the bad things that could happen to a wise-ass kid like me.
She knew how difficult it was to be taller than everyone else, because she had to deal with the same thing
when she was growing up.
For example, my mom had to bring my birth certificate everywhere with her. They didn’t believe I was only nine. The bus driver, the subway conductor, the guy behind the counter at McDonald’s. Can’t a kid get a Happy Meal without all this hassle?
I got teased a lot for my size starting when I was around five or six. I remember walking down the street one day and this
kid called me Big Foot. I looked down and he was right: my sneakers were huge.
As I got older, the names got nastier: Sasquatch, Freak-quille. Shaquilla Gorilla. I didn’t like that last one at all. I figured out I had a couple of choices. I could learn to be funny to get kids to be on my side… or I could just plain beat them up.
I did both.
When I started growing bigger I realized I had to
master the little things. I had to be able to do all the things regular people did so they’d stop concentrating on my size. That’s why I started break-dancing. I just loved to dance. I had good feet, so I could really move. We used to have contests and I became a really fabulous dancer. I
could twirl around, spin on my head, all the stuff you see those little black kids do on television. I was
so good all the kids forgot I was tall and goofy, and they started calling me Shaqa-D cuz I could move.
I was dancing all the time. Everyone loved it. I loved it. But one day when I was dancing I hurt my knee. It was really bothering me so I went to the doctor, and he told me I had Osgood-Schlatter disease, which is something kids get when they start growing way too fast for their bodies.
When
I got home, I told my father I had Osgood-Schlatter disease. He punched me and said, “You ain’t got Osgood nothing! You’re out there break-dancing and that’s why you’re wrecking your knees!” So I got a good ass whupping for that.
The truth is, my dad spent a lot of time beating me. If I did something wrong, he’d smack me and say, “Be a leader, not a follower.” I was really scared of my father.
He beat me all the time, but I would never call any of those whuppings unjustifiable. I deserved it. He did it to keep me in line. I swear, if he hadn’t, I’d probably be in jail right now—or worse. Without my father staying on me, I never would have become Shaq or The Diesel or any of those other crazy names I’ve invented for myself.
Philip Harrison was a military man all the way. His friends
called him Butchy, but all my friends called him Sarge. He was very, very big on discipline. Things had to be done his way, or else.
Ironically, that kind of tough-love approach hurt him in his military career. At one time he was a drill sergeant, but he spent so much time challenging people and cussing them out he was demoted. They put him in charge of running the gym on the base, but his temper
got him into trouble there, too. They got tired of him cursing at people, so they made him a supply sergeant.
Nobody messed with Sarge, especially me. His family was Jamaican and when he did something wrong as a kid, he got a beating. He just did what he was taught.
And it’s true—I did a lot of stupid stuff when I was a kid because I wanted to be cool. I’d carry chains in my book bag. I’d go
to the store
and steal stuff. I’d break into cars, just because I could. I’d break into people’s houses and take little things, nothing big, then brag about it after I was sure I wouldn’t get caught.
That kind of stuff drove my dad crazy. He wanted me to make something out of myself. He made mistakes when he was a kid and his father beat him within an inch of his life. So that was what he was
going to do with me. He’d get me with his fists, his belt, a broom, whatever was around. It was his version of corporal punishment. Whenever I did something stupid he’d beat me so hard I’d have to think twice about doing it again.
Sometimes fear really is the best weapon.
Because my dad was in the military we moved a lot, so every time I went to a new school I would find out who the toughest
guy was and I’d measure him up. I’d test him out first by being funny, then I’d beat him up. That way I’d be the New Guy in the school, instead of being the “new guy” in the school. Big difference.
When I was really small we lived on Oak Street in Jersey City. We were living with my grandmother Odessa, and she lived across the street from a park. She was a nurse and my mother was right there,
with the TV in the window, so they were watching me all the time. It was safer in Jersey City than in Newark; there were only a few juvenile delinquents in the neighborhood instead of one on every corner.
There was this guy Pee Wee who lived right near the park, and I was scared of him because he had this big dog, a German shepherd named Sam. Every day like clockwork around 4:15 p.m., we’d be
in the park and Sam would come charging out of the house and chase all the kids. Pee Wee and his brothers were drug dealers. I hated that dog. I was scared to death of it.
Now, my father came home from work one night and he brought me a present. They were Chuck Taylor sneakers, brand-new, the original white canvas ones. I couldn’t believe it. I never had shoes like that. I knew we couldn’t really
afford them. So my dad tells me, “Hey, you’ve got to wear these shoes to school, to play ball. You’ve got
to wear them in the summer. They’ve got to last. Don’t mess them up, you hear me?”
I go outside in my new Chuck Taylors and I’m strutting around and I’m feeling good. I am
The Man
. But at 4:15 the screen door opens and that damn dog Sam starts coming right for me. I start running and I try
to jump the fence, but I’m so big I’m having trouble scrambling up there. My feet are dangling and I’m trying to hoist myself over, but the dog gets the back of my shoe and rips it. So I go home and tell my dad and he says, “I don’t want to hear that crap!” and he punches me.
The next day I get myself a stick, and when Pee Wee’s dog comes out I try to break his neck. I’m so mad about the Chuck
Taylors I’m trying to kill that dog Sam. The dog runs back in the house and Pee Wee comes out acting real tough and I hit him with the stick, too. Next thing you know his three brothers come out and they beat the stuffing out of me. I am so messed up my father doesn’t even bother to whip me again.
I was on punishment a lot. I used to be sent to my room, and to keep myself from going crazy I’d
close my eyes and create all these dreams. In one dream I was the Incredible Hulk, so I’d close my eyes and start growling, “Aaaaaahhhhh.” In my next dream I was Superman, so I’d close my eyes and flex my muscles and then I was flying. Next time, I was a hero in
Star Wars
.
Once in a while, I’d close my eyes and I’d dream I was one of those drug dealers on the corner. They always had money. The
wads of bills would be sticking out of their pockets so we could see how well they were doing. I’d think about what it would be like to be them for a second, but I was always on punishment so I couldn’t even get out of the house to do something stupid like that. See, Pops? Your “tough love” worked.
Grandmother Odessa hated it when I was on punishment. Funny thing was, I was on punishment in her
house, because we couldn’t afford our own place. After I screwed up and my dad beat me, she’d
wait until he left and that’s when she’d sneak in with a glass of milk and a slice of Entenmann’s pound cake and tell me in that low voice, “Here, have this. Stop crying now. It’s going to be all right. You’re my baby. Don’t worry.”
I used to tell my grandma, “When I get rich, I’m going to buy you a
house.” She’d smile and tell me, “Baby, I don’t need a new house. This one is just fine.”
We lived with my grandmother for a while, but she and my father didn’t really get along that well so we ended up moving to Newark, on Vassar Avenue. My grandfather, my dad’s father, was this hard-core Jamaican man, and we moved in with him. We also lived with my dad’s brother and some of my aunts and a ton
of cousins. The house was full. It was a pretty big house, nine or ten rooms, but there weren’t enough beds to go around. I slept on the floor with a bunch of my cousins.
My grandpa had dreams of being rich, so every day he’d give me and my cousin Andre a dollar to go buy the Quick Pick lottery ticket and another dollar to buy bread. My cousin and I were entrepreneurs. We’d buy the Quick Pick,
but then we’d buy the cheap, stale bread that cost sixty cents and use the other forty cents to buy gum. We did that a few times before someone in the house said, “How come this bread never tastes fresh?” We got found out and got a whupping from my crazy grandpa.