How did I become an expert on Hitler, genocide, and the psychopathology of warfare?

        I grew up in a lower-class community, Irvington, New Jersey. Although I had no concept of “lower class” at the time. We ate well: pork chops, lamb chops, steak, spaghetti (better than I eat now). I never felt hungry or deprived of food.

    I had a younger brother, Steven Koenigsberg (14 months younger), and we spent most of our time out of school playing sports: football, basketball, stickball (hard-ball stickball), actually every sport that one could imagine. I was better than my brother, and always defeated him,

I often rode around the block on a bike, and I ran one mile to the movie-theater on Saturdays.

    My elementary school consisted of students that were extremely dull. I thought I was brilliant (and the teachers did) because the other students were not bright. I took an IQ test and was measured at 150 (my brother scored 105).

    Junior High School (7th grade) was different. The students were not much brighter than those in elementary school but were much more interesting. They were "tough guys," Italians, Poles, etc. I didn't know anything about "ethnicity" then. At the beginning, many of them called me "Jew boy." I didn't mind it, rather found it amusing.

    One fellow was a ringleader. But I tested him out in the playground, realized he wasn't very strong and challenged him to a fight. The class surrounded us. I defeated him easily. I was sitting on his shoulders, and asked him to "give up," and he did (in all the fights I had, I never hit anyone in the face).

    Gradually, I became popular and a leader. I frequently pulled stunts in class. I often WAS sent to the "principal's office" with other "bad boys." I enjoyed being there. I considered it a badge of honor to be "kicked out of class."

    My parents saw that I was getting into trouble and wouldn't get a good education in Irvington. My pointed out that I often was saying "dees" and "doos" instead of these and those.

  My parents decided to get our family out of Irvington. They purchase a house in about two miles away moved to Maplewood, a much more affluent community after I had completed seventh grade. The students in Maplewood Junior High School were intelligent and civilized.

  I went from being a big shot and very popular in Irvington to being a nothing in Maplewood.  My brother and I sat alone during the lunch period. I had a lovely girlfriend, Diane Gerber, in Seventh grade. We played spin the bottle and called each other. There were dances in the gymnasium every Friday evening, and we would slow dance for two hours. At the end of the dance, they would play, "Goodnight, Sweetheart." It was so romantic and beautiful.

  I frequently drove my bike back to Irvington after school to play basketball, then back to Maplewood uphill (a two-mile trip each way). I was angry at my mother for making the move and wouldn't speak to or forgive her for three months. 

  But the new school (Maplewood Junior High) was serious. Suddenly, I had to take my classes seriously. I had to concentrate to understand what was going on.. "Algebra/Trig" came as a shock. I had to apply my intellect.

    Still, I was an athlete. There was an "athletic club." Out of thirty-students, I was thrilled to be selected for the "starting five" on the basketball team.

    Those were conservative days. a lot of "passing the ball around." A score might be 43 to 37. The guys on the team didn't like me. I was like a "radical." I didn't play politely. The guys on the team didn't like me. Sometimes they avoided passing the ball to me. I didn't fit in. I did things my own way, like drive ferociously to the basket. I was the first one to "pass behind the back." 

    I was a small, five feet six inches tall and weighed perhaps 120 pounds. But I was tough and fearless. The other "guard" on the team (Bob Davies, six feet tall) said to me at one point, "point, Who do you think you are, Bob Cousy?"

That gradually became how I was known. People began to call me "Cous." No one knew that I "earned" the nickname in a fit of hostility. In high school (beginning in 10th grade), it became a name uttered with respect and affection. Everyone called me "Cousy" or (more profoundly) "the Cous." Tom Baum and many other males addressed me as Cousy or "Cous." My brother Steve became known to Barry Rosenberg and others as "little Cous."  On the other hand, however, the young ladies did not know me by that name. I remained Richard. But my best friend years later at Wesleyan University called me "Cous," though he didn't connect it with my early basketball career. And sometimes he called me "Almighty Cous."