My favorite day of the week is Sunday because I love going to church. I may not always feel like going but I do, and when I get there I don’t regret it. The rest of the week, my favorite times are when I take man-child to school in the morning. I love those times when it’s just me and him and we can talk.

“Daddy, I can’t wait to get to school today!” Neo exclaimed. The jubilation apparent within his eyes begged me to ask the question.

“Why’s that son?” Even Peaches who joins us on our morning travels seemed interested in hearing the cause of such joy.

“We get to watch a movie in class today, it’s about Abraham Lincoln!”

I immediately starting thinking back to my grade school years and how absolutely juiced I would get when the teacher would wheel in the television or the over head projector. The squeaky carts were made of metal and had the most awful color of green painted on it I’d ever seen, complete with metallic flakes. Just as a smile was starting to come over my face, I slowed down to stop at the light. That’s when Neo hit me with the show stopper.

“What was the best movie you ever watched in class daddy?”

I’ve seen a lot of movies in my school days-not many of which I would classify as “good” per say but nevertheless, the one memory that came to mind was one that I couldn’t tell him. Even if I did he wouldn’t believe me; no one would unless you were there.

I was in the third grade and our teacher Mrs. Graves was the epitome of zero tolerance. If it were to take human form, zero tolerance would appear In the form of a menacing black woman who had permission from my parents to hit me with the magic (a paddling for those of you raised in the CPS era) and she used it frequently. I’ve mentioned this in the past before that I got a lot of spankings and such growing up. I wasn’t mistreated don’t get that impression. Every spanking (with the exception of a few) I earned so I’m not complaining. I wish they’d have done it more now that I think of it. But anyways, Ms. Graves was a hard but fair teacher who loved her students but there was no fooling around in her class.

One day our 3rd grade class and another teacher and her class (I think her name was Mrs. Mason, I can’t remember) told us that we were going on a field trip. We were so happy we couldn’t stand it. Every kid likes to get out of the class from time to time so we were all game.

We hopped on the city bus that took us to downtown Milwaukee. Once we got off and a short walk later, we found out our destination. It was the movie theatre!

“This is radical! It can’t get any better than this!” That’s what I was thinking or something close to it. A day at the movies-you can’t top that.
After the initial excitement of going to a movie settled in, we all began to wonder what it was we had come to see. I don’t know who it was that asked but word spread like wild fire among us kids.

We were going to see Purple Rain. Yes, the one with Prince in it.

I was stunned. I knew Mrs. Graves was a prince fan (I caught her listening to one of his tapes leaving the parking lot one day) but I didn’t know it was like that. I had heard his music before but I was in the 3rd grade and was not prepared to meet Prince on the big screen. Most of the movie was a blur, I only saw it that one time. I remember a motorcycle and a woman who was just a pretty as he was. The only other thing I really remembered was an intimate scene that left one of the women’s breasts exposed.

I was always told to cover my eyes when something like that happened and I didn’t dare peak. I was sitting next to Mrs. Graves when this happened and my hand immediately came up over my eyes. I didn’t want to look because I knew I’d get in trouble by my parents. But then I realized, they weren’t there so I made my move. I wanted to see what the hoopla was about too.

“Mrs. Graves, do I have to cover my eyes?” I waited to see if she’d take the bait.

“You can do what you want to do…” she said it in that parent way like “you can technically do what you want but your survival is another matter all together.

At first I thought it was a trick. I had outsmarted her earlier that week and I was afraid she’d caught on. It could be a trap, a set up and I’d be walking right into it. You see Mrs. Graves was very found of making us look up words and define them for homework. The problem was I am a gamer. There was no way I was going to be thwarted from saving princess Mushroom by the likes of homework. I already new the meanings of most of the words. The year before I had won a set of encyclopedias in an art contest at school. My parents made us read them for at least an hour a night-making sure we got good use of them. At first it sucked but after awhile it was fun; especially when you hit “H” and got to see the cool human body stuff with the transparent overlays. So I started writing my definitions the way they sounded in the dictionary. Same type of vocabulary and all, it drastically cut down on the time I had to spend on looking up each word and copying it verbatim. I figured she had caught on was getting even with me so I never did look.

Well, I did take a quick peek but that was it. I swear I could feel my parents watching me so I didn’t test my luck. I darn near slid under the chair to the greasy popcorn and forgotten Skittles world of the theatre floor below, trying to turn away.

“BEEP BEEP!” the car behind honked over and over again. I snapped out of my flashback, sitting at the same red light that was now green.

“Daddy, did you hear me? What was your favorite one?” He looked at me bouncing in his seat like a Disney gummy bear off a fresh cup of juice.

“Abraham Lincoln son, Abraham Lincoln.”