Chapter 4
Dewey, Cheatum & Howe, Inc.
“Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!”
—General Patton, ambushing Nazi's before they could ambush him.
Howdy . . .
Early Halloween memory: I'm getting ready to go extort candy from the neighbors with my older sister (cuz while I'm starting to suspect that Santa Claus ain't real, I'm still pretty convinced that ghosts and witches are out there, thus requiring a bodyguard) . . .
. . . and, putting my worldly experience to work, I choose the biggest bag available to carry my haul in.
Dreams of endless sugar-rushes have my five-year-old brain twitching like a junkie as we join the throngs of vandals and kids outside, and I'm raking it in.
However, just before calling it a night and heading home, I realize that my bag was a little TOO big . . . and I'd been dragging it along the ground, and all that glorious booty had fallen out in the street somewhere behind me.
The horror.
It was unfair. It violated every code of how kids should be treated by the universe that I knew about. It was a memory-scarring traumatic event.
I felt . . .
. . . cheated.
And I'm pretty sure that was my first lesson in empathy. Because it sucked to feel like I'd been cheated out of something.
Sucked, sucked, sucked. I'd headed out that evening snickering to myself about being so clever with the big bag . . . and . . . and . . .
Well, I can't even talk about it anymore. It's just too painful a memory.
And from that moment on, I have nodded in solidarity ...
