A Boy's Life: Rocky Wright

Rocky, a sixth-grader at Metro Catholic School, lives with his mom, his 16-year-old brother and his 20-year-old sister in Cleveland His father moved to Texas after his parents’ divorce two years ago, but the two keep in touch over social media and weekly phone calls. When Rocky’s not playing kickball with his brother in the backyard, he’s singing in the school choir or acting onstage.

My best days were when I went into Cub Scouts with my dad. I was chosen for lots of things and there’s camping. We learned how to survive in the wilderness and did some community services. There’s the main club where they choose one little leader. First, it goes from tiger, wolf and bear, and those three groups chose me to be their little leader. They were all my friends and they listened to me. They made me happy just from listening to me and actually not arguing with me. A leader needs to be able to not yell at people and help people out. If you don’t help your pack or your group, they’re not going to listen to you.

I don’t want a friend that’s actually bad. There are lots of times when we’re playing outside in the summer and this kid will start trying to make an argument with me. He’ll start out by saying, "I suck," and stuff. I’ll say, “Please stop,” and he’ll get up in my face. It does make me feel angry, but I’ll still try to control it. I’ll just say, “Please, step away from me. I don’t want to talk to you.” I’m just not a fighting person.

I don’t really like people who judge other people. I worry about people being judgmental about me because I am kind of overweight. I just don’t want people to notice that. I kind of recently got over that because I normally wear a sweater to hold it in, but I lost my sweater so I just decided to go with the shirt. It still showed and no one actually said anything about it. It makes me feel happy because I don’t have to hold anything in. — as told to James Bigley II

[Editor’s Note: This blog series is an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine’s March issue. For all these stories, click on the “A Boy's Life” tag.]

A Boy's Life: Alexis Oyola

Alexis, a seventh-grader at General Johnnie Wilson Middle School, is learning how to skateboard and wants to be a baseball player in the major leagues. He currently lives with his 13-year-old brother and 18-year-old sister, his mom and his stepdad in a four-bedroom house in Lorain. The family has moved to a larger three-bedroom house in the West Side city, but he hopes to maintain strong relationships with distant family members.

Sometimes, I get worried and my stomach starts to hurt real bad. I don’t want anybody to get hurt. On the news, there are a lot of people who get shot every day in Cleveland. My mom said she might move to Cleveland, but I don’t know why. Sometimes, they say that Cleveland people go to jail in Lorain, so sometimes I’m worried they’ll get out and come to our place.

I’m really happy when all of my family comes together. We have a lot of fun. I have six or seven brothers. I don’t see my aunt or my cousins a lot. I try to call them but they never answer.

I really don’t talk to my stepdad. I just hang out with my brother and play video games. I usually can’t talk to my sister much because she has a lot of work to do for her job.

My mom inspires me. She cooks a lot and she makes me things every day. Sometimes, I get scared of fires. Yesterday, my mom put out a fire on the stove when she used the wrong stove. She took off my pants and tried to use my pants to put it out, but then she used salt to take the fire down.

I barely see my dad. On New Year’s, we always tell our resolutions that we’re going to do for the new year. My New Year’s resolution this year was to get closer to my dad. He texted me on New Year’s, but I didn’t get the text because my phone is messed up. After a couple of weeks, it showed up, and it said, “Happy New Year!” So I just called him and said, "Happy New Year’s" to him. In the summer, I want to spend more time with him. I want to help him out with cars — he has four of them. — as told to James Bigley II

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine’s March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the “A Boy's Life” tag.]

A Boy’s Life: Aidan Muchnicki

Aidan, a seventh-grader at Shore Middle School, lives with his parents in Mentor. He’s a multisport athlete, playing on football, baseball and basketball teams. He is following in his father’s footsteps, who played football for the Kent State Golden Flashes.

The hardest part of school is probably tests. You learn something, then you keep learning it, then you take a big test and it stresses on you for that part. We were taking the [Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam], and that’s a lot more stress now.

My biggest fear? I honestly hate insects. They’re just really ew, like spiders. And probably dying young. Because there are so many things in life that you can enjoy. Dying young means you probably never experienced most of the things that you will as you get older. There’s so many things you can do when you get older. That’s the biggest fear, you’ll never know what it feels like to do that.

