Thread: Tell Me Your Life Story

CoLd BlooDed, after the above, you might want to rethink that whole "no matter how long or short" part.

Had it actually been about him, and that long, I probably would have left it.
But it was just a copy/paste of the works of Mark Twain. Didn't even have respect enough to cite the author.

Thread salvaged.
Carry on.

Umm...yeah that's obviously not his life story. Delete it.

edit: thanks, O

No prob.

Mysterious Stranger, indeed, Carou.

My life so far has been pretty great, and I'm generally pleased with the way things are going for me. I'd like to think my outlook is not as rare is today's 'emo' culture suggests.

Anyways, having only lived on this Earth for sixteen years, the vast majority of my life experience has occurred in the ghastly grip of America's wonderful public education system. The hours I've wasted, and the hoops I've been made to jump through, to fulfill arbitrary requirements invented by a bunch of idealistic fools have been the main source of trouble in my life. Arguably, it's more entertaining than troubling, so I really can't complain.

I spent eight years of my life in a rural Connecticut setting, living on the edge of a magnificent little cliff overlooking a lake ringed by hills. I've always loved being outside, and I spent most of my non-school childhood mucking about out there, making paper airplanes to throw off the cliff, trying to fashion bows and arrows out of scrap, etc. When the internet was introduced to me, it obviously became a big part of my life as well. As I like to say, on the internet it takes longer to type "I don't know" than it does to find out. So that's basically my 'home' life as a child.

I was born the day after Christmas, so I got into school around a year earlier than most of my classmates. All was well until around fourth grade, when I began to get the sneaking suspicion that the vast majority of them were stupid. Being a kid, it didn't really cross my mind that I might be the odd one out and not them until my teachers suggested to my parents that I skip a grade. This was the beginning of those endless hoops. They made me take the PSATs when I was in sixth grade (I was ten, I think, and it was still out of 1600), in order to set a bar for the anticipated flood of students who also wanted to skip a grade. I was the first student to skip in the middle school's history, so they didn't really have any rules in place. I got a 1220, and after some emotional maturity testing, was allowed to skip into eighth grade the next year.

Eighth grade was a bit hard for me, because half of the teachers were trying to "get us ready for high school", which they apparently thought was much harder than anything they could demand of us. However, I soon made friends with lots of people and I lived. It also turned out that high school was about 500 times easier than anything I'd been through before, ironically enough. I think this is largely due to the lax homework checking policies, and my being able to learn things just fine without doing thousands of homework problems a night.

Again, all was well. Then my dad got an internal job transfer, and we moved to Rhode Island. It was all extremely sudden, and within about four months of learning that I was going to move, I was already settled in my new home. The first year of settling in was, again, pretty tough. I managed to get some difficult teachers who were unaware that I was new, and so I didn't get much sympathy. The most frustrating was my new school's graduation requirements, which included Earth Science. In my old school, I had taken biology freshman year and physics sophomore year. I then found myself, a 14-year-old junior, in a class of 14-year-old freshman learning about the phases of the moon when I felt I should be in AP Physics or something. The whole situation was a bit odd. Because of various other scheduling mixups, I also lost a good deal of the other AP classes I was going to go into at my old school. I had managed, sophomore year, to take AP Computer Science and AP French (my parents only speak French at home, and it's technically my first language). Now, in my new school, all I got was AP Calculus AB.

To add to the fun, this school has a system where every year, students have to do some sort of research project. The idea is that it gets bigger and more complex every year, preparing them for their senior project. Thing is, I hadn't been there for the first two. The obvious solution? Make me do all three of them in one year!

Oh, I forgot to mention, somewhere after I moved I found DV. It's become a pretty big part of my mental life now, since I don't get out much (I can't drive yet and I don't do any drugs, so where to go? ). My new room, as Mes has observed, is quite awesome. I basically have my TV and my computer on all of the time, and I learn an assload more than I've ever learned in school. Somewhere along the line, I also realized that neuroscience was my calling. Last summer, I managed to get into an undergraduate-level summer session course called BN001 at Brown University (Introduction to the Mammalian Brain). The class was about half-and-half high schoolers and Brown students, and I think I was the youngest one there at fifteen. I managed to pull off a 98 as a final grade, and my professor wrote me a very flattering letter of recommendation to Brown which I'm sure helped my passage quite a bit. (I've been accepted early decision).

