It was over. I mean, we have NO chance - Skinny and me, that is. The year after The Pilgrim Girl was unceremoniously pushed into the mud on Thanksgiving Day, the previously very white Roselle High is forcefully racially integrated - happening to coincide with mine and Skinny’s first year there. It’s 1973 - and Roselle is finally and forever changed.

  Even though we’re Sicilian (Skinny and me) and come from Brooklyn, and at least have some frame of reference for this - as opposed to all these Opies surrounding us - we’re still just puny little kids. Compared to these guys, anyway. I mean, most of them, they’re like grown men already. It’s like black Vikings invading the school. It was swift and it was total, and just like that, our innocence, or whatever the hell it was  - is gone. Snap.

   We didn’t really understand, but it felt like living under  the Kremlin, or something. There was no point in trying to escape or resist, we just have to take our lumps...especially me, since for some reason, I am put into the class for the criminally insane. So, we’re pretty much just quivering pats of butter. That’s where Weatherbee H. Peabody comes in. Weatherbee is this fictitious character derived from our imaginations. He is this kid from England who is driven to school every day by his chauffeur in a limousine - he wears black framed glasses, and a tuxedo to school every day - and does snuff. And refuses to take gym class.  I mean, subconsciously we know this is beyond absurd - but it had to be done!

  So we start spreading this around -  it’s almost, like, subliminal messages,  or something. There’s  a lot of nice black kids among the assassins also  - and one this kid, Keith Bailey, is  one of our confidants.

   “Oh yeah, I seen that mofucka in gym class - he be wearin’ black socks and shoes, an’ shit with his gym shorts - mofucka be crazy an’ shit!’

Pretty soon, it’s like wildfire around the school (particularly among the black kids, who find this thoroughly intriguing) and everybody is claiming they’ve seen him.

“Man, I seen that mofucka doin’ snuff an’ shit while he be waiting for his chauffeur, then the mofucka gets in this limo!” Another kid declares.

It becomes  such a must see attraction that finally, a group of the black kids threateningly confront Bobby Gibb, a friend of ours, claiming they’ve never seen him.

  “Oh, they put him in remedial reading!” He blurts out quickly, saving his ass, and for reasons unknown that seems to satisfy the angry mob.

At last, Skinny and me are laughing again.