Steve is my dear cousin of the same age. When my family stayed with Uncle Eugene during the summer of 1968,Steve had made up his mind to play football like his brother "Stan the Man". He thought he had to get bigger, so he tried to put on weight by drinking lots of milk. Uncle Eugene would always fuss because Wayne Stevenson was drinking all the milk that came to the house and there were others in the house. When Uncle Eugene was upset, he seemed to call you by your entire name. We laughed as kids, but Uncle Eugene was dead serious. What a summer it was - Memories!

Granted, this story goes back a very long time but I’ll share it nevertheless. It goes back to early childhood when Steve and I were sitting in our house back when we lived in the old barracks on the Central State University campus. Well, this was a couple days before Christmas and Mother and Daddy were out shopping or something.

First of all, I’m two years older than Steve and I’m about 8 years old or thereabouts at this time. We’re arguing about whether or not there is a real Santa Claus. I tell him that Santa is real and that he should believe what we’ve been told so let’s stop talking about it.

Well, he says, follow me. He goes to the attic stairs, pulls them down, and takes me up into the attic and points to all the gifts stored there. I was pissed! He smiled and said, I told you so, no Santa Claus.

Here he is the younger brother but found out there was no Santa before I did. Of course, I had no interest in truly wanting the truth but he had no issue with it. I had planned to keep on believing this for as long as possible but Steve still enjoyed Christmas just the same whether Santa was real or not. I couldn’t.

Steve sometimes played dumb while being keenly aware of everything and everybody around him.

Please share your Steve Key story. We’d love to read it.