Dr. Mykee Fowlin is a performer for students at schools. He teaches kids through characters he makes up to let them understand the meaning of lessons they hear every day. He has gone through many difficult experiences in his life and speaks to younger generations to help keep them on the good path in their own lives.
In “I Am Not The Enemy,” he discusses many lessons about people. Two of his characters regarded a story about a little girl’s death. He started talking about the main character’s teenage life in high school and how he was a people pleaser.
He got bullied by the popular seniors, but when he didn’t report them, they started inviting him to party with them. He went on to his adult life, still drinking and doing drugs on the weekends. One time, his friends asked him to take them home, and when he did, they accidentally hit a little girl on the street.
The girl was ten, and she died.
“I found the presentation to be very comforting. Seeing people comforting the students who related, really made me recognize another side of the people I see everyday.” — Aleah Becker, 8
The story continues into the dead girl’s sister’s perspective and how she was supposed to walk her sister that day.
The sister starts saying how she felt guilty and suicidal because of it. She went on to meet the second character in the hospital, a guy who lost his grandpa. He and his grandpa were very close, and he didn’t accept the fact that he was dead.
The first and second characters connected over their losses and agreed that if they ever wanted to end their lives, they would call each other first to give the other person a chance to talk them out of it.
The guy was talking about his grandpa’s death in group therapy, and when a new character started giving him advice on how to deal with his loss, the guy just got instantly defensive and told him: “You don’t even know me! You don’t know the pain I’m going through.”
This new guy was a rich man who had been misjudged his entire life for someone who doesn’t struggle just because he has money. He started telling his own story about his English teacher in high school and how she didn’t particularly like him.
She gave him a paper to write about something he deeply cared about – other than money.
He didn’t tell her that he was molested in his childhood or that he visited the elderly weekly for no other reason than he felt bad for them being alone.
He didn’t want his teacher to say that he visited them for their money. One day, he had enough of people judging him and broke a vase and started to harm his body (chest and abdomen).
He had gotten six surgeries, and his doctors said he would need four more. The second character, the one who suffered the loss of his grandpa, apologized for assuming that they didn’t share the same pain.
Dr. Mykee then went back to talking about his own story and what happened to him in his childhood. He talked about his big brother who is in prison for his cocaine addiction.
His brother ran away from home when he was old enough, and the only time Mykee saw him was in the halls of their school. His brother was scared to go home and face their dad because he would hurt them physically.
“I thought it was very interesting and different from anything I seen like that, but it had a great message behind it.” — Keira Caruso, 9
Older siblings are programmed to protect their younger siblings, and Dr. Mykee said he would never forget that.
The next character that Dr. Mykee played was his mother. He impersonated her talking about her childhood. She used to talk about the cows in her childhood.
She said the cows would beautifully fill up the pail every time you milked them, but as soon as they finished, they would ruin their work by kicking the bucket over.
Dr. Mykee, as himself, even mentioned oysters and how pearls are made. An oyster has to go through immense pain in order to make something beautiful like a pearl.
The last character that Dr. Mykee Fowlin played was a kid with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is when you have balance difficulties, and people with this are in wheelchairs. Dr. Mykee depicted this character with great emotion and skill. The story was about this kid who didn’t like it when other people felt pity for him for his condition.
He made a lot of jokes and found out that if he made other people laugh they wouldn’t notice that he was different from them. He said that the worst day of his life was when this random kid came up behind him and pushed him out of his wheelchair. No one helped him; not even the kids that were considered good.
He was in pain, and everyone was walking past him, ignoring his pain. Later that day, he had an assembly at school and the guy on the stage asked the audience a question: “If you could choose a superhero, either flying or invisibility; which would you choose?”
He immediately yelled out, “Flying!” Everyone started laughing because it seemed ironic that the kid in a wheelchair wanted to fly. When the guy on the stage wanted to know why, he answered, “You don’t need superpowers to be invisible.”
During this assembly, Dr. Mykee made sure that no one felt invisible. His stories were inspiring and beautifully crafted. Listening to him was an event that we shouldn’t take for granted. We were lucky to be one of the schools he visited.
