DO YOU REALLY THINK

that if you crossed your eyes when you were a kid that they might just stay that way? I don't think so either. Do you think if you made an ugly, ghastly face as a kid that your face might freeze like that? Me neither. Do you think if you did step on a crack that it just might break your mother's back?

Kids are told lots of stuff. Stuff as in what a good friend of mine used to say when he heard something unbelievable. "You lying stack of stuff," is what Mr. Will Taylor Lee would say in his once powerful booming Southern voice.

Do you think that "sticks and stones may break my bones/ but words will never hurt me"? Words do hurt. They last a lot longer than a broken bone.

There is such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy, too. If we felt as a kid that we wouldn't amount to much, then we probably filled the bill. Parents sometimes were the worst offenders:"Can't you do anything right?" Well, that's sure to inspire.

Parents of friends can be equally hurtful. I still remember my good friend Tommy and I playing in another friend's basement when we must have done something pretty terrible. I sure don't recall or cannot think of what might have warranted the mother of the friend who blurted out "You and Tommy will wind up in prison someday." I don't know about him: I just thought she was crazy. I don't remember being too affected by it, but at age 10 or so, I still remember telling my mother what had been said.

And I don't recall her, a proactive mother and grandmother not afraid of supporting her own, contacting the other mom. She must have thought her crazy, too.

We must have left that house that day after the prophecy; again, I don't recall. But I do remember going back and playing there again. And I do remember years later when her son was charged with selling cocaine.

So there you have it.