Sneak Peek At The Making Of The Bronx Identity!

On the first day of school, our teacher gave us homework to make tour books on our hometowns. For the time being, she asked us to introduce ourselves and highlight our tourist attractions. Most of the students were from countries like England and lived in places like Beverly Hills. Everyone applauded after every student’s brief presentation. Everyone’s mouth dropped when they found out I lived in The South Bronx.

The teacher turned pale face and almost fainted. A few minutes later a rich student from Switzerland quietly got up and moved to another seat. I had a marketing problem.

And I was ethnic profiled at NYU.  The kids were mean to me!

“No can’t go out with you,” said a polite Japanese girl, “You poor! You South Bronx!”


Her laughter made my face redder than the rising sun over her country.  I began to dream of a way to draw tourists into town with The Big Idea

I began to spend hours at the computer lab working with exciting programs like Adobe, Lumina and Word. They helped to formulate a strategy. I was going to put citizens from our town like Al Pacino, Colin Powell and now Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor on police line-ups with the headline Take Another Look.

This was the new Public Image of my town: IN YOUR FACE!

And since The Bronx is the only town connected to the mainland, I was going to capture The American Spirit to the tune of The Magnificent Seven at Yankee Stadium to hit the ball into orbit.

Let go, said a voice. Use The Force.

I experienced an academic second wind at the university from a Big Bang of so many ideas, one blaze of glory.   The genius is out of The Bronx School of Science. Then I was held down on the holy grounds of higher education and had my memories wiped by a Neo Nazi.  The plug was pulled out on my brain. 

My 2001: A Cyber Space Odyssey began when Win95 reactivated A.I in the year of XP

  (Read A.I as Amazing Imagination more important than knowledge said Albert Einstein.) I became Casper The Friendly Ghost in the machine of the media matrix. This is Bronx, Baseball and Beyond Tron Legacy! 

                   Seriously, this really happened.                    

 I got to go now. I only get 15 to 45 minutes of computer time at NYPL, that helped make a  wish to live life like A Great American Novel, one like the sci-fi of a Great Comic Book, come true.

“Don’t let them tell you who you are. You tell them who you are,” said Charlie Rose at a commencement speech at a university I never graduated from and yet I did.

Yes, I did.

I graduated with flying colors.