Adult Dean: Growing up, Mom and Dad gave me "The Police Talk" about how to handle yourself around cops. There was a presidential election that created a racial divide, and there was a flu pandemic that they said would kill a million people around the world. But it was 1968. And that's the state our country was in. Yeah, even the flu part. This was the year I turned 12, the age where you transfer from boy to man. Or as the old folks used to say, "When a boy starts smelling himself." The previous summer's race riots had caused the first wave of "white flight" to the suburbs. As a kid, I didn't understand all that. We had neighborhoods that were just as safe as the ones they were developing outside the city. There were teachers, veterans, shop owners, all united by pride, self-determination, and the right to spank any kid caught outside after the street lights came on.

Bill: Shh. Be cool.
Adult Dean: "Be cool" was Daddy's catch-all advice for every situation.
[flashback to Bill throwing a match on the grill:]
Bill: Be cool.
[flashback to Dean gasping as he's electrocuted by a wall socket:]
Bill: Be cool.
[flashback to Bill in the driver's seat with his family as their car is stopped by the police:]
Bill: Be cool.

Adult Dean: I didn't understand a lot of what was going on, especially why when people get really upset about something bad, they resort to destroying their own things.
Man: [o.s.] Sick and tired of this!
Adult Dean: But something told me that my friends were probably just as confused as I was.
Man: [o.s.] Why do they keep doing this to us?!
Woman: [o.s.] Nothing but them ol' white folks.
[When Dean arrives at the old school, he finds Cory and Keisa kissing]
Adult Dean: Suddenly, the anger I was seeing on the news made a little more sense, especially because it felt like some things would never change.
[Dean throws a rock at a school window and then puts his glasses back on before riding his bicycle home]
Adult Dean: Everybody in my family plays that day over and over in their minds. But for different reasons. For each of us, it felt like the world around us had changed forever.
[Lillian lets Dean in when he arrives home. In the living room, Dean notices the baseball on the mantle, signed "Dean's game ball 4/4/68"]
Adult Dean: But thankfully, for each of us, the world on the inside hadn't.