Chapter 9 The Defeat

Up until the age of four, my little brother, Tremayne, habitually sucked his thumb. If you "google" old school, my dad’s picture would pop up. I can remember him raving under his breath. “Ain't no boy of mine will be sucking his thumb”. Dad was going to nip this in the bud.

I imagine he did not think the implementation of this discipline would require any difficulty. After all, he had already locked me down. All dad needed to do to admonish my disobedience was flash that “Allen Scowl.” I obeyed immediately (funny how things inevitably turn out because I definitely did not stay that way). I did not need a spanking to cry. If Dad grazed his hand over his belt buckle like Clint Eastwood, I would start bawling. (What he did not know was the burgeoning of my brilliance began even then. I remember thinking at the age of six, if I hyperbolized my visceral manifestation of fear preemptively toward his castigation, it would precipitate his fraternal nurturing sensibilities thus assuaging his resistance toward my abscondence from corporal punishment. I remember thinking that.)

Tremayne, however, would not cry. Ever. No matter what Dad did. Tremayne would not stop sucking his thumb. Dad tried scolding him. Motivating him in the various creative ways that were legal back then. Tremayne continued to suck his thumb in defiance as if trolling my Dad was the only reason he did it. Dad never won this battle. Tremayne stopped sucking his thumb on his own, but dad knew something different brewed in his younger boy.

That event opened the flood gates to the many times Tremayne bucked authority before his teenage years; Tremayne would lie. Tremayne would tear up stuff my parents owned. Tremayne would frame me to avoid getting into trouble. Tremayne would put all of his vegetables in his mouth, ask to go to the bathroom and spit out the food in the toilet to avoid swallowing it. Tremayne would run away with a sleeping bag and hide behind the HVAC unit at the side of the house. Tremayne would hide notes to our parents to inform them of his poor conduct in class. Inevitably, they would resort to stapling the notes to his shirt. Tremayne, one time, sick of hearing a teacher’s incessant nagging, put his fingers in his ears while she spoke to him. Tremayne would get all A’s on his report card and an “N” for conduct. The “N” stands for needs improvement. When Dad saw that “N”, I swear his nicely manicured Jerry Curl hairstyle combusted into flames.

When Dad started coaching us in football, we could not believe it. This man, who threw the Nerf football in the yard with us, disappeared and became an insane person, barking orders and torturing little kids with sprints and leg lifts. How I dealt with the situation before the next football season was to train. I would do push-ups and leg lifts and then go show my Dad and tell him I am getting ready for him. How Tremayne dealt with it was to walk up to Dad and tell him, “I quit.” My Dad, who did not get mad, came up with the brilliant strategy to tell Tremayne he could quit football if he could find someone to buy his equipment and repay the hundreds of dollars invested. Dad knew Tremayne possessed talent, and no son of his was going to be a quitter. He figured an eight-year-old kid, without a car and a phone, would not find a buyer, thus having no choice but to submit to his will. Tremayne found someone to buy his equipment by that afternoon. Of course, Dad squirmed out of that promise, and that year Tremayne became the best Pop Warner football player in the city, running for over two thousand yards and leading the team to an undefeated season and a city championship. I still remember Dad giving a speech about each individual player on that championship team as he handed each of them a trophy. He saved Tremayne for last. I still remember that speech to this day. Up until that time, I had never seen Dad like that before. Euphoric. Dad’s chiseled sable face overflowed with joy like boiling water spewing over a pot. I had to make the hall of fame at my college before I got that same speech.

I recently realized Dad treated us differently. The last time Tremayne and I visited Dad without our kids, Dad and I greeted each other like lifelong war buddies, hugging each other and grinning so hard our cheeks almost splintered. We stayed in his garage laughing and trash-talking and telling stories for hours. Tremayne would come out periodically to check on us, hang out a little, and take Dad’s side in one of our “debates,” then go back into the house. The next morning, while Dad made breakfast, our festive talk continued as I wolfed down two plates of my dad’s delectable breakfast of eggs, potatoes, and sausage; taking me back to the excitement of when he cooked in my childhood. Tremayne stood quietly in the corner. I went upstairs to take a shower, came back down, and saw Tremayne and Dad in the front yard, talking intimately. Incredibly, I saw something I rarely saw from Allen men. Dad was… listening. For what seemed like hours. When they finally came back in, Dad and I engaged in our joviality again. We then went to his fiancé’s house, Gail (one of my favorite people in the world) and continued our little party. I made a joke about Tremayne getting special treatment, and Dad got offended. He said, “I do not favor Tremayne over you. I love you both equally and would die for both of you.” Then, I got offended. Equally???