It’s really tough to think about 10 years. In 10 years, you’d already be 22. I haven’t really thought about that yet, but I know that sometime I will have to think about it. All I know right now is that I can be a nice person, an honest person, reliable, trustful. I know that can help me toward the future, being what I want to be. — as told to Sheehan Hannan 

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine’s March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the “A Boy's Life” tag.]

A Boy’s Life: Tarae Graves

This sixth-grader at Miles Park Elementary School may seem tiny, but he makes up for his size with a huge heart. With four brothers and sisters, Tarae is proud to be the man of the house, helping his mother and his stepfather take care of his 7-month-old brother, Rome. The family currently lives in Harvard neighborhood, and hopes to move to a larger house soon. For now, Tarae splits his time between his mother’s house and his father’s house down the street, and wants to become a police officer.

I worry about my family because when I’m not there, they don’t have nobody to help them. Sometimes, I put Rome to sleep. He likes his purple cover, so I’ll give him his purple cover and I rock him until he falls asleep. He’s expensive. He’s a chunky baby because he drinks milk a lot, so we have to keep buying milk. He nibbles on everything. He gets mad sometimes because we have to put him in the playpen — that’s jail for him.

I clean the house for my mom. I do the dishes, I sweep the floor, I vacuum, I do my room, I wash the walls, and I keep the bathroom clean and smelling good. My mom is special to me. If I help her, she’ll give me a reward for doing that. She doesn’t have to tell me every day to do it, I just automatically do it on my own.

My god-sister is Miracle. She’s 10. She lives across the street from me. My mom and Miracle’s mom are like sisters. My neighbor’s kids are always talking about my sister and they’re always trying to jump my sister, but I won’t let them. I guess because she’s little they think they can bully on her. I just tell Miracle to come in the house with us, and we’ll just listen to music. That’s why my mom keeps us in the house, because they’re always trying to jump me too. They think I’m little, and when I protect my sister, they want to get on me.

I want to be a police officer. I think the police academy is going to be hard for me because you’ve got a lot of training to do. If you want to be a police officer, you have to go to school, get your high school diploma, go to college and then you’re on your own. They make a lot of money. It’s awesome when I’m watching them take people to jail and see all the guns they have. Their uniforms are awesome, and they get to speed in their cars. I wish I could do that. That’s going to be me one day. — as told to James Bigley II

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine’s March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the “A Boy's Life” tag.]

A Boy's Life: Max Steiger

Max, a seventh-grader at Beachwood Middle School, lives with his mother, father and older sister in Beachwood. For each birthday, his parents take him to a different ethnic restaurant. So far, he’s tried Ethiopian, Indian, Thai, Chinese and Japanese cuisines.

My best day, I think it was last summer. We went to Virginia Beach with my dad’s sister and her family. That was really fun. We went to the ocean and there was one day where we were at the beach for the whole day, then came back to the condo and had a good dinner.

When I’m 22, I want to be somewhere, not just at home. I want to be in grad school or college, depending on what happens. I don’t want to just stay home, skip college and not learn a lot of stuff.

I want to be a lawyer. My dad is a lawyer, and it sounds cool. I’d like to be in court, or just do that kind of stuff. I think it would be fun. I mean, my dream profession is to be a professional sports player, but my realistic dream profession is to be a lawyer.

Everybody changes in high school. I don’t know if it will be for better or for worse, but I’ll be very busy with homework and everything. I don’t know if I’ll have time to be with other people, so that might be a big change when that happens.

In general, I’m afraid of heights. Of the future, I’m afraid I won’t be able to get a job and then I won’t be able to have a lot of money. Then I’ll live a bad life. I went to New York a couple years ago, and I saw the homeless people there. I felt really bad for them. I was thinking that I don’t want to have to live like that, because you’re living on the edge. You don’t have a second option basically. So I want to be able to have a second option. I want to be able to do a lot of the things that I want to do. — as told to Sheehan Hannan

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine’s March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the “A Boy's Life” tag.]

