here's to better days.

i can remember one of the earliest miserable times in my life: preschool. i'm not even sure you could call it that. it was a school for 'special' kids. kids who could read and write and recite lincoln's second innaugural address from memory at the age of four. there were two other kids in my "class" in that school: bobby parks and robert peeler. parks is in prison and peeler is a pervert in and out of the loony bin on a regular basis. 'gifted' kids are almost never lucky. they get a swollen brain pan and all of its associated side effects. me, i'm fine. but i'm getting off topic. the earliest miserable situation i can remember being in: we had times where we were put into a play group with the "normal" school upstairs to pretend that we were suposed to be there. we meshed fairly well. we were four or five. i was fine until a certain incident. i lived in boston as a wee lad, but had never in my four years seen a black individual in person. bill cosby did picture pages with me. that was as close as i had been. on this day, a new student who was black was introduced during this comingling play time. he had just had eye surgery days before and was wearing a caucasian-toned eyepatch over his right eye. i immediately hit the floor as if reacting to a clamore. shelter was a small table across the room. i covered my eyes and screamed for what seemed like hours. i screamed the the painted man was here to get me. i refused to take my hands from my face or to come out from under the table until he was removed fom the room. he was and i did, but it was a miserable situation that is a paradigm. the painted man.

here's to better days and the other side of the tunnel.