AUTOBIOGRAPHY Of GEORGE BARNETTE II: Chapter 3

So my parents slipped a good one in that summer after Kindergarten. DISNEY WORLD. Maaaaaaaan. I just couldn't even believe I was actually in Disney World. I thought we'd gone to the fake Disney World. The trip was fun. I got pictures with Mickey, Goofy and all those good folks (You will not see those pictures of me with sunglasses the size of my face).

Man the heat in Florida is a different animal. It's not hot down there. It's hell. If it got down to 85 degrees, people would've been pulling their jackets out of their closets.

This trip was also my first encounter with racism. My parents and I stayed in Daytona while we were on the trip and the hotel we lodged in had two pools. A normal pool for everyone and a shallow pool for children. Well, there weren't many black people staying at the hotel and I don't recall any. So when my parents took me out to the shallow pool, I had to sit there and watch every last one of those white kids get out of the pool. At that age, I didn't know why and I hadn't had much exposure to white kids, let alone racism. I asked my mother what was going on, she told me don't worry about...now I had more room to play. One lady brought her son to the pool and told my mother "Don't worry, they're idiots." It was years later when I realized what actually happened that day.

First grade was cool, new teacher, only one year until my sister was going to Shugart (Yes!!!!) and now I'm not in the lowest grade in school. We got to use computers for the first time and I joined the school play.

Cats...(No Elton John), I was in Cats. After school everyday, we'd rehearse the lines and the songs and just thinking about the costumes we were going to have to wear makes my stomach turn. Sadly, all that practice was for not...(foreshadowing)

Anyway, my parents took the fam to see He-Man on Ice. I had a ball. So much of a ball that I wanted to see Thundercats on Ice. My parents told me no, but they sold the no.

"Aren't you tired of sharing a room with your sisters?" Of Course I was. "Well, if we skip this, I bet you by this time next year you'll have your own room." COOL.

So, we started looking at houses. Now...I don't know how many houses my parents looked at altogether, but I only went on two trips. One was in Temple Hills (It had a basement and they were the coolest things in the world to me) and the other was in Upper Marlboro.

It took forever to get to that house in Upper Marlboro..."Is that a cow...A whole lot of woods out here"

Most of you reading this know which house they chose. :(