A Boy's Life: Michael Beros

The sixth-grader at University School tries to read at least one hour every night before going to bed. His favorite books, like the Michael Vey series by Richard Paul Evans and the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz, revolve around adventurous kids who are trying to save the world while coming to terms with their identity. His mother works as a college counselor at University School and his father works as an independent business consultant, but Michael is paving his own path — one that will take him out of this world.

I like reading because it tells me stuff I don’t know about. I wasn’t very familiar with the country of Taiwan until I read the fourth Michael Vey book. It explained a lot of the background history on the country. It’s always fun to learn about interesting things. In the country of Nicaragua, they eat guinea pigs, which I know sounds kind of mean to eat guinea pigs in the United States because they’re cute and cuddly creatures. Everyone is like, “Oh, it’s so weird,” but it’s normal to them. They eat a lot differently than we do and their diet is a lot different.

I think I really want to be an astronaut when I grow up. I wouldn’t necessarily want to go up into space, but be in the International Space Station. It would be really fascinating to go look at the Earth from a different angle than how we look at it. I find space exploration really interesting because we keep discovering things, and it’s only really come around in the past century that we’ve had all these great technological advances. You know the space telescope, Hubble? It’s a deep-space camera. We’re actually sending a version of that called Voyager 2, and it’s going to visit Pluto and take pictures in 2022 — that’s when it’ll arrive.

I kind of have a fear of the dark, but I’ll get over it probably when I get older. It just scares me at night because I always know something bad is happening somewhere in the world and I just don’t want it to happen near me. Recently there’s been terrorist bombings and school shootings and my parents get really scared when that happens. They don’t want me turning into one of those kids.

I don’t really like when people do stupid stuff. Like, “Do you want to go sledding down that hill?” And there’s no snow. Or like, “Do you want to do those crazy bike ramps?” or “Do you want to ding-dong-ditch people?” Like, Why are we doing this? That doesn’t do anything. It’s not comfortable to me. I don’t want to make trouble — I want to stay away from it. — as told to James Bigley II

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine’s March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the “A Boy's Life” tag.]

A Boy's Life: Casey Cipollone

The Lee Burneson Middle School seventh-grader has been taking accelerated classes since he was in fourth grade. As the son of Westlake High School’s athletic director, he plays football, baseball and wrestles. But he’s out to break down clique boundaries to create friendships with anyone he can. A couple of years ago, a friend on his bus introduced him to a Bill Cosby stand-up routine he had on his iPod, and ever since he’s been inspired to make people laugh.

People say social isolation is worse than the death penalty. I believe that to be true because if you’re just deprived of any interaction with anybody and you’re kind of just sitting alone and you can’t do anything or talk to anybody, that really hurts you more than anything else could hurt you.

When I moved here in third grade, I was outside and I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t want to go play basketball with kids because I couldn’t play basketball, but I wanted to make friends. It was very confusing because I hadn’t figured out what to do yet and I didn’t know, so I kind of just sat alone. I felt like I had to hide my face and not be very social because no one knew me. Then a friend, Alec, came over to me and he made it OK.

I think socializing is a very important part of seventh grade and eighth grade. You have to make friends and then you build bonds that will last through high school. When you make friends now, they last longer later, so I think that helps a lot.

The key is to surround yourself with people you like and people other people like. In our school there are social levels. At the top, there are people who are super-popular and everybody knows who you are and they know your name. The super-popular people usually stay in their own circle. The people down at the bottom are wherever they want to be and that’s very cool because they can be nerds and they can talk about games and stuff, and I like that. And in the middle is the best place to be. Some people stay in the middle, or they go up, or they go down, and that’s how it kind of works now.

There is certainly a sort of pressure sometimes. Every day, I worry about embarrassing myself in front of everybody.

It’s really confusing. I should probably write a book or something. — as told to James Bigley II

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine’s March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the “A Boy's Life” tag.]

A Boy's Life: Jordan DeMicco

Jordan is a sixth-grader at Harmon Middle School in Aurora. He has two older brothers and four dogs: Coco, Sarah, Boomer and Hershey. He plays football and baseball and is already thinking about college. He’s absolutely certain about going to the Ohio State University. ’They have a good football team, a good baseball team, they’re really athletic,” he says. “And they have a lot of smart kids there too.”