I always assumed I was the favorite. 😂

The first time I disobeyed Dad, I did it at the age of eleven. And I did it deliberately. I planned it. I rehearsed my lines. I executed it to perfection. He did not spank me. He did not touch me. He just gave me a look. And to this day, the memory of that look still keeps me respectful (in all honesty, still scares me a little). I grew quickly and looked the way the son of a six-foot-seven-man proud black man should look. Private schools already recruited me in the eighth grade because they looked at me and looked at my Dad and knew I would grow into something special. Everyone expected me to be the best player on every team I played on until the age of forty when my own son dunked on me. But Tremayne did not grow quickly. He started high school so small that he became the team manager for the football team. He also did not possess the rough-and-tumble rugged look of the Allen clan. His mocha skin covered my mom’s features, making him particularly good looking (some girl cousins said), but not very intimidating. Dad pushed me. But he needed to pull Tremayne. I was a fire he needed to contain and control. Tremayne was a flame he needed to ignite.

And ignite it did. I have gone through Tremayne accolades before, but I can sum it up like this: If anyone in the universe googled “former star athletes at Brentwood Academy,” Tremayne Allen is at the top of the list, along with Jalen Ramsey, Derrick Barnett, Darius Garland, and Dawson Knox (all in the NBA or NFL). You will not find my name anywhere in that search.

Often, Dad would tell me stories of his coaching strategy for football and basketball he used over the years as an educator in the public school system. He would make his players run and terrorize them with torturous calisthenics. He would go up against these kids, one on one in football or basketball, to show them how it is done. He told me a story of how he once told his team, when playing a star opposing player, “If that kid dunks again, I will call every single one of your parents to let them know you will be spending the night with Coach Allen and we will be practicing in this gym until school starts tomorrow!” The star player never dunked in that game again.

Almost every time, after he tells a story, I would shockingly ask, “Isn’t that illegal now?” Then he would tell me about one of his former students, seeing him in a parking lot, or a grocery store, or even pulling up next to him at a traffic light. The former student would introduce his kids to my dad and say, “This is Coach Allen, the one I always tell you about. I do not know where I would be without him.” Dad did not just coach these kids. He became the only father a lot of them would ever have. Dad would drive the kids home after games and practices. He would intervene when the kids got poor grades or disrespected their mothers. He would pay for clothes, hospital bills, and equipment. He once invited me to give a motivational speech to his class. All the students, even the ones who didn’t play sports, revered him.

I do not know how he did it, but he did. And still does so. Our kids call my dad “G-pops”. The “G” does not stand from “grand” as in grandfather. It stands for “G” as in “gangster”. He gives motivation talks to my nephew, Tremayne’s son, on the way to fencing class. Tristyn loved to tell his G-pops about all of his victories in class but this one day, he lost four in a row. He told my mom, “I can’t tell G-pops I lost” and proceeded to take his sword home for the first time ever to practice. When my mom told me the story, it sounded so familiar, I got triggered. Lol.

I finally discovered my upbringing was some sort of “Aubrey Jedi Mind” trick in my late twenties. For some reason, Tremayne learned the secret of arm wrestling. He destroyed me and everyone else who challenged him. He would beat anyone, no matter how big or strong, in seconds. It became a party trick. Tremayne would not tell me the secret, but his power did not come from strength. One time, we went to our dad’s, and I told him that Tremayne would annihilate him in arm wrestling. My dad did not believe it. Tremayne slammed Dad’s arm so hard into the glass table, everything almost broke. The table. Dad’s arm. My face from laughing so hard. My dad, rubbing his shoulder, wore a subtle look of pride. And suddenly, I remembered that look. The only time I beat my dad in basketball was when I was eighteen years old. He NEVER LET ME WIN. For years, it didn’t matter my age, he would block my shots, back me down into the paint, and shoot hook shots over me. We had not played in a while, but he insisted on playing me the summer before I started college. I destroyed him. (So much so, he repressed the memory). I do not think he even scored. The last basket, I did a reverse dunk so hard, the backboard shook. And I held on to the rim and looked at him with the same “Allen Scowl” he always used to keep me in line. Then I said two words: “Who’s next”. My dad chuckled, but I remembered that same look of pride he gave Tremayne during the arm-wrestling contest. He wanted to play with me before college to see if his oldest boy was ready. Today, looking back, I realized Dad never cared about the little battles. He wanted to win the war. He wanted to see me and my brother go beyond our abilities. He took us on two different journeys, but we ended up at the same destination.