This year, I've managed to get into five APs, so that's improved. I've also become better known in my new school for my art awards, math and science competition performances, awkward age and constant juggling

In general, my year is extremely easy, I have an exciting destination next year after graduation, I get three meals a day and life is beautiful. So that's my life story so far, I guess. I doubt anyone will be genuinely interested in all of these academic details, but they really do make up the majority of my life - I'm there seven hours a day, five days a week by law. The time I have left over, I gorge myself on information and practice my juggling

Thanks for that gnome. Pretty cool to recieve some insight on the troubles of being a genius. I appreciate your detailed post.

Time for me.

The Life of CoLd BlooDed - Part 1

In retrospect, my life has been pretty interesting. I've had my fair share of obstacles and problems, days I wanted to die, days I didn't want to end, crushes, crushers, friends and enemies - but in the grand scheme of things everything has been worth it. I couldn't be prouder of who I am today.

My life started at 10:47 AM in New Westminster of British Columbia, Canada as a semi-late 1990 baby. I was the firstborn. My sister came into the world exactly two years and one day after me (kinda weird), and my second sister six years later. Everything was normal - we were a typical, loving family... a dad, mom, three kids and a cat. I was diagnosed with a lazy eye and sentenced to wear huge Harry Potter glasses. Besides that, ;ife was as entertaining as it could be for a toddler - but it wasn't until elementary school that things started to get spicy.

I found myself naturally accustomed to the "school" atmosphere. I flourished, both as a capable, respectful student and as a sociable person. A good number of people I met during the kindergarden to grade 5 years are people I'm still friends with to this day.

Anyways, things carried along normally until about the summer after grade 3, where my parents got a divorce (seeing as I wasn't even 9 yet this affected me quite a bit at the time). The following years I tried to make the best of things but my emotional state wasn't quite right. It was tough; my parents fought constantly everytime they saw each other, putting my sisters and eventually me into a state of tears. The most vivid memory I have is my dad coming into the house and start talking to my mom about some paper that she was supposed to give him. I had disappeared around the corner but pretty soon I heard my mom screaming as my dad has wrestled her to the ground (not sure what he was trying to accomplish). My mom yelled at me to go call 911. Horrified, I ran to the kitchen and picked up the phone, but I couldn't do it. My dad gave up and went away eventually, but this single event was so scarring that I couldn't function for the next week or so. From the exact words of my mom to my sisters after that event, "He doesn't show emotion, his heart just cries."

School went along fine. Had some memorable elementary teachers who adored me. Grade 5 was a blast - never had I realized how much fun it is to be on top of the hierarchy. This proved to be the same for eighth grade and my current senior year.

And now comes the single most defining period of my life that created the personality of my present self: sixth grade. Holy mother was this ever a nightmare. As a result of the divorce, the house we were staying in was too luxurious for my mom to afford (she worked as a hairdresser). It was put on the market due to financial troubles a year before I switched to middle school, refusing to be sold until a month or so into grade 6. The new environment started out decently, but shortly I became labelled as the scrawny cross-eyed geek who talked too much. I was in seperate classes apart from my elementary school buddies, and some of my 'friends' even went to some pretty hurtful lengths to make me feel like shit. After the move it was near impossible to regain contact with any of these guys, as I was in a whole new barcode struggling to remain at the school I was going to. I had about three friends, two boys that lived in the same house we did and another kid down the street. At the middle school I was completely friendless.

It didn't help that my dad had become an alcoholic, unable to make it through most of his weekends with us without getting hammered and annoying my sisters and I. I was afraid to sleep in bed with him because he'd say really weird stuff (once he told me that the doctor said he didn't have much longer to live) that would freak me out and make me cry. His girlfriends son would always beat me up and make me box him (I was 11 and he was 16) in which I would get the shit kicked out of me. He'd also just fuck around with me intensely; for instance, once him and his friend took off my jeans and locked me outside of the house, and I stood there while neighbours and drivers just stared at me. Bah.

How did this define me? Well, after this year, where I had suffered through hundreds of humiliations, backstabbings, and other emotional trauma, I finally decided enough was enough. Subsequently I grew my hair out, ditched my glasses (I ended up getting contacts after refusing to wear them) and vowed that I would never let something like this happen again. In fact, I vowed to become recognized amongst my peers and generally well liked, all the while being respectful and friendly to the minority (polite way of saying the unknown or disliked). To this day I am not quick to judge. I make friends with everyone regardless of social standing. Likewise, the beatings I endured from my dads girlfriends son made me tough as nails, and I became known for that even to this day. I went from being a bitch little kid to a young, maturing teenager. Honestly I have no idea where I'd be if I didn't change the way I did.

This is getting really long, even with me omitting details. Guess this will be a two parter.

