Keke Palmer became a millionaire at age 12 by teaching us how to spell “pulchritude” – which actually turned out to be a win-win

I do not know exactly when it happened, but Keke Palmer became certainly one of African Americans’ favorite people. Maybe it was while playing lie detector segment for Vanity Fair she, like lots of us, couldn’t recognize Dick Cheney in a photograph and gave us certainly one of the best sound bites of all time. Or possibly that is once we all realized how human she was as she handled a family situation that was made public. The possibilities are countless because I feel like Keke Palmer has been in my life without end, despite the fact that I’m 14 years older than her. I used to be actually years old today after I discovered that as of this writing she is just 31 – and I even have never felt older.

Recently beloved artist he went on, “Club Shay Shay” to speak about her life, profession and every little thing else under the sun, likely to promote her just-released book “Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative.” During a conversation about dating (which Keke was mainly flexing, roughly), she mentioned that she became a millionaire at the age of 12 and that got me considering: what was she doing at age 12 that made her a millionaire? The second query, in fact, is: what did I do at the age of 12 that made me a millionaire? The answer definitely involved riding the bike out of the garage and seeing if I could land it without breaking the bike or any bones.

NO. At age 12, I used to be introducing my parents to latest and revolutionary ways to take care of disappointment.

Anyway, my curiosity about how she managed to turn out to be a millionaire at the age of 12 (which would have been 2005) made me check her IMDB credits and yes, it coincided along with her breakout role as Akeelah Anderson within the film , “Akeelah and the Bee”, a movie I still love to this present day. I watch it every time it’s on and have even decided to dedicate an episode to the podcast “Dear Culture” for the movie. I actually attribute to Keke Palmer that I do know the word “prestidigitation” (though I do not know what it means), but most significantly, I do know the word “pulchritude”, which comes from Latin and means “Beautiful” which means beautiful.

I am unable to say this strongly enough: if it weren’t for this movie, I might never have learned this word, and if Keke Palmer made a million dollars for me to learn this word, she was underpaid. The variety of times I threw the word “pulchritude” at people, it should be illegal. I do not even use the word “beautiful” anymore; I only refer to my wife as “pulchritudinous”. Because she is. And there’s just one person I can thank for that: Akeelah Anderson. And Akeelah Anderson is Keke Palmer.

Thank you Keke Palmer for helping me expand my horizons and vocabulary. And for ensuring I all the time and without end know how to spell “pulchritude.”