Recent events have brought to mind some terrifying days I experienced growing up in the Bronx. As a sixth-grader, I was painfully shy, with a pronounced stammer.
One day, two uniformed policemen came into the classroom, looked around and pointed to me while declaring, "We want that boy."
I was escorted to the principal's office, planted in a chair and asked if I knew why I was there. I stammered "no" and was told to stare at the wall clock until my memory improved.
When it became clear that clock-watching was not going to produce a confession, I was grilled on my whereabouts for a series of Saturdays. Fortunately, my father had formed a boys' club at our church and he would take us to various points of interest in New York City. My Saturdays were covered.
This only produced frustration from the officers, so I was directed back to clock-watching.
That evening, I shared the horror with my parents who were Swedish immigrants and certainly not acquainted with the finer points of law. So my father wrote down the places and times of the boys' club's Saturday trips. Certainly, that would clear me, they reasoned.
However, the next day I was back again facing the clock. My father's list meant nothing because the police officers had been informed by a reliable witness that two boys crawled over the school fence, broke into the school and caused minor damage. One was identified as an Italian, and the other had blond hair.
Since there were few blonds in our Italian, Jewish and Irish community, it was clear that it had to be me. Of this the police were certain.
