"While recalling the heartfelt memories of my ex-childhood, patiently awaiting me was a world deepened by time’s fascinating dimensions."
"Just around summer’s corner would be the long-awaited Clyde L. Fischer junior high school—now including gun and mini-skirt sightings. Heck, I was almost a teenager...finally!"
"I figured I had about 90 seconds before passing out, and a 5-minute window to be revived from drowning without brain damage."
"She had a history and mystery somewhere between the literary magnum opuses of “War and Peace” and “The Tao of Physics.”
"Grammy once told me Mom saved coins in a sewing container for food. Her heart and self-esteem were smashed, somewhat like Little Boy hitting Hiroshima just eight years previous. But let’s set aside her bomb-shelled past, turned divorce, and focus on the insurmountable challenge of raising two young boys single handedly."
"I’m referring to small, dark, handsome and black-eyed me being proudly placed atop of some other mother’s bosom! And on Mom’s side of the fence, apparently the same stern veteran nurse placed a fair-skinned, blond, blue-eyed baby atop of my should-be mother."
"His 196X Cadillac Seville was a block long, heavy and quieter than floating in space. When it accelerated, all you heard was a brief squeak of the leather seats…very memorable. This, of course, was in comparison to our 196X rattling, rambling Rambler wagon."
"It all promulgated some cogent points about Ali's ostensible draft-evasion position, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam, while so-called Negro people in Lousville are treated like dogs? If I thought going to war would bring freedom and equality to twenty-two million of my people, they wouldn’t have to draft me. I’d join tomorrow.” And we proved his points valid, as battered soldiers of all color came home only to be spat on, despised, jeered and hated by their fellow Americans."
"I now understand how time truly is a man-u-factored state of reference and dimension, extracted from its true quintessence. A miracle had visited my side of the fence. And though forlorn from her loss, what a beautiful gift was bestowed to me from this trans-dimensional universe."
"For single parents on the fence that separates economic survival and good parental modeling, following are some tools to enhance your offspring’s entry into adulthood. Take it from a boy who’s been there, and who didn't cave to the motherly wishes of mother bear. Powerpoint talking points as follows:"
"Well, certainly the Nairobi Village strip mall on the apartment’s other side of the fence, amid East Palo Alto, was not what could be better. Unlike East San Jose where I grew up, my new town had the dubious ranking of highest murder rate in the country!"
"I felt my beloved brother had been chosen to move on to the spiritual side. There he would continue his brave journey as a gentle, strong and kind-hearted individual. David was at last freed from his physical and mental oppression."
"Within such sanctums, the mystery and intrigue of the world—culture, humanity, emotion, love, natural wonders, art, music…everything—all suddenly lie at her fingertips literarily. From shame, poverty and emotional abuse, to a wide world of fascination, imagination and limitless wonder, was suddenly conferred to this brilliant teenager, my mother, through tens of thousands of bound pages."
"This and other symbolic things on their attire represented power and protest over the prejudice, poverty, inequality, and hypocrisy toward black Americans. Today, a beautiful larger-than-life statue of these historical few seconds rests on the college campus that these humanitarian giants attended. It is also the college I graduated from (San Jose State University) not long after. What an honor."
"Like a raped child, self-sufficient me never mentioned the experiences to Mom or anyone, probably out of embarrassment. Why cry about a dream anyway? Was it? It wasn’t."
It was all synergistic, as time bestowed us boomer kids with a non-electronic playground of high-voltaic imagination.
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