I wake up and immediately feel the difference. The air in my bedroom smells like fresh peaches and warm Georgia sunshine-like jerk chicken, etouféé and Chicago blues. Then I remember:

It's Black History Month.

And so on the first day, I rose. I sprung from my bed like a panther streaking across the Serengeti, into my bathroom, where I gripped my toothbrush and tore open the medicine cabinet, much like John Henry, that steel-drivin' man of myth, tore through a mountain of stone with only his hammer and his bare black hands.

It's Day 1 of my new life, you feel me? Our time has come! If I'm going to make the most of my new identity, I'd better get crack-a-lackin':

"Kids... we're black."

At breakfast, my four children squint at me the way Thomas Edison squinted at Lewis Latimer when Latimer invented the carbon filament (without which Edison's lightbulb would have remained a dark bulb).

"What are you talking about, daddy?" says my teenager, the future award-winning author/actress and thermonuclear supermodel.

Read the rest at Black Voices.

Thanks as usual to Gina Misiroglu of Red Room for putting me in touch with the Black Voices/AOL people. It's just one of the great ways she's bringing traffic to Red Room and getting attention for Red Room's authors.