LUCIAN VITALE'S POINT OF VIEW
When I was a child, I had everything any kid could dream of: a mansion with grounds that stretched beyond the treeline, cars that gleamed like polished coins and made my friends' fathers look away with tight smiles, my own basketball court where the hoops never wobbled. Toys arrived wrapped in silk paper, their price tags hidden away-costing more than most families made in a year. Above all, there was perfection: a perfect family, a perfect life. I wanted for nothing.
Mom and Dad loved me with a ferocity that felt like shelter. Ask for a new action figure, and it would sit on my bedside table by morning, still warm from the store's plastic wrap. Crave pastries from that patisserie in Paris, and they'd arrive in a wooden box lined with white cloth, their sugar crusts crackling under the kitchen light.
