At seven I was injured severally.The left side of my head hit a concrete floor from five feet up on the left cortex and the left side of my face was torn open from some construction. I was appointed a social worker in the hospital by the Chief of Staff. My mother had stopped on the way into the ER to get a tranquilizer at her doctor’s office. Her doctor and life friend was the Chief of Staff of Sacred Heart. And the Social Worker arranged while my father was in litigation with his company on Apollo One to negotiate the merger of his company under a million-dollar government fine on Breach of Contract. She arranged the school for me to go to, and the town, and my father’s new branch office. The school was a school for Geniuses and children with disabilities in the sixties, an experimental school. I was in a special class for students with high IQs and they brought in students from the HS to teach French and Italian and Spanish and German and studied with a friend while he was studying for his Bar mitzva and learned Hebrew from him. I had a Speech Pathologist and Audiologist. And a Plastic Surgeon and Dental Specialist. And I went up to the Gym every night or the Y just down the street and started Taekwondo early. One of the Master’s came in from Korea to Little Rock when I was 12 in ’73. They asked him to visit me in the Y. I spoke Korean and understood Taekwon do. The Master gave his personal belt as a kindness. My father’s partner in the company gave me his sons Guitar, my parents bought me a drum set and a trumpet. And we had a piano. And my brother bought me an 8 track that I could record from the radio while singing on the 8 track. All of it for recuperation at this very very beautiful school.
And the Social worker arranged it so that the school and the attorney’s law firm across the street would make the decisions for my family on my education. My family was not told that I was being taught foreign languages, and I am not sure why, but I think it was a desire for me and my elementary school neighbor for it to be between us. And that they would have said no. I was smart enough to decipher languages as well by Linguistic History. And I loved studying. And a neighbor of ours encouraged us as we grew older to find a career that would incorporate the Languages and History that I loved.
From the accident I developed PTSD and for some reason have considerable memory loss or difficulty in storage of long-term memory. And it was 2 years ago now that my doctor with the team that I have for my care told me when I asked her… that it was French that I had talked to her in. At that point I did not know I spoke French or that I had learned French in School. And there are other languages. There is confusion there as well as with my guitar and piano. Caused they believe by how my brain stored memories.
My parents bought a turntable, and my brother bought me the album… Jethro Tull, Too Old to Rock and Roll Too Young to Die.
My sister bought from Columbia Records my first 8 track called Caledonia by Robin Trower with the song Bridge of Sighs on it.
September 