“What children have going for them is a flexible head – their minds are not stuck on how things are supposed to be. Part of becoming a billionaire – a thing that we can argue abou whether it should be – was nonetheless reclaiming a flexible head. I was told that I was a poor Black boy in Lofton County, VA who had better not get out of the place my betters had assigned me. They would be lynching men like me, wholesale, until 1974, civil rights not getting here quite on time, to keep that in the heads of young men like me – but I reclaimed what I was born with.”
Thomas Stepforth III, at 16 years old, was talking with his grandfather, Thomas Stepforth Sr., while they watched 16-year-old Tom's cousins Velma (11), Milton (9), and Gracie Trent (8) playing on the yard with Tom's little brother Vertran (9), and the seven Ludlow grandchildren from next door.
“So, let me make sure that I understand what you're telling me, Pop-Pop. Basically, we have to be able to see the universe like they do – it's not just that they don't understand the danger there really is, but when they don't see what they want, they just make it up.”
“Exactly – the creativity to know that you can make something of yourself and of the things given you in the world around you. This is why although my family was poor by the world's standards, we just didn't live in the misery others wanted us to because we could make more out of a sunny day than the people who hated us could make out of a million dollars. That's actually the reason I went into solar power first – people used to say that about your Big Pop-Pop, my dad, Theodore Stepforth, and he was tickled to find out some other people were catching up.”
“I still remember that laugh of his, although that's about it,” Tom said.
“He said to me that he was glad to meet me the third time before going on to Heaven because, 'Earth ain't really ready for three, but dat gon' be Earth's problem, not mine, not y'all's!' ”
“Yeah, it's been real, just us three Tom Stepforths getting to be men together,” Tom said. “I didn't think Dad was ever going to forgive me for blowing up the kitchen, but he respected how I worked all the jobs I had to in order to pay it off!”
“That's what Stepforth men tend to do – we will mess up big, but we will make it right – keeping a flexible head means we can always find a way."
Tom smiled.
“Did Velma ever tell you how Lil' Robert next door started saying 'Next week, though'?”
“No.”
“They were watching a whole bunch of videos and reels by clean comedian Anthony 'Spice' Adams, who back in the day was always going to start that diet 'next week, though' --
"– but then he did, and Lil' Robert just watched him change in size over the course of those videos, having no idea that took seven years to 2020!”
“So, five-year-old Robert Edward Ludlow III, with his flexible head, put two and two together, and now believes he can change anything in the world, and if maybe he is too small this week, 'next week, though!'”
“Yep,” Tom said.
“You know that if he keeps going, just like Spice Adams, the week will come when he is right!”
“Yep. I get it, Pop-Pop. I get it.”