My father sits back trying to recall my first walk across the tightrope, the initial plunge, the consequent falls, however you want to mark the spot. Perhaps I was never steady, thrown off course long ago. My mother, refusing to allow my faith to disappear, repeats a story I have often heard: I was dying inside her and just when doctor, nurse, and family gave up, I didn’t. Instead, I chose to cry and scream and claim my place among my race. She smiles as she tells this as if to say, you have always defeated the worst.

I bought my first apple computer at 20 when it was available at Cal for a steep discount, and because I was disenchanted with biochmestry, started writing, and I haven't stopped. In my box of college things, there are dozens of floppy disks whose contents contain amateurish writing of a broken hearted young man, but that, as they say, is another story. The answering machine was a novelty when I went to college in the mid 80's but has now become a relic, an oral journal of sort, going on history's shelf next to old postcards and the handwritten letters.