Nov 1, 2019

Yeah. I think every day is extraordinary. Every moment of every day. And I don’t remember anything that’s really outstanding, but since you asked, I remember this. And I was going to say one thing to Gary about what he said. At school, I was always just like I am now, talking, yakking, yakking, answering all the questions. Remembering everything I could look at, and I remembered. But at home, until I was about 13 or 14, I stuttered, “No, I wasn’t supposed to talk.” But one day I decided, “I’m 14. Let me say what I want to say.” And they said, “Well, you can talk at the dinner table.” So I participated in whatever they were talking about. Nothing that I remember because they were not in doing anything that I really was interested. They talked about food, each other, stuff like that. But what I remember, there was a pool called Colonial Pool. We would walk up to that, about 150 street, somewhere like that, in the summer. And we brought seven of us.

I used to go the beach with my aunts, Rockaway and some place in Jersey. But they were technically my great aunts because they lived in New York before my grandma. They would take us swimming, but only about many years before I finished high school did I learn, although I talked my grandmother into letting us go with them, they couldn’t swim. So I don’t know if even if I would’ve went with them, during Rockaway especially. You’re standing here, in two minutes, the ground shifts. So the water that was behind you or in front of you is someplace else, and you’d be there with more water, or less water.

Okay. So we were going to the pool. We didn’t want my grandmother to know so we go early in the summer. So we would have clothes drying, so we couldn’t have bathing suits. But one of my cousins fell in the pool. I don’t remember if anybody could or couldn’t swim, but he was my favorite cousin. So everybody was yelling and screaming. So I said, “Oh, Tommy can’t drown.” So I jumped in the pool to save him. And he was down in the water, and I went down and got him help and got him to the top. And he was worried about, he had something in his pocket that he didn’t want to lose. I forgot what it was. So I said, “Well, we’ll worry about that later.” And he was full of water and I guess so I was, but I’d seen the movie that they had, and I remember he pulled the dude this way, the flow and I was able to do it. Then somebody else jumped in and they saved us both.

Now look at somebody that didn’t swim. I could not swim. And in high school you had to learn how to swim to get out of the high school. So until that time I didn’t swim. But I actually swam and got him to the edge where he could hold on. And never told anybody anything about it. And that’s how I’ve been most of my life was I told you. Anything I set out to do, whether it’s long range, I don’t do any long range thing, but whatever I have to do, I do it like that and get it done and keep on moving with life. That’s how I am. That’s how I am as a person.

Well yeah. But you see me every day over here. Mario, they put him on a leash the other day saying, “Goodness, you’re know?” No, but really that’s how I think about life. You don’t have to have long range plans. You can do whatever you want to do and you don’t have to give it much thought. Music is a good example.

I never knew I could sing, never thought about it. But I can hear the music right now, but I think of a song, I don’t even know what it sounds like, but the music comes and then I have it right. Everybody says I do, so I can hear things that you want to hear, and do things you want to do without a lot of preparation. You know what I mean?

Not everyone has those gifts.

But see you call it a gift and I call it just the way of life.