My earliest memory is the experience of death. I played at the edge of the pool for hours on end when I was three. With my right arm and right leg submerged I would imitate the motion of a swimmer but I could'nt swim. This subdued dance I so enjoyed while teeter on my chest and belly which gently rubbed against the warm clean concrete of the edge was an item of worry for my parents and grand parents. Because they knew I couldlnt swim I was effectively forcing them to watch over me intently. Grandpa Michael Caro was watching me through the kitchen window. They asked him if he could I was alright and he said that I was alright. There is an ethic best summarized by the phrase what does not kill me makes me stronger that is strong in my family. The cool unheated pool water engulfed my body as I slipped. I was face down in the pool. My visual field was filled with the rippling lights refracted through the layers of concentric circles which defined the surface of the water which played as a projection over a handful of leaves some floating dust and the smooth surface of the bottom of the pool. That changed. The projections seemed to increase in intensity until it seemed that I was sealed in a container filled with blinding suffocating impenetrable light. Like a black hole in reverse. I could no longer enjoy the sensation of the water flowing between the fine hairs on my skin not because I was dry but because I was floating face down and had drowned. I will never forget how cold my body became as the water in my longs was contiguous with that of the pool. My body heat transfered freely into the pool both from the surface of my skin and the inside of my lungs. As the story goes no one knows how long I was floating but my grand mother was the first to notice my motionless corpse floating in the backyard pool. She dove in and made some attempts at mouth to mouth for children. Fifteen minutes later the ambulance arrived and pronounced Theodore Vincent the Fifth dead on arrival. My mother prayed to god in curses and screams which interrupted the condolences of the paramedics who attempted to fill out the forms which record my death. Several minutes later I began to breath. My first breath seemed to me to be something very funny. Although I was too weak to laugh I was laughing inside at the sight of my mother's terror. I can only imagine that I was intoxicated by brain damage. The medics said that I would suffer permanent brain damage. They said that my parents shouldn't expect me to read or write because I may never learn to speak again.

They were right, for a while.

Although I was a strange infant who never learned to crawl. I reverted to my infancy. I would knuckle walk taking "steps" by repositioning my seat and letting my legs flop to whatever direction, for the year following my death. Eventually I learned to walk for the second time. My second first step was not an event to celebrate. I was almost four at the time. I spoke in a sequence of incoherent babbles often attaching the relevant noun at the end of a sentence. It may have been the fact that my grandparents spoke five languages in the home. The spoke German Hebrew Spanish Italian and English and those languages were heard in equal parts in conversations between Eva and Mike Caro. I did'nt learn to speak until I was almost five. I was put into ESL courses based on my difficulties with English. They asked me to write things in my native language and of course I did. I wrote things in Hebrew. My grandmother taught me to write in Hebrew thinking that I already knew how to write in English. For a year and a half I was in ESL and ESL mixed classes. My mother realized that my ESL teacher spoke horrible English when they had a parent teacher meeting with to discuss my learning disabilities. The only benefit I gleaned from this year in ESL would be the friendship of my table mate Natto. Natto is one of my best friends to this day.

I was placed in a normal English speaking class and left my first and second generation Mexican friends for a class of asian white and black kids. In this new and much more like television environment I thrived. I scored highly on most standardized tests typically in the top two percentile for the state of California through elementary school. I was a pain in the ass to my teachers whom I made fun of at every opportunity. The mood of the classroom was at the whim of my wit. I would complain to my mother that I had no friends. Often I cried to her while she drove me to school and when we arrived at the classroom door the children would say my name and cheer. Then she would say don't you see you have lots of friends. Although I was always well known for public displays my lunchtime friends were self proclaimed nerds and outcasts. One year I came back from Isreal with a broken leg. I wore a cast for almost an entire year. My friend Daniel the son of one of the worlds premiere baroque violinists was the only kid who would play with me. We built sand castles in the sand and spoke about taking algebra and advanced math.

I was Theodore Vincent the Fifth but they called me Clinton. Daniel calls me Clint to this day. My father who I never knew referred to me by the name of his favorite musical artists George Clinton. I always wondered why he didn't call me George. In the summer I would be back in Israel every summer until sixth grade.