Ah, the song of my first love - I was so naive at 15! My parents were proud that I'd been chosen as the youth delegate for a convention, when in the registration line a dynamic man with full afro and stars-n-stripes overalls began talking with me. We spent a fair amount of time together that weekend, I learned how to kiss from the best, then he returned to Seattle and we began a correspondence with occasional phone calls and visits. He taught me of politics and pride and living for who you are. He sent me poetry and clipped verses, and I felt valued and respected as I never had. I will never understand how I was unaffected by my parents' discriminatory fears, or that of my lily-white little home town. Wasn't until many later I learned that my mother had taken and discarded many letters that she retrieved from the mail before I did, likely the last few he ever sent. Wow.