I actually had a great childhood as the youngest of six with two parents that loved me. My grandmother was a school teacher back in segregation days. The thought of not trying hard in a class because the subject matter didn’t appeal to me is completely foreign. I can more relate to the children of immigrants from some Asian cultures. We did not walk 200 miles thru the deserts of Uzbekistan so you could get a B in Chemistry. Because of occasional bad luck and my father’s health problems, we did not always all live together. I grew up mostly in different parts of the Bronx, with stays in Newark, Jersey City, Hackensack, and Kentucky. I went to 5 different schools by 7th grade. In every grade I was the tallest and the fastest. In every school they refused to believe that I could not throw, catch or hit a ball. My coordination clicked in later. I was tall skinny, wore glasses and was painfully shy. What Rutgers did for me I can never repay.
The NYC murder rate back then was over 2,000 per year. Now they sh!t a brick when it tops 500. It was a different world. God bless Rudy Giuliani before he went crazy. I never went to the hospital though I have scars that clearly needed stitches and no police were ever called. They were different times.
I can be annoyingly precise. Other people say “I love you” and it means some vague nice feeling. When I say it, it means I place your health, happiness and welfare over and above my own. When I say I hate Joe Buck it means that if something bad happened to him, like he lost his job, I wouldn’t feel bad. If I saw him slip on a banana peel, I would laugh. I’m not wishing cancer on him and would not heckle him if I saw him on the street.
