Jordan Knight - School Days

I started going to school in kindergarten. My whole family, all my sisters and brothers went to the Trotter School, and I did too. A lot has been written saying that we white kids were bused to school in a black neighborhood, but for me it wasn't really like that. See, I don't live in a white neighborhood, I live in a mixed neighborhood, so being bused to Roxbury, where the school was, was nothin' to me. It was only ten minutes by bus, but I could get there on my bike in five minutes. It wasn't the closest school to my house, but if I did go to the closest school, it would've been mixed just the same.

For some other kids who went to Trotter and who came from white neighborhoods, it was a big influential thing for them, but it really didn't have a big influence on me, y'know, I don't see that. For me, growin' up in the house I did, and in the neighborhood I did, it was like normal life. My brother Chris is black and so were a lot of the foster kids in our house. My part of Dorchester is totally mixed. So being bused to Trotter was just normal for me, a kid going to school.

I was on the same bus as Donnie, so I've known him since I was tiny. But I was closer to his younger brother, Mark. Mark and I were good friends, we used to hang out. When we were little, though, I used to think of Donnie as a bully. He never bothered with me, except he'd come over and pinch his cheeks and say, "Jordan! You're so cute!"

I was pretty good in school. I liked math, and I used to read a lot, I still like reading. I think I'm smart. I think that I probably absorbed more than the kids who got all A's and stuff even if my grades weren't always that great. I've always been fascinated with everything, fascinated with learning, but I didn't always want to do the work, didn't always want to do my homework or a report. But when the teacher talked, I listened. I was fascinated.

What I liked best about the Trotter School is that we had a lot of art we always had plays. My first play was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was in the fourth grade and I was Charlie, the leading role. I used to love seeing the plays that the other classes put on. There'd be a night show and a day show, all the parents came, and it was great. I loved it.

Trotter had a great chorus, and you had to try out to be in it. They'd put on musicals and stuff, and that used to be fun. I used to love doing that. I made the chorus right away and it's funny - the lady always used to try and make me do solos, but I was so shy. One day the soloist she usually used was absent and she made me sing. The kids couldn't believe how high I sang. I was so embarrassed, because they were blown away by how high I was singing. Everyone started at me and I was so embarrassed I never did it again.

Next: Jordan Knight - Friends & Games.....

Jordan Knight - An Extended Family

It seems like as long as I could remember there were foster kids in the house. When I was little, I didn't think about it. They were people, they just lived with us, it was part of life. Later on, I found out that my mom was doing this for professional and for personal reasons. As a social worker, she created this program, a family-oriented group residence for disturbed teenagers, kids that for one reason or another had kind of "flunked out" of traditional foster-care homes. She ran this program out of our house. But she wasn't only doing this because it was her career. She was doing it out of her heart. She believes deeply that "there has to be a place for every kid," and the place she created happened to be at our house.

There were some times when there were fourteen, fifteen people in the house. Our house was so wild that people could come over anytime and be entertained, because so much was going on. Sometimes it bugged me. I could never get a free moment or time to myself, 'cause there was always something going on.

We didn't only have kids, either. We had elderly and disabled people too. A couple of elderlys died while they were living with us.

We have a guy, Ken, who still lives with us who was in a car crash. He was an alcoholic and lost his memory of everything after the car crash. But he's real, real smart, and before the accident he was studying to become a doctor. I used to bring my homework to him and he'd do it with me - but he couldn't remember what he did five minutes ago.

Some of the foster kids were addicted, some were abused, some had serious mental problems. There were all types. Some lived with us for years, and I've gotten very close to a lot of them. When I was little , the foster girls would cook for me, just like in a real family. A lot of them were happy to be in our house because they had never seen anything like it before. Some foster parents are real strict and do it only the money and don't have the loving frame of mind my mother has. She was doing this out of her heart, but she kept control. Believe me, she's a strong woman and didn't take junk from any of them. If they swore, they got punished same as we did. She kept everyone in line. She would try to keep on top of everyone about doing their homework, but it was kinda hard.

A lot of them still keep in touch and even come to my mother for advice. So that shows that she really did good for them. And I think that the ones I got close to are real, real proud of us now.

