Innocence and Experience

      Everyone loses their childhood innocence at one time or another, either gradually through the normal course of growing up, or all at once as the result of an unforeseen trauma and disturbance. I count myself lucky to be part of the former group.

      The events I recall which gradually stripped away the vestiges of my innocence and made me come of age:

1. April 4th 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, TN;
2. May 4th 1970 when the shootings took place at Kent State University in Ohio;
3. August 8th 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned as President;
4. April 30th 1975 when Saigon fell and the North Vietnamese took control;
5. June, 1977 when I graduated from Ridgewood High School;
6. June 1978 when my family moved from Ridgewood into Manhattan.

      These events forced me to re-evaluate my untainted, youthful ideas of Life and made me start to realize what the world is really like. Everyone can rightly name their own but these were the ones which stick out in my mind. These events provided me with experiences which hopefully have not made me grow too pessimistic.  There is much to see in terms of joy and wonder in our world. A person like myself only needs to remember the fact that others have been given much harsher introductions to adulthood and have trouble recollecting anything at all which they would care to reminisce about. I am lucky to have been spared such trauma and to feel grateful for my childhood memories.