The Art and Science of Getting Over.

Intelligence is not a gift. Intelligence is a curse. Especially if you’re 10 years old going on 25. If you are fortunate enough to be the smartest kid in your class and you live in Gross Pointe, Michigan, your path to Princeton, Yale or Exeter is all but guaranteed. So too is your partnership in a top ten law practice, your membership in the Skull & Bones and your stunning trophy wife. Your intelligence is both a gift and a blessing and society applauds your every effort to leverage it to the benefit of all you have chosen to become affiliated with.

However, if you are unfortunate enough to be the smartest kid in your class at Burnett Street School in Newark, New Jersey, you better be ready to loose your lunch money every day and get your ass beat every week. They don’t do smart in Newark, New Jersey. They do hard in Newark, New Jersey. And the only thing that trumps a thug in that corner of the world is a thief.

And so it was after a series of lost childhood lunches and uncomfortable ass whippings, that I decided to consort with a cadre of outlaw bikers and car thieves in the interest of self preservation. Of course in the presence of such company, intelligence goes by another name and is directed to another purpose.

In Newark, NJ, you are not intelligent, you are “slick.” And your path is not directed to move you upward and onward. Your sole motivation is to do whatever you have to do to get “over.” As with all things in life there is a right way to be slick and a wrong way to be slick. Do it the right way and nobody ever sees you coming and before they can check their wallet or their girlfriend, your ass is up and skillfully gone. Do it the wrong way and you’re made as being “two-bit slick” and your friends are few and your prospects are slim.

So it was that I entered the world of grown-ups while still very much a child. Children were silly and of no consequence. Grown-ups were serious and all-powerful. Children were ignorant and unfocused. Adults were cunning and knew how to get what they wanted. Children cried. Adults whispered. Children were always broke. Adults were always getting paid.

My path to getting over became very apparent at a very early age. Learn everything I could from every adult I could, before they noticed I was taking it all in. The first thing I noticed about the world of adults was the ways and means they had for keeping us kids in our place. If an adult knew your parents, they were quick to limit your freedom and your access. If an adult didn’t know you from Adam’s house cat, they didn’t even notice you unless you were stupid enough to get under foot.

The first lesson I learned about the most common belief adults shared about children was that we should be seen and not heard. It was the first time I came to understand that my intelligence was even more of a threat in the world of adults then it was in the society of my contemporaries.

“Keep your ears open and your mouth shut,” was my most valuable gift of knowledge from the bad element I fell in with. I was useful as a lookout and a gathering device for neighborhood intelligence as long as I followed those simple rule of conduct. I knew paydays. I knew when welfare checks arrived. I knew birthdays. I knew when birthday gifts arrived. I knew who hit the number. I knew where the shopkeepers stashed their cash. I was a wisp of smoke in the shadows. I was as still as a mouse under the tenement stairways. I knew what basement pipes yielded third floor conversations. I understood what drunken domestic squabs yielded payday information. And because I was addicted to movies, radio and television, I understood the best way to pass information on was the silence of the written word, slipped in a coat pocket hung on a wall. No one could tell what they never heard. I worked hard to improve upon the order of the day. I was never seen and never heard. This was my life at the tender age of ten.

Until the two Newark Detectives who were buddies of my newspaper reporter father, scooped me up in their prowl car and took me out to the Jersey Meadows and beat me with phone books until I passed out from the pain. The last thing I remembered before passing out was the Italian Cop telling the Black Cop that if he ever saw me in the wrong place at the wrong time again, he should round up my mentors and let it be known that I had ratted them out.

The very next day my mothered packed my bags and sent me off with my father to spend the rest of the summer with my Grand Mother in Pittsburgh. My parents had no idea what I had learned at the hands of my criminal role models. Within a week I had started up a crap game in the laundry room of my Grandmothers apartment building with the steelworkers who pulled the nightshift and spent their days drinking and swapping lies about their exploits in the great war. It was my Grandfather who discovered my basement side venture. He was a big man and certainly no one to mess with so with a few words of wisdom to my crapshooters my crapgame became null and void.

“What is it you love to do, more than anything else on this Earth, boy?,” my grandfather asked while rifling my pockets for my winnings and handing most of it back to his neighbors. “I guess, I like to draw,” I said, looking for an answer that would paint me in the best possible light. That afternoon he took me downtown on the trolley and spent the last $30 of my winnings on a cardboard box full of art supplies. “Since you won’t be going back outside until your father comes to take you back home two months from now, these here paints and brushes and drawing paper should help you keep the Devil at bay.” That’s what he said. That’s what he meant. And that’s how I spent the next two months of my life. And ultimately the rest of my life until this day.