8The American Scheme hovers around a deep dark family secret. It's my half-century odyssey to unravel the mystery surrounding my linage: humans inherit 46 chromosomes. (23 from father and 23 from mother) My story is partly a tug of war between mother and son regarding the phantom 23 chromosomes of my father. Like gravity and mass pulls the earth together to form our world. Once all the elements of my life are pulled together, the world that I inherited will take form. I dedicate this book to the five putrid souls who interrupted my fourteen-year-old future mother's morning trek to Garfield Jr. high school, in Detroit Michigan, in the spring of 1948. You've made it almost impossible for my mother to look at me without conjuring up the pain and humiliation y'all trust upon her. You have ravaged her soul forever. We survived your dastardly acts. We came to grips with it all nearing the end of my mother's life in June of 2001. We embraced with a long overdue hug laced with love. Y'all lost. We won!