I think I might have made a good actor. No, really. Why do I think that? Well, I can remember my lines. Really, really, really remember my lines.

An example you say? Okay, here's just one.

"I'm not very old, and I'm not very bold,
But I'm brave enough to say.
We wish you a merry Christmas,
And a Happy New Years Day."

That, my doubting friends, is from a Christmas program put on when I was in Kindergarten, and those were my lines. I was five years old and it was the first half of Kindergarten, in Odessa, Texas, as the second half of Kindergarten was in St. Louis, Missouri. No program in the second half.

All kidding aside, I'm not really sure why I've remembered that all my life. That was sometime around 1961 I believe, so it was quite some time ago. I remember rehearsing my lines with my mom when we lived at my grandmothers house in Odessa while dad was attending Army boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. At some point I remember my grandmother taking us three kids into a bedroom and asking us if we wanted to stay with her, or go with our parents when they left to go to dad's next assignment with the Army. The other two kids were really too little to know one way or the other what she was talking about, so she was essentially asking me. I told her I wanted to go with my mom and dad, and she never treated me well ever again after that. You only got one chance with my mom's mom, and if you didn't live up to what she wanted, you were pretty much personae non grata after that.

First grade in Austin, Texas after that, and then second grade in Eminence, Missouri while dad was in Greenland, of all places. I remember that year JFK was assassinated. I was too young to really understand what was going on, and the implications of it, but I knew folks around me were mightily upset and scared, so I was scared, too.

Seems like folks are still scared today.

Mac