When I was in the 3rd or 4th grade, Jimmy Holmes, a 6th grader in Mr. Bockover's class happened to have a BB gun bullet and threw it on the schoolyard. I happened to be on the receiving end of that one - the bullet shattered my eyeglasses and almost took out my left eye. I remember crying and thinking, boy, my parents are going to be really mad about my glasses.

My friend Kathy who I met in the 2nd grade lost her father when she was age 6. He was randomly murdered in their own neighborhood and the news was kept from her by her mother for a month after his death. Kathy agreed that we went to school with some mean kids - remembers being with her little brother Robert, and being chased home by Dan Geiger and Joe Perez who took off their belts and whipped them all the way home.

Going home this weekend puts a whole new perspective on where I've been and what I come from. I am sometimes often amazed at my life now and my life then, and recently more interested in creating connections to the past vs. distance.