Tumbling

  I used to hate my physical education class in junior high.  For starters, my teacher was a sadist.  I don't mean that in a funny way.  He loved to punish people for not following his direction.  I have already written about the time he told me to bend over and grab my ankles for him to use a fraternity-style paddle on me, after he caught me spitting on a bully.  Even though, the bully started spitting on me first.  

 He would demand that all of the guys take showers after gym class.  I didn't want to take community showers with other boys, so when he would walk around the locker room and see me, I would start taking off my clothes and then put them back on after he left. I wasn't the only boy who did that.  Since most of the boys taking showers were the bullies, I felt I didn't need to get more abuse there.  

 One week, we were to do tumbling in the gym.  The boys were on one side of the gym, and the girls were on the other side.  Due to some unknown reason, I just couldn't do a summersault. I would end up on my head but not able to go all the way over.  I tried, but it just wasn't happening.  Our teacher wasn't very helpful, and all the boys laughed at me.  After several tries, he gave up on me and sent me over to the girls' side. He just wanted to embarrass me further.  Thankfully, their teacher was more empathetic towards me.  She took her time and showed me how to do it.  However, the girls weren't as sympathetic either.  Being made fun of by both sexes just wasn't nice.  Their teacher was the only one who seemed to care.

 So, I began to get sick every Tuesday and Thursday right before gym class.  I would go to the school nurse, and she would call my mother to get me.  After the second week of getting sick on these two days, my mother asked me why it was at the same time.  I told her that it was gym class.  She called the principal, and I got an excuse not to do gym class anymore.  I would come to class but just sit in the bleachers and watch the others.  Of course, this made the bullies want to beat me up more, because I was getting preferential treatment from the school.  I got hurt more after school from them.  

 If that was today, the boys' gym teacher would have been fired.  It was a different time.  

Dark

 After Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, there were riots in the streets across our nation.  The city of Columbia was no exception.  Back then, segregation was still rampant in the South.  As I wrote about earlier, I was attacked by three boys in Five Points for being responsible for Dr. King's death.  They threw rocks at me, while I screamed that I had nothing to do with it.  I didn't get to tell them that one of my cousins was a Freedom Rider with Dr. King.  It probably wouldn't have mattered to them.  

 So, the Sunday night after the assassination, I was driving home from church.  I had just gotten my driver's license.  The city had turned off the electricity around Benedict College and Allen University, where there had been some unrest.  Both were historically black schools.  The police thought that if they cut off the electricity that the students would go back inside of the buildings around the schools.  By cutting off the electricity, the traffic lights and streetlamps were off, as well.  To say it was dark as night was an understatement.

 On the corner of Taylor Street and Two Notch Road, there was a policeman directing traffic.  He had a flashlight for drivers to see him.  He was standing on the line separating the lanes.  It was his fault for standing too close to my car, because I felt a bump under a tire and then another one.  I had run over his foot.  I saw him jumping up and down in my rear-view mirror, but I wasn't about to stop to see if he was okay.  I thought that I could lose my newly gotten license that I had worked so hard to get.  

 When I got home that night, my parents asked me if I had run into any trouble.  I told them no, other than it was really dark around Allen and Benedict.  I hope the officer recovered okay from probably a broken foot.  I hope the statute of limitations has run out after 57 years.  If not, it would be a strange conversation in jail, when they ask me what I am in for, and I tell them that I ran over a policeman's foot in 1968.

Bike

  The first bike I ever had was a red Schwinn.  It was big, heavy and not much fun.  So, I asked my parents for a lighter bike.  They got me a rust orange color with a banana seat.  The handlebars were in a "U" shape, and it had a 3-speed gear shift that sat between the seat and the handlebars.  It was cool.  

 I rode it everywhere.  The handlebars got loose sometimes.  Once, I was riding along a sidewalk, and the handlebars gave way.  I fell over the top of the bike onto the pavement.  I have a scar on my shoulder from that. It still got me where I wanted to go.

 One of those places was about five miles from my house, which was a movie theater.  I loved going to the movies there, because they showed a lot of foreign films.  I would park my bike in an alley between the theater and a drug store.  I had a bike lock, so no one would steal my bike, but it would always be there, when I left the movies.  Except once.

 I came out of the theater, and my bike was gone.  I walked back home not knowing where it was.  I was around 15.  When I got home, I told my father what had happened.  He suggested that we contact the police.  We went down to the police station to file a report.  I gave them a really good description of my bike.  It also had a name plate on the back with my first name on it.  They took the report and said that they would be on the lookout for it.  

 My father drove me around the neighborhood near the theater.  We saw my bike in the front yard of a house about two blocks from the theater.  My father called the police to report what we had found.  They told us that it could be anybody's bike, despite the fact that mine was unique, so they didn't do anything about it.  They said it would be my word against theirs.  So, I didn't have a bicycle after that.  Fortunately, I got my driver's license soon after that.  I hope the thief enjoyed the loose handlebars.

 

Snowman

 The first house I ever knew was on Seminary Place in New Orleans.  It was a modest home built in brick, and it had a carport next to the house.  My brother would use the adjacent roof of the carport to sneak out of the house.  I was too young to do that.  

 Although, I have just a few memories of that house like having to learn how to walk again after my hernia surgery and my highchair at the kitchen table, I do remember one very strange moment, when I was around 3 years old.  I saw my first snowfall.  Yes, it snowed in New Orleans.  My parents took me outside to experience this strange stuff on the ground.  They bundled me up with a heavy coat and hat.   I was pretty warm in this cold environment.  New Orleans was usually rather warm year-round, and we had a lot of rain but not snow.  

 It wasn't very deep, maybe 2 inches, but I was encouraged to build a snowman.  I really had nothing to go on how to do this.  I had seen pictures in books, but we didn't have enough snow to build one of those.  Fortunately, my best friend Paul had some experience in doing this, so we built it together.  When we finished, it was pretty short.   However, there was one problem.  We didn't have enough snow to make it in sections, so it was just short and thin.  I realized later that the reason my parents wanted me to make a snowman was to clear the yard of the snow.  They were clever that way. I have a picture of me standing next to the snowman.  I glad I do, because it melted the next day.