I'm going to try this with bullet points, because otherwise it will be a freakin' tome:

• December 20, 1960, entered this realm in Detroit's Mount Carmel Hospital
• Lived in Detroit until 1965, when the folks decided it was time to move after I got attacked on a street corner and had my forehead slashed
• Moved to a nearby 'burb, found school drop-dead dull, was drafted into an early prototype "gifted child" program that was utterly lame, studied classical guitar, read voraciously and played chess. Was pretty much an outcast, though I tried not to be. Mom tried hard to raise me in the Catholic church but the hypocrisy I found there converted me to atheism.
• Around 1973, discovered rock n' roll and drugs at the same time. Had a lot of fun, I think... was in bands, had loads of burnout friends, discovered girls and barely graduated high school.
• Sobered up for a year after having a spiritual awakening and becoming a Christian. Started studying engineering in junior college and started drinking because I thought it was safer than drugs and it was fun. Landed a co-op job as a toolmaker's apprentice.
• 1980s - Drank myself out of my job, worked in a band, had a terrible, damaging relationship with a great lady and lost what was left of my sanity about the time I was turning 21 as an alcoholic. Somewhere in this haze of idiocy, I met my mother-in-law to be and became fast friends with her.
• Wandered into AA and stayed for five years. Band broke up, quit smoking, met my wifeling. Burned up my sports car and fell off a cliff and broke my back within months of meeting her and she hung around anyway. Went back to junior college and finished a couple degrees, got a job as plant manager of an ordnance manufacturer. Got my Amateur Extra license and started playing with a fascinating network called "The Internet," using a program called NOS and hacking in through the MERIT network. (There was no World Wide Web or HTML yet.)
• Married, started our machine shop business, walked out of the plant manager position an emotional basket-case and took a job with one of our first customers to "hold me over" until the business got going well enough to support us.
• 1990s - Son born, bought a house, never left the "hold me over job." Went back to university to complete the engineering degree I never finished, (I did get degrees in business and liberal arts,) got very involved in politics and the then-developing World Wide Web.
• Daughter born. Tons of weirdness resulted from the political activities - ended up walking away from all of it. Continued working, running the business and going to university.
• 2000s - Graduated. The band that broke up in '82 re-formed as a hobby band. Extended family life got freakishly bizarre. Fell into angry depression and made a decision to change myself and how I think. Everything changed.
• Realized that many of the strange things I was experiencing in my youth were actually lucid dreams - started researching and ended up here.
• Attempted to bullet-point my life.

Originally Posted by pj

• December 20, 1960, entered this realm in Detroit's Mount Carmel Hospital
• Lived in Detroit until 1965, when the folks decided it was time to move after I got attacked on a street corner and had my forehead slashed

They slashed 5-year-olds on your street? I think the move was a good idea. Otherwise, that was a nice read PJ. Enjoy the rest of your life. Especially if you're planning on dying soon.

Originally Posted by Super Duck

[/list]They slashed 5-year-olds on your street? I think the move was a good idea. Otherwise, that was a nice read PJ. Enjoy the rest of your life. Especially if you're planning on dying soon.

No plans on the table, thank you.

And thank you! Obviously left great huge bits out... just ran with the flow there. It was fun to write it!

My wife stayed in Detroit as a child. She remembers watching the tanks rolling down her street and laying on the floor to avoid being shot.

lmao @ pj - great last point.

That was perfect. It's hard to sum up your life, ain't it? I'm only 17 and even I'm finding it hard. Once you're done though, it's interesting to reflect on everything you wrote - each time I think about it I'm fascinated with everything I've been through (and what everyone else has been through, too).

Thanks for posting, pj.

Heres some of my life, how exciting..................


Well I was born in brooklyn new york, I guess I had a regular childhood, sorta.
We lived there in queens for about 5 or 6 years, then we moved into the island a bit further away from the city areas. I don't remember much of my early childhood, like from 1-7 i hardly remember a thing.

What I do remember is that my dad was always working and never home, and me and my brother just spent alota time doing kid stuff, goofing around and crap like that.
When i was a kid i was pretty destructive, every toy i had id wreck pretty much, expensive toys, id just break alota stuff as a kid.

then when we moved things got very different, i moved away from all my friends and family pretty much, a hour away. So this new school i think i started in 2nd grade cause i did k-1 in queens. I was shy, introverted (what the fucks new?) and i hardly had any friends for a while in school there, i had maybe 3-4 friends and the rest of the kids pretty much just picked on me, calling me all kinds of horrible things.

