Free Forever the Fat Kid: How I Survived Dysfunction, Depression and Life in the Theater by Michael Boyd

than six months after the accident, she was well enough to return home. Not just to her family, but to her job as well. She became, once again, a wife, mother, and full-time secretary at the position that her former employer had held open for her since the accident. She still made weekly visits to New Jersey to see Dr. Kirby.
    Soon after Annette returned to her old life, another curve was thrown her way–the unexpected death of Dr. Kirby. Whether it was real or psychological, Annette had developed an intense dependency on Dr. Kirby, and she was convinced that the sessions with her were responsible for the improvements she had made, and was still making. The day after my mother told her of Dr. Kirby’s death, Annette called and confessed that she hadn’t slept very well the night before. She also complained of a constant headache ever since getting the news.
    NATIONAL TRAGEDY / PERSONAL TRAGEDY
    Recently I was lying in bed reading the Sunday newspaper and came across an article titled “America Beyond The Color Line.” The article began with the line “Last April – 35 years after Martin Luther King was assassinated – Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. set out to explore what had changed for African-Americans socially, politically and economically since then.” Had it really been thirty-five years since Dr. King had been assassinated?
    I have a vague memory of the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And that, of course, is the defining “where were you” moment for most Americans. I was in the first grade and I remember something going on, although our teacher made no attempt to explain anything to us. Maybe she thought we were too young to understand, or maybe she was simply too upset herself. Walking home from school that day, an older boy who lived on my block filled me in on what had happened. Having just turned seven years old, I didn’t grasp the full impact of the events of that November day in 1963, and went happily about the business of being a kid as the rest of the world mourned. However, the day of Martin Luther King’s assassination is quite a different story.
    It was April 4th, 1968. I was eleven-and-a-half years old. It was two days after my mother’s forty-ninth birthday. It had been nine months and two days since the horrible car accident that altered all of our lives. We were in Philadelphia at Annette’s house, or what had been Annette’s house. She no longer lived there. Hours earlier we had laid her to rest in Merion Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. If it had been two months later, we might have been there celebrating her thirtieth birthday. Instead, here we were gathered in grief, trying to find some sense of purpose in this loss. In the background, a television set was on. Out of nowhere, a woman yelled out, “Oh my God!” Everyone within earshot turned to see what had happened. This same woman, in a voice full of shock and disbelief, shouted, “Martin Luther King just got shot!”
    ONE WEEK EARLIER
    Thursday, March 28th started out on a positive note. My mother let me take the day off from school to hang out with my cousin, Ronnie. Ronnie was in the military and hadn’t been around for most of my life. I was just getting acquainted with him on this particular visit back home to New Jersey, and I thought he was the coolest person on earth. He was doing some work on at his mom’s–my Aunt Florence’s–house and my mother let me stay home from school to help him, though I’m not sure how much help I was at eleven years old. After dropping me off that morning, she continued on to Newark where she picked up Annette at the train station. They spent the day shopping.
    Around four or five o’clock that evening, they picked me up at Aunt Florence’s house. While my mother waited in the car, Annette ran in to let me know that they were here to pick me up, and to say hi to Ronnie whom she hadn’t seen in years either. After leaving there, we stopped to get chili