1.

On the day we call the cops on him, L. tells me he’s always been a fighter.

No guns, though.  He looks up at me from where he’s hunched, a skinny kid sitting on a rickety chair.  Not before what happened.

What happened before was L. was riding his bike and some bad boys shot him in the spine.  He wasn’t supposed to walk again.  He walks fine now.  He swaggers.  His khaki pants are too big and he cinches up his belt higher than the other boys.  I don’t think he can handle wrestling with the constant creep of a sagging waistline.

Folks have been predictably misty-eyed lately over the outpouring of support for Karen Klein, the 68-year old bus monitor who was taunted by 7th grade boys in Greece, New York. Within a week, more than half a million dollars was raised from outraged and sympathetic well-wishers who wanted to “send this woman on a vacation,” and the total money amount continues to climb. Anderson Cooper reports that Southwest Airlines will foot the bill for Klein and nine of her friends and/or family members to enjoy a 3-day trip to Disneyland. Klein is also talking about finally being able to consider retirement.

When I was in elementary school, my motto was “Another day, another A.” I didn’t go around chanting it in the hallways or anything like that; I wasn’t quite that smug (at least not publicly). This mantra of mine was more like a private joke, something my mother and I could laugh about when I got home each afternoon. After all, school was so easy. Why shouldn’t I boast about it? It made us both giddy. And as I piled up A’s, I also piled up awards: scholarship awards, citizenship awards, perfect attendance awards. I looked forward to the end-of-year assemblies, daydreaming about the accolades I might receive this year. By the time I reached fourth grade, Mrs. Corbet’s class, my obsessive grade-mongering was beginning to take on maniacal proportions.

“There’s this you, here, you know.  Talking to me.  And there’s the you watching you talk to me.  And in the book, there’s the you in the book and the you reading the book and the you watching you reading the book about you.”

“Sure.  Okay.”

Growing up working-class in a small Southern city, I early acquired a racist vocabulary. This was by no means encouraged by my parents, who were mortified when, at four or so, I referred to a fellow customer at Sears as a nigger. I have no memory of doing that — I was told about it years later — but I’m sure I was baffled by the punishment I received. The kids in my neighborhood used the word “nigger” as a matter of course. To them, it was an appropriate term for a person of color, and I followed suit, even after the Sears incident. Why punish someone for calling a bird a bird? And why would a bird object? So, I think, my reasoning went.