I never felt bad towards the foster kids. I was never jealous of any of them, and I never resented them being there. But there was a lot of stress. The only times we had big problems was if any of them did something real bad, like steal from us. And that happened. Certain people would do it a lot.

Of course, I felt crowded - big time. But I was always proud of it and I used to love when other people would come in and see how crazy my house was. There was never a dull moment!

I think that living with foster kids has given me the personality I have today. I'm very liberal and very open-minded, and I'm not prejudice one bit - and I think that's what did it. I learned how to get along with anybody.

With so many of us in the house, we all had stuff to do. We had lists of chores, who would cook - different people would cook every night - and who would do the dishes. Up until the time I was ten or eleven, we'd all sit down and have dinners together, saying grace and everything. I usually washed dishes and raked leaves and stuff and cleaned my room. But I never wanted to do any of it. It was more like I just wanted to hang out, go out with my friends. Jon did everything, though. Jonathan just would do stuff because he wanted it done. That's the way he still is today.

Next: Jordan Knight - School Days....

Jordan Knight

I was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on May 17, 1970. We didn't live there, that's just where the hospital was. My mom, Marlene, comes from Canada, and she always wanted to give one of her children names that represented the two cultures of Canada, English and French. So my full name is Jordan Nathaniel Marcel Knight. I was the sixth child in the family. Before me were Allison, Sharon, David, Christopher and Jonathan.

The first house I lived in was in a Boston suburb called Westwood. In that house all four of us boys shared one bunk bed, two on top and two on the bottom. I always shared with Jonathan.

I was close to all of my brothers and sisters, but growing up, I was closer to different ones at different times. I was always close to Jonathan. I was close to Dave when I was very little and then again when I was around ten years old. Dave and I used to play soccer together, we used to be in the neighborhood leagues. I think sports brought us together and music too. We liked the same music.

Then, around twelve, thirteen, I started bein' real close to Chris. We would hang out with the same people, and we went out a lot together.

Even though I was closest to my brothers, I'm really most like my sister Allison in my personality. Allison is real quiet, real shy, and I think we both have the same problem with communicating with people one-on-one. I have a lot of trouble talkin' to individuals and havin' a conversation with one person. But yet when I get on stage, in front of 15,000 people, I just let loose. It's really weird and I don't understand it.

I was tiny back then. I used to be the littlest kid. I used to look like a girl, with this long curly hair, and when I would walk into stores, people wouldn't know what to call me, a boy or a girl. I had chubby cheeks and stuff, and everyone used to love grabbing my cheeks.

My dad, Allan, was a carpenter and also a minister. When we lived in Westwood, he had his own church where he was the preacher. My mom is a social worker who specialized in family therapy.

I was lucky to have the parents I did, 'cause they weren't strict., not at all. They always really cared, we always knew that they cared, but they let us do what we wanted to do and be independent. As long as we got our chores done and stuff, that is. When I'm a parent someday, I think I'll be like them.

When I was almost three, we moved to this really big old house in Dorchester. It had something like seventeen rooms and ten bedrooms. People used to get lost when they'd come to my house! But in the beginning, there were other people living in the house, it was three families. So at first, it was crowded, real squishy, and all the boys were still in the same room. This time we had two beds, not bunk beds. But I was still sharing with Jonathan. Eventually, the two other families moved out and we had the whole house. But I didn't get to have my own room then - in fact, I didn't have my own room until I was sixteen - 'cause when the other families moved out, I started sharing with foster kids that came to live with us.

Next: Jordan Knight - An Extended Family....

Donnie Wahlberg - Teen Years

When I was about 13, my parents got divorced. Since I was the kid who always wanted things to go smoothly, I would have preferred if they didn't get divorced. But they did - and you know what? A lot of really good things came out of it. I was lucky because my dad didn't move too far away. He was right in the neighborhood and I could see him everyday if I wanted to, but just on weekends and things like that. We'd have, like, two Christmases; one at mom's and one at dad's. In some ways, me and my dad had an even better relationship after the divorce.

