I love forever the stage of development that is sophomoric!

We pass through it, ever so briefly{hopefully}only to get to the other side with both foolishness and wisdom still in two different hands. Why did I ask so many questions only to forget the answers and do as I pleased anyway? is the question of the sophomore. As I have told you many times, they pinched us and smacked questions out of our mouths, much of the time. Children should be seen and not heard. We had to find answers to our questions. I don't know if they didn't know the answer, but we were warned of asking too many questions.

This morning your questions took me into Freshman year of my life and I can only find those days in my mind's eye, when I look at my face in masculine your face at the same season of life. It's amazing how many things are lost to the aging process. When I see you with the same expressions, I remember what made me make that face.

Well, I told you of the day I got lost on Gravesend Blvd. in Brooklyn. I was sure that some monster would eat me there. What peace I got from calling home, was lost when I heard the screaming and futility of the entire house that I was under the elevated train in a completely foreign location. Eventually, I found my way through the fear and craze of my own imagination. Eventually, I got home and learned about turnstyles and grated exits and entrances on the train. I never really wanted to talk to the conductor or the token taker, we were warned, ever so strongly against talking to strangers. If I got lost or turned around, I would find a map and locate where I was and find my way where I was going. Mostly this was underground, remember. If I had a dime in my pocket, which eventually became a quarter to use a payphone, what could my family do to help me? So might as well keep the dime, in case you find a quarter on the ground and can buy a candybar to satiate your aching tummy. That was my thinking, anyway.

Wisdom in one hand and foolishness in the other hand of the sophomore. This is only if your parents had the forethought to spank the foolishness out of your heart into your hands. Is this a wise or foolish thing to my way of thinking seems the labyrinth of second year of High School? Can I get away with it? That is the thinking of the permissively reared youngster. Will it call down the hounds of hell to come up out of the ground and eat me alive, is the fear of God planted deeply in the sensitive soul? We saw those hounds in our minds eye and they were bigger than our father's huge whip. I would rather face the whip than the hounds of my imagination. I'd say that is the beginning of discouragement in the over whipped heart.

Father's provoke not!

Don't try that, it will eat you. Don't do that it will kill you. etc. Right and left hand thinking, where is wisdom and where is foolishness. I call this letters from next Tuesday, because they often promised to beat you into next Tuesday. Now that I've woken up next Tuesday, I can see this, now can't I.