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[Bunjov AT aol.com]

> I think it a bit sad that you had no one to share your pleasure with.  
> Film allows multiple people to experience something, hopefully the same  
> thing, at the same time...the pleasure, fright, laugh, etc. is  shared.
 
Oh, but I did have someone to share it with. My baby sister was too young,  
but I had Eddie.
 
I may have written to you earlier about Eddie Mitchell. Three doors  down.
 
His family and their - intellect / education / lifetstyle constituted the  
only (for shame!) instance I can think of - that my otherwise totally liberal 
 
parents crossed the line into prejudice. I read to Eddie because he couldn't  
read, and nobody was teaching him.
 
I was five and a half, and he was four and a half, and we were  partners. Toy 
cars and little dirt roads under our dining room window.  Hunting spiders. 
Bird-watching with a pair of worn-out binoculars. Hiding up  under the 
boxcars 
and pretending we were hoboes. Oh, that's the life for me!  Getting into 
trouble for firing up the back yard incinerator at 4 a.m. on a  Saturday 
morning and 
stealing our mother's potatoes just to see if we could bake  one in the coals 
and eat it.
 
Enter, Kindergarten.
 
My first day in a brand-new, frightening world. Left him crying in the  
driveway. I had already been admonished that I shouldn't be 'hanging out 
with'  
him, as his parents couldn't read or write, and they saved stacks of  
newspapers 
in a small stucco building his father had carefully constructed for  just 
such 
purpose. I am sure my parents thought they were looking out for my  
'intellectual' safety, but no excuse.
 
That first day, we - (my classmates and I) - little people that we were,  
were instructed to form a line with a 'partner'. Me, too shy and at the end  
of 
the line, had no partner, and broke away from the group and ran home, proudly 
 
returning with  Eddie in tow a few moments later. He WAS my  partner.
 
Eddie was sent home because he had no shoes.
 
I have never forgiven the 'system' for this horribly cruel  malfunction.
 
My mother and I, several years later, when I was a teenager, were taking  the 
Long Beach 'red train' and I was so looking forward to finding Eddie again.  
But we happened to pick up a local paper at one of the stops,and  of  the 
lead 
articles told of how Eddie had been horribly maimed in an auto  accident.
 
I don't know where he is today.
 
Sandy
Mid-Mojave
 
 
 
 
 
 
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