And when my mom re-married, she married a really great guy. My step-dad, Mark Conroy, never tried to take over my father's role, he never overruled what my dad said or anything like that. Instead, he's always been a friend to me and my brothers and sisters. Like I said, we've been real lucky with the whole thing.

In the seventh grade, I met The Kool Aid Bunch, just a posse of kids and that was a real turning point for me. There was Danny Wood, Elliot, Joe (not McIntyre), David, and Chris Knight, Jordan's brother. I wasn't in school with Jordan and Jon at this time, and I didn't hang with Chris because he was their brother, I just hung with him because he was Chris Knight and I liked him.

I always hated people who tried to do things just to look cool. And I did it too. I smoked just to be a cool guy and I understand why I did that. I never got into the habit of smoking, it was just something I did to try and be cool. And when I was real young, being cool was important, but when I met The Kool Aid Bunch, I wasn't worried about bein' cool anymore. Just being with those guys made me real loose. When I started to hang with them, I found out that being tough wasn't all that important. Just being me was important. And the things I didn't want people to know about, suddenly it didn't matter if they did know about them.

Like now I'll say, "Yeah Sesame Street's my favorite TV show." Most people my age, guys, wouldn't say that, but I don't care. It's not really my favorite TV show, but I just say it. It kind of is, when I think about it, it's one of them.

Danny Wood and me were cool. I would hang with him after school and stuff like that, drive on the bus with him and go on dates with him and two girls. We would double-date.

All I thought about when I was a teenager was girls. I always had a girl, I could always get a girl. I did pretty good when I was younger. I did good with girls. They've always been important to me. I liked taking the subway to new neighborhoods to meet new girls. I was shy but I'd make a lot of eye contact first, then slowly start telling jokes and getting all the attention. I was a big flirt, and pretty soon the girl would be interested in me. I've had my heart broken, but in those days, I was a heartbreaker too.

A lot of people have described me as a street kid, but I'm not trying to be known as a street kid - I'm just trying to be known as me. I just grew up hanging out in the streets. That's what I know. I know people say, "Oh Maurice Starr wanted some street smart kids for the group." It doesn't matter whether he wanted street smart kids or not, 'cause that's just what I am. If I wasn't in the group, I'd still be that. So it's not like Maurice Starr trained us to be street smart kids, that's what I am.

Next: Jordan Knight.....

Donnie Wahlberg - Musical Roots

I remember when I first started hearing rap music, I was like, in the fourth grade. And if I wasn't in the school I was, I probably wouldn't have been exposed to it. But I was in that school, and that's what the kids were listening to, and that's what i grew up on. And I loved it. My musical roots are in rap music and heavy metal music, because my brothers Artie and Paul listened to heavy metal. Artie loved Led Zepplin, Paul loved AC/DC. Artie really influenced me musically, 'cause he hipped me to the radio and all the music that I started to love, which even thn they were playing a lot of on the radio. It was good music.

But the kids in school were listening to rap and so was I. People sometimes say, "Oh, what does this white kid know about rap?" Well, what do they know about what I know about rap? That's what was in my face every day, hip hop music and I loved hip hop music, y'know? I groove off hip hop music, I appreciate hip hop music. That started way back in elementary school.

And the first time I heard a rap, I wrote a rap. The first one I wrote wasn't really about anything, it was just rap. Me and my brother did it, me and my little brother Mark wrote a rap. We just really stole the idea of "Rapper's Delight," which was the first big commercial rap song. We stole the names and changed them a little, it was funny.

I remember one called "The Ronald Reagan Rap" - that was the first real song I wrote. It was like five pages long, and I used to know it by heart. I still know a lot of it.

I always liked doing rap, writing rap or just writing rhymes, writing poetry, expressing myself through words, doing it lyrically. Whether I used it in a rock song, a folk song, or a rap song, it's just expressing myself through music.

I didn't buy too many records. The first record I bought, it was like crazy. Maurice Starr's brother's album, Space Cowboy by the Jonzon Crew. And it was before I met him. But it was crazy because I went up to the record store and I looked at these albums, and I was stuck between New Edition and the Jonzon Crew. I was discovering a connection, though, 'cause reading the album covers I kept seeing the name, Maurice Starr, on both albums. And then I saw Maurice Starr's album.