The Bible says in Genesis that God wrestled Jacob. Jacob, fearing his brother would kill him for his treachery from years before, sent his family and all of his possessions (ostensibly as a shield) ahead of him and stayed back alone. The Bible says a man attacked him, and they wrestled all night. Jacob, anticipating Esau’s murderous rage, probably thought he was fighting his brother and that this fight meant life and death. At some point, Jacob realized whoever he struggled with came from heaven and held onto this man, whom he previously thought attempted to murder him, until this man blessed him. This man struck his hip and changed his name to Israel.

The exegesis of this story would take months to unravel. But some questions pop up in my mind: How did he wrestle the God who created the universe? The God whose face a human being could not look into and live? And Jacob wrestled the God of the universe to a tie. Have you ever wrestled? In high-school, I once wrestled the best high school heavyweight in the state of Tennessee. I lost in thirty seconds and could barely get up off the matt because of the exhaustion.

Jacob did not climb on the top rope and give God the atomic elbow like The Rock. Jacob assumed, if he stopped fighting, he would not see the morning. So, he fought all night. It was life or death. I do not see how Jacob lasted. And why did God attack Jacob? Why not bless him or give him wisdom or destroy his enemies?

All these questions converge to bring forth one answer: Because God wanted to transform Jacob. After Jacob defeated God, God changed his name from Jacob, which meant deceiver, to Israel, which meant one who overcomes God and man. Jacob never deceived anyone or ran away in fear again.

Who knew God required us to overcome Him? Who knew that He desired warriors as His children who He can drop in any situation at any time and know that child would come back with a victory? God made David’s path for his destiny as king through the greatest soldier Israel ever encountered, Goliath. You would think this fitting because of David’s fighting prowess. But if you look at the list of heroes in the Bible, and if David did this by faith, then one of those heroes could do it by faith as well. Drop Abraham or Daniel or John the Baptist against Goliath, they would come back with Goliath’s head. Give David or Hannah or Esther the charge of preaching the gospel to every nation, like Paul and Peter, and an upside-down world would arise from their effort. If God dropped the Virgin Mary into Egypt during the time of the Exodus, the Israelites still would find themselves on the other side of the Red Sea and the Egyptians floating in it. If God put Jacob at the head of the army at the Promised Land, the walls of Jericho would tumble down. After all, the Bible says, if you truly possess faith in God, nothing is impossible for you.

However, if you read about the beginning of their lives, these great heroes did not start that way. It required a little wrestling with God. Moses told God “no” four times at the burning bush before becoming God’s friend, where they talked face to face. Paul murdered Christians before becoming the greatest missionary of all time. Not one Southern Baptist church would ever hire Judah, the patriarch of Jesus and David, for ministry. Not after the background check revealed a son of out of wedlock, birthed by his daughter-in-law. I look at how many of these heroes started as cowards and failures and screw-ups. I saw how God individually pushed and pulled and ignited and contained. I see my Heavenly Father in the Bible doing exactly what my earthly dad did for me and Tremayne.

Often, I prayed to avoid the fires in my life. Very often, I would find the supernatural answer to those prayers that led me into the fires that I prayed to avoid. So, I stopped praying. It seemed like God did the opposite of what I asked. But God was trying to answer my prayers in ways beyond my imagination. He was trying to lead me into the fire and meet me there so that when I walked into it, I would notice that I did not feel any heat, and that my clothes were not singed. I would see that I did not even smell the smoke. The consuming flames would be like a breeze to me. And then I would walk out unscathed. He did not want to just deliver me from the fire. He wanted to transform me into a child of His that would never be afraid of fire again. Doing that requires some wrestling. It requires some motivation and mentoring. Some pushing and pulling. Some igniting and containing. It requires a Father who does not care about losing the little battles, because He, from the beginning of time, has only ever been interested in winning the war.

Revelation 2

Verse 7: "To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God."

Verse 11: "He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death."

Verse 17: "To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it."

Verse 26: "And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations."

Revelation 3

Verse 5: "He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels."

Verse 12: "He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name."

Verse 21: "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne."