I Promise To Keep Quiet (After I’m Dead)*

Maybe you saw the cover of this book on a shelf in a bookstore, and opened it, thinking it was the story of a former lady gangster with secrets to reveal -- or possibly the ruminations of a partially recovered escapee from a nut house. Well, tough luck, it’s not. That book you are holding in your hand is just something I decided to write to get some old garbage off my mind. I’m not going to glorify it any more than that. I just happen to be an outspoken schnook raised by a pair of other outspoken schnooks, residents of an average neighborhood of nobodies, most of whose lives were pretty boring. So why buy this book? I’m no celebrity -- I’m not even a genius or a compulsive gambler -- although I am compulsive. There are two simple reasons why I wrote it: (1) Now that I’m a seventy-one year old lady, I can finally tell the truth about my undiagnosed insanity because all the other principal players in my personal drama are dead. I also thought it might be a good idea to put some of my childhood anecdotes in book form, rather than have them buried in some sort of time capsule. Knowing my history, nobody I know would ever dig it up anyway. (2) The second reason is that I need your money. I want you to purchase this relatively cheap book as a charitable contribution to my personal fund, and, trust me -- it’s not even tax deductible. I’ll let you in on a little secret -- I had a third reason. They say senior citizens who want to avoid memory loss should exercise their brains more. So by having to write in sentence form, in halfway decent English, I’m doing it. I am taking my brain out for a walk. I’m a survivor, I think. Yes, indeed, I’ve just checked my pulse. After living through a tumultuous childhood, crisis-filled puberty, interrupted schooling, multiple marriages, childbirth, divorce, career revisions (I’ve even practiced law for thirty years), health issues and a few other bumps in the road, it’s time for me to be able to let go of pretense and face reality. (Yiikes!) Actually, I hate facing reality. It gives me the itches and takes me on that wild ride back into my past. All those memories are still vivid. When I was a four-year-old tomboy, I had a lack of well-behaved mentors to guide me. I was an only child until age eight of two working parents living in a storefront neighborhood where the only kids my age were rowdy little boys who were always dirty and played mean. I probably thought I was supposed to act like the little devils that they were. Fortunately, this stage of my young life ran its course and I settled down to a relatively calm existence as a mere rebel. I never got over that stage, but I’m harmless enough. I like the idea of starting a new project at age seventy-one, so I’m ready to reduce my craziness and compulsive behavior to a few chapters of light reading. I have tried hard to keep it light because my attitude is, if you want to get into something heavy, you’re better off reading one of William Shakespeare’s tragedies. I’ve had fun doing this project, so maybe you’ll chuckle a little bit as you follow some of my antics. If you don’t, well then, I’ve still got your money. I have come to the conclusion that it’s a mistake to take the road of life too seriously, so I simply view it as a scenic bypass carved out of the murky human jungle.