The THIRd page

As long as we look backward to childhood, we might as well dispose of the rest of it in pages three through sixteen. No skipping! The quest is introduced within.

Youth’s not a place for a good time, and anyone who tells you differently must be having a hellish old age. Let us rejoice in that thought, while we cherish our every mature moment.

Some folks have thought it provocative that this churl had any kind of childhood at all. I’m not certain why they find this worthy of note. Would they think that I had sprung from the womb at full five foot-nine and 170 on the scales, encumbered with all ills that middle-aged flesh is heir to? No.

I did, however, spring from the womb in a condition near blindness.

A good reason for the blessed, swift flight of infancy is the end of its damnable state of inarticulateness. How can a child without the gift of speech and the knowledge of brighter vision express himself? How does he come to know he is virtually blind and everyone else is not? A kid gets a kind of reputation: dumb.

Kindergarten was deemed useless for an idiot, so my parents thought there was no point in putting me into school until required by law. I would have done no better in pre-school than I did in the first grade, which I flunked.