My best day was probably my birthday, when I went to New York City. I’m into sneakers, so we went sneaker shopping and to this thing called Sneaker Con. It’s a giant sneaker convention. We saw a bunch of shoes worth like $6,000.

I actually have my favorite sneaker. It’s called the Air Jordan White Cement 3. It has this elephant print on the toe and the back. It has a white midsole with a little bit of black and a red inner lining. I like those, mostly how it tells a story of an elephant and Michael Jordan, because he wore those in the dunk show when he won it — from the free-throw line.

My worst day is probably the day that my parents got divorced, three months ago I think. I wasn’t really sure which side I should go on — I wasn’t sure if I should go with my dad or my mom. That’s why it was hard for me. I go with my dad on the weekends and my mom during the other time.

I worry if we’re driving home, Is there going to be a car pulling out and my dad doesn’t see it? Is something going to happen really quick and somebody gets injured? Some people don’t make the right decisions; they can just blank in a second and something could happen. — as told to Sheehan Hannan

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine’s March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the “A Boy's Life” tag.]

A Boy's Life: Malik McKeldie

The sixth-grader at E Prep Cliffs Campus, a Breakthrough Schools charter in the Goodrich-Kirtland Park neighborhood, enjoys drawing, though he only knows how to draw animals right now. When he sits down to create, his father inspires him. “He draws everything,” he says, "because he’s a tattoo artist."

My biggest fear used to be stage fright. I get it sometimes but not as much. I want to be an actor, but stage fright is my biggest fear. I shake. At this school, I talk in front of class more often than at my old school, where I really didn’t get in front of my class. I like people to see me. I want to be famous and express myself.

At my old school we did a play. It was about Santa Claus. Nobody had a really big part. It wasn’t a big play. I played Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It really didn’t feel like a play though, because we acted, but I didn’t really act. I just talked. It was probably because I didn’t know how to act. I didn’t really start wanting to be on TV until last year or two years ago.

When you act, it’s like movement. Actions can speak words too. When you just talk, it’s not as funny or fun. I was watching Disney Channel, and they get real people on TV. They said that this guy had stage fright too, and this group came to his house. He acted real good even though he had stage fright, and he ended up being on Disney Channel.

I can see myself doing a lot of things when I’m 22 — in the NFL, the NBA or an engineer. By the time I’m 22, I might not be an actor anymore. I won’t give it up, but I’ll probably feel that’s too old.

I’ll change in high school maybe a little bit. But I like myself right now. I like to be good and respectful. Sometimes I have discipline problems. When I’m mad and I don’t care about anything, that’s what I don’t like about myself. It affects other people sometimes. — as told to Sheehan Hannan

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine's March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the "A Boy's Life" tag.]

A Boy's Life: Cael Gray

The sixth-grader from Memorial Middle School in Mentor dreams of playing in the NBA. “I’d want to travel to all the different basketball arenas and see the differences between them,” he says. The Wednesday before this interview, he went to a Cleveland Cavaliers home game where he saw Kyrie Irving put up a career high 55 points while LeBron James sat on the sidelines due to a wrist injury.

When I figured out LeBron wasn’t playing, I was hoping Kyrie or someone would step up. I watched Kyrie play in college and I said, “I want to be like him when I grow up.” He’s a point guard, and so am I. He’s a great athlete, got good ball-handling skills. I just hope to practice and be as good as him.

My favorite subject is social studies. I like learning about the ancient history and different religions of the world. Mostly, I like coming to school in the morning and talking to my friends. But then I have to wait through the rest of the day until social studies.

Sometimes school is hard if I’m tired or not feeling so well. Then it feels like the day is going slower. But if I’m talking with my friends and I’m all happy, then I feel like it’s fast and it’s better. I try to always think positive, and hopefully the day can go by fast.

My least favorite part about school is all the homework we get. And sometimes if one of my best friends isn’t at school and I was looking forward to talking to them and they’re not there, it gets me a little down. — as told to Sheehan Hannan

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine's March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the "A Boy's Life" tag.]