Then around 5th grade, we moved AGAIN, more east from the city once more, so here i am AGAIN in a new school, AGAIN, knowing nobody, AGAIN.
So as you can imagine, i never quite recovered from the first move, so the 2nd move made it even worse, i hardly talked to any class mates, i didnt enjoy school 1 bit, people still put me down and made fun of me, the usual. the school even stuck me in these weird testing rooms to see if i was normal cause i was so godamn introverted and shy to talk to anyone.

So then, yes, again WE MOVED, to the other side of town, around that time we got my dog snoopy, a dalmatian. anyways so we moved into a smaller and more affordable house, and then middle school starts...o boy

i thought elementary was bad, but in middle school i was picked on some more, by the same people pretty much, i spend those 3 years in middle school mostly to myself, never really hung out with anybody and i just pretty much had no life, just school and being made fun of constantly.

so then comes high school, and suprisingly, the teasing and the making fun of crap sorta faded away.

the problem was, i was still emotionally scarred from moving 3 times and never re-cooperating from that, and i was still extremely shy and introverted.

9th grade was kinda cool, i met some new people had some new friends, the first time i tried pot was in 9th grade

my brother brought me out with his friends and they introduced me to mrs. mary jane.

I have to say, i never felt so happy in my life then that moment i inhaled mj.

so i continued to smoke with them a few more times and eventually they kinda forgot about me, i mean im some little 14 year old kid with no cash they cant keep smoking me up forever. so then weed left my life for a long time.

then comes the rest of high school, i sorta float by high school, i dont do anything extraordinary or relevant.

10th grade comes along, and this junior set me up with this girl he knew, which became my future first gf and first kiss and whatnot, that was a high moment i guess, but it was short lived and i dont remember exactly what happened but i broke up with her.

the last 2 years of HS were much better, i socialized alot more and opened up finally, i had a bunch of friends and we always goofed off in school and we had our good times.

so when Hs ended, i moved on to college, which subsequently,i dropped out after a year and a half, i just felt like i was wasting time.

i know i missed alota stuff in between all this school talk but ill elaborate on my non school life another post.

so then i become great friends with this group of stoners (lol)

and for a good 2 years, we hung out everyday, smoked ourselves to the limit, experimented with drugs and just had a blast for a good 2 years or so..

then came the bad news,i had to move to arizona, this was a year and a half ago, almost 2 years this july...

so when the move happened, i had to drop ALLL OF THAT PROGRESS i made, socially, i had to leave my friends, my girlfriend, my cousins and my brother and i had to tag along with my godamn parents.

and here i am today, i work 40 hours a week, every week, i dont go out, and i dont socialize, i have 1 or 2 friends, thats all, and all the progress i made socially in new york just went down the drain, now i feel like im on step 1 again, i feel like my 2nd grade self, shy, in this new place, where i know nobody, and im lost and trapped i feel

and there i go i guess, thats only a fraction of whats happened to me thought, that was more of a summary with school mainly cause well, we spend most of our time in school young people that is....

to be continued...sorta

Originally Posted by CoLd BlooDed

Thanks for posting, pj.

Thank YOU for starting this thread! I love biography. I've enjoyed everything posted so far... these lives we live are so varied and rich.

Originally Posted by pj

My wife stayed in Detroit as a child. She remembers watching the tanks rolling down her street and laying on the floor to avoid being shot.

Wow! That's pretty scary...
edit: 500th "NOT-IN-SENSELESS-BANTER" Post. Probably 1,000,000th overall post.

tanks shooting in detroit? when the hell did that happen?

Originally Posted by Super Duck

Wow! That's pretty scary...

It was a terrible time. The city has never recovered from it. There are still great swaths of Detroit that are burned and crumbling or just plain empty, having at least had the rubble bulldozed away.

But there were some incredible things happening here during that time in spite of the ugliness... the Big Three were in their heyday, CKLW was redefining pop radio, Berry Gordie was redefining pop music through Motown...

Originally Posted by guerilla

tanks shooting in detroit? when the hell did that happen?

That was 1967. The race riots.

i wasn't born yet, hmm go figure i didnt learn about it in school, they only teach us in school that "america is the greatest nation in the history of the human race" garbage

Haha. In school I learnt that nothing interesting happened solely in England after 1066. We learnt WW2 from the German angle ... and The Cold War, the Women's Rights, Black Movement and Student Movements for the USA perspective. The exam board blatantly think their own country is a boring place to be. I'll tell you all 'bout my life when I have the time. I shouldn't even be online now