02/21/2010 - 1st Sunday in Lent
Friday, June 18, 2010 at 11:09AM Growing up as a “youth” in Brooklyn, New York, had its natural challenges and temptations to be sure, but these innate obstacles were on occasions made even more difficult by the arrogant claims of young boys, who tried to live up to the extreme levels of bluster about the extraordinary physical and athletic feats they were capable of performing at any given time. My friends and acquaintances in the neighborhood for instance, would gather together on many an afternoon in our favorite hangout, Sunset Park, and after engaging in a couple of hours of mortal combat that we called basketball or two hand touch football, we would sit down review the exceptional events of the day, after which the pride of all would gradually swell, and the bull would begin to fly, always winding up with a man on man challenge as to who was fastest runner, who could throw a ball the farthest, who was the strongest, who was the toughest and so forth. On such occasions the boast was usually followed by, “if you say you can…then prove it…now as I look back I’m sure these sessions were purposely schemed by a few of the more worldly, in order to get someone to say something outlandish, to give the rest of the fellows a good laugh at the victim’s expense.