I was in a band when I was about eleven or something. That was called Risk and it was just and my friends, banging on the drums, and guitars and harmonicas in the garage. Me, Billy, Eric, and Jamie. But sometimes we did something and recorded it on cassette and it would come out good, it would come out kinda interesting.

But we weren't doing it because we thought we'd be famous. It was just fun. I was always doin' things like that, though. If I found a tape recorder, I would talk on it a lot. I always had a good imagination. When I played army, I played army - I didn't play around. I got really into it. I mean I wouldn't have all the equipment and stuff, but I believed what I was doing.

I got into Michael Jackson in the ninth grade. At first, I wasn't as into Michael Jackson as I had people believin', but it brought so much attention to me - the girls, the girls would always come up to me. His Thriller album was real popular at the time. I had sixty-five buttons and at least four hundred posters of him; pictures all over all four walls of my bedroom. See the fans today, they think they got their walls covered, but they couldn't hang with what I had of Michael Jackson. I had a "Beat It" jacket, t-shirts, hats. I used to wear loafers, dress just like him, with what I could. See, that was the thing, I didn't have money, so I didn't have the resources, so I took my father's loafers. I imitated the moves, I did the moonwalk, but I didn't sing.

Next: Donnie Wahlberg - Teen Years....

Donnie Wahlberg - School Days

I went to kindergarten by my house, but after that, I went ont he bus to the William Monroe Trotter School in the next neighborhood over, which was Roxbury.

A few of my brothers and sisters - Jimbo, Bobbo, Tracey went to the Trotter School before me, so I didn't think about it, about being bused to school. That's the way it was. It wasn't as if I had walked to a neighborhood school for four years and suddenly got bused to another one - being bused was always the way it was. So that's all I knew.

Danny Wood was on my bus that first year, but I didn't really know him. I know that Jimbo knew his sister, but we didn't really start hanging out that much in elementary school. We didn't have that many classes together. Till high school really, we were in hardly any of the same classes at all. Middle school's when we started getting together, when we hooked up with these two girls, and that's when we started hanging out.

I was real smart as a kid. I always got good grades, until certain point in my life, when I started goofing around.

Middle school was my favorite, that and my first two years in high school. It was the wildest, the funnest, the craziest. Middle school I was happiest. In high school, I started worrying about things, not important things. When I was in elementary school and middle school, I was worried about doing good work and other things. But when I got into high school, I started worrying about what I looked like. I mean, I always liked to look good, I like to dress good. In middle school I didn't really care what I looked like. Once, I had some teeth knocked out playing hockey - they were broken in half - but I didn't care, I loved it. Now they're capped.

In high school I started getting zits and I started caring that I had zits. But one thing I like about high school was when I got into drama class. We put on some great plays. In one of them, I was the only guy in the whole play - all the rest were girls, but I didn't care. We did one where I played the husband in an interracial marriage and there a scene where I was apologizing to my wife for the hard life we'd had. It was really moving and I cried real tears.

Sports was my main thing after school when I was in the early grades, anyway. Mostly I played in the streets. I got into organized sports twice. I played basketball once and we lost the championship. And I played baseball one season and we won the championship. That was great. I loved it when we won.

Next: Donnie Wahlberg - Musical Roots...

Donnie Wahlberg - What I Was Like

Everyone has this impression of me as this wild kid, but actually I was a lot more quiet when I was little. I was shy. I remember being real shy, like it took a lot for me to go up and talk to people and stuff.

I think I was crazy, too, when I was real young, but I picked my spots. When I wasn't being shy, I was being crazy. A lot of older people always liked me when I was little. All the teachers always seemed to like me. My whole life I've been able to get along with adults.

I was a funny kid, I used to always tell jokes. I liked to be the center of attention, but I don't know why that was. Because I was still shy, y'know, and I was self-conscious, so maybe I wanted to be the center of attention and be, like, successful at being the center of attention.

When I got to know people, I was always real outgoing. If I was running with the crowd and a new kid came along, I always wanted to make him a part of our crowd. I'm very sensitive...very sensitive...probably too sensitive.

Next: Donnie Wahlberg - School Days....