Meet Jerry Joseph ... err, Guerdwich Montimere.
Montimere is a 22 year old (illegal) Haitian immigrant who played high school basketball at Fort Lauderdale's Dillard High School. After leading Dillard to the 2007 Florida class 5A semifinals, he graduates and signs a basketball scholarship with Highland Community College in Freeport, Ill. Montimere then moves to Illinois, attends school for about two seconds, and promptly drops out.
So, college life was not for him. Fine, right? No big deal. If college life is not for Montimere, then he can choose to do something else with his life. Most people would agree with that. The thing is, he didn't decide to quit school altogether. Oh, no. He thought it might be a good idea to get a fresh start and wipe the slate clean after his brief tenure at Highland, so he transfers to a small school in Texas. Okay, that's cool. There are several good community colleges in Texas that he could attend. So which one did he choose? If you guessed Nimitz Junior High in Odessa, then you would be correct!
Nimitz Junior High. Not junior college, junior high. It turns out that Montimere's buddy from Dillard High School, Jabari Caldwell, was enrolled at the University of Texas-Permian Basin at the time. So, Montimere moves into the dorm with Caldwell (whom he claimed was his half-brother) and enrolls at Nimitz Junior High, posing as a 15 year old Haitian immigrant named Jerry Joseph. His Haitian birth certificate (FYI, even real Haitian birth certificates are about as legitimate as the paper inside a fortune cookie at your local China Dragon) shows that he is 15 years old, so Nimitz accepts Montimere.
A few months later, Caldwell moves back to Florida and Montimere needs a place to stay. It was the summer before Montimere's "sophomore" year at Permian High School, the famous football powerhouse that inspired the book/movie/TV series Friday Night Lights. In need of a home and family structure, the Permian basketball coach, Danny Wright, takes Montimere into his home and welcomes him into his family. This part of the story is very Blindside-esque -- you know, the story of how the Tuohy family took Michael Oher (tackle for the Baltimore Ravens) off the streets of Memphis and into their home and helped turn his life around -- except, in this case, the loving family was Blindsided by some 22 year old poser who's got basketball Jones and wants to chase some high school tail. Oh, yes, he went down that path. He not only starred on the basketball court; Montimere apparently gave a 15 year old classmate the "full Monty" at her dad's house one summer afternoon. The family is now pressing charges.
So, to make a long story short, Montimere became a basketball star during his sophomore year at Permian, he was voted District 2-5A Newcomer of the Year by area coaches, he lived and attended church with the basketball coach and his family, and then, out of the blue, he was identified by a couple of his former AAU coaches from Florida at an AAU tournament in Arkansas. They insisted that he was not "Jerry Joseph," but he was, in fact, a much older young man named Guerdwich Montimere. After several weeks of piecing together the puzzle that was Montimere's identity, authorities finally identified "Joseph" as Montimere. Believe it or not, he could have avoided jail time had he chosen to simply not have sex with a 15 year old classmate, but heck, he'd come this far, right? Since he decided to move "all in," Montimere now faces more than 30 years in prison if convicted of all the crap he's stirred up for himself.
On the surface, this story is beyond ridiculous, but I'd like to think we can learn some valuable lessons from Monty's escapades. In fact, let's see if we can do a top 10 list.
The top 10 things we can learn from Guerdwich Montimere:
10. If you are Jonesing for some hoops and don't want to attend college, just go to the Y.
9. If you're a black dude and need a fake birth certificate, definitely manufacture a Haitian one. No one will ever know the difference.
8. If you want to pretend to be a 15 year old, when you're actually 22, and star on a HS basketball team, then go to Texas and choose a sports-crazed school like Permian (how cool would it have been if Monty had chosen the name "Boobie Miles" instead of "Jerry Joseph?").
7. If you want to have sex with a classmate, then, for heaven's sake, choose an 18 year old senior.
6. If your coach asks you if you want to play on an AAU team and travel to tournaments where you might run into your old coaches from Florida, just say "no thanks."
5. If your buddy decides to move back to Florida, then move back with him. Don't move in with your HS basketball coach and his family, especially if you're 22.
4. If you want to pose as a teenage kid, then why don't you start out in high school, rather than middle school?
3. If you are an illegal immigrant like Monty and end up in a similar predicament, simply notify the mass media that Arizona police officers captured you while you were going out for ice cream and made you do it as part of their grand scheme to put a black eye on all "illegal immigrant-patriot-victims" such as yourself.
2. When someone tells you to "stay in school for as long as you can," don't take it literally.
1. Illegal immigration is NOT a problem (haha, I almost typed that with a straight face).
So, boys and girls, I hope you learned as much as I did from our friend, Guerdwich Montimere. Remember, if you agree to play a college sport, then follow through with the commitment rather than dropping out and going back to junior high. And if you drop out of college and go back to high school, please don't have sex with the girls. If you do, then it'll cost you 30-plus.
All right, Monty; it was nice talking about you. We'll see you when you're 55.
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