GLADIATOR SCHOOL

'WE,WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE,SALUTE YOU!" Gladiator pledge

aloha again,
was thinking about my mother for Mother's Day.

until the day she died my mother went shopping on weekends with a sharpened can opener or a can of caustic oven spray.let me explain..
i grew up in Harlem knowing nothing about its history.i grew up in the dead center of Harlem,135th & 5th avenue (the northern black ghetto park of the famous 5th avenue). they bulldozed about 12-16 blocks of the worst slums and built the upscale Riverton House for the black middle class across 135th from the working poor in the Abraham Lincoln Projects, there was a brass statue of Lincoln with a lil pickaninny child that i didn't understand until much later.

i was born in 1947 and lived in a slum near the famous Apollo Theater,, my first vague memory was attempting to pet a rat i thot was a cat...the ALP opened in 1948 and my family was among the first to move in. we lived on the twelfth floor of a 14 floor brick building (perfect for jumping).i do not think of myself as a Hard Man, i was among the more moderate of my generation.nevertheless i expected to kill a man and die before i was 21...we all did.

Gladiator School.
my building had two elevators, unlike the short 6 story buildings which only had one, every weekend the local thugs would disable one or more often both elevators.just to add a lil zest then they would break all the light bulbs in all the floors knowing no white maintenence people would come into the ghetto until Monday.then they would lay in wait...
point of information,
the local thugs trained in assault,robbery and rape in the Projects before graduating to richer white people in Central Park south of the ghetto (110th street) the cops job was to keep them caged up in Harlem,often as brutally as possible.
so imagine absolute & total darkness, straining your ears for the swish of a fist or bat for twelve nerve wracking flight,both ways-up & down every single weekend for years...while carrying groceries. PTSD ? poor black people invented it.until i got full sized (over six feet tall and @185 in 6th grade) i got routinely terrorized by bullies.in my second grade school,if you didn't have any lunch money to steal they took your pants and humilated you.i never lost my pants but i soiled myself more than once afraid to use the bathroom where thugs were smoking.
everybody carried a weapon. like the Viet Cong we made our own . ZIPGUNS were hand made and deadly,often the user would lose a hand if the wood or tape couldn't contain the force of a .22 shell.zipguns were like knives,only good for close up killing.under the wing of an older thug Charles Cain (yes that was really his name),i stole money from a teachers purse to buy the components of a zipgun so we could rob local stores,luckily we got caught before it went too far. i then went to my third and last grade school, i was in the fourth grade by then.i was not among the worst.
when NYC started the STOP & FRISK laws, where a cop could legally grab you,slam you up against a wall & go thru your pockets for weapons (something our schools did routinely) like the ancient Chinese we turned to marital arts. we literally became weapons,each of us chose a discipline,i chose hard style karate-self taught from books we found in the Bronx (a white Jewish enclave mostly).i got bigger,i got stronger, i got harder.i kicked a lot of bully ass! (spent a lot of time in the Principals office but it was worth it) i did not become a bully, it was not in my nature.i earned respect from the local thugs,which was something for a bookish comix devoted semi nerd like me.then i got raped,at knife point, in a summer day camp stairwell and never told anyone (until a dear friend of mine died of AIDS in SF), also about this time my Dad died...(thank u Pagani for the honesty of you own bio)

back to my point,
now you understand why my mother,a tough strong woman who never moved, carried caustic oven cleaner to go shopping before facing the perils of the stairs.

in psychobabble terms, i became a Type T action junkie. i never thot of myself as tough or unusual until i went to mostly white schools after Junior High and found out their world was not the one i grew up in.they were the audience, they expected to grow old peacefully and not be rotuinely mugged or terrorized.imagine that.

in other news,
don't forget to vote by May 19th.
we're counting the deck chairs on the Titanic and calling for more ice...SIGH.

PAGANI P.S. Type II no wht brd products, healthy mostly organic diet.no apettite due to two years of antibotics,for Lyme.
i know i know, 6 meals? not happpening,lucky to cram down three.eat meat one meal a day for five days only.my PCP has faith i can overcome insulin resistance with self control (martial arts legacy) and exercise,we'll see.i am not a Brittle diabetic.

namste
semper grumpy
mega