No April Fool's, part 1

I promised a response to the post immediately below this one. I'll write it in two parts.

All first six statements are TRUE:

1. The only person who ever noticed that I have a crooked smile was a Russian doctor, in a remote town by the Black Sea.

The scene: Sochi, in the Soviet Union. We must inspect the health of all who travel here. You, the youngest one – your face is not working properly. One cheek ees deader than the other! (gulp) One hip ees higher than the other! (gulp) Eat more!

2. The very fist TV show I watched was the Mickey Mouse Club. I watched it repeatedly while in an orphanage in Poland.

I watched while in the orphanage, but when not watching, I myself was not in the orphanage. The place was in the Polish village where my grandparents lived. They wouldn’t have had me any way. They only took boys.

3. I went to a New York elementary school in a building that had a separate stairwell for boys and a separate one for girls.

New York (then, as now) had such tremendous respect for the United Nations that, when asked to offer up space for the UN International School (where I went), they could only come up with an old, condemned (no April Fool’s there!) public school building, built in the previous century, where boys did not mess with girls. At least not in stairwells.

4. The first three years of my life were spent in a house that had no electricity and no indoor plumbing.

We had a fine well outside and a very clean outhouse. Eventually we moved up to a hand pump that I learned to work, so that water would splash out in spurts into the kitchen. The pump built strong arm muscles! I have no virtuous words to offer for the outhouse.

5. I had a violent confrontation with the police when I was barely fifteen.

The Polish police and I had a run-in during a student demonstration that I was watching at a tender age, trying to understand what the hell was going on in my country in 1968.

6. I was on the Mike Douglas show with Virginia (of “yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” fame).

Mike Douglas wanted to have a few token red commie kids on a Christmas TV special. My sister and I were plucked out of our school, which probably had the highest concentration of commie-country kids in the States (all of five maybe). The goal was for us all, at the close, to sing Silent Night in our different languages. I gave it my best shot, but then I noted during the airing of the show that they muted our singing. Maybe they thought I was vocalizing Polish profanities or worse, anti-capitalist slogans. Even though I was such an angelic child! Okay, a touch spunky at the edges. Okay, maybe not so angelic.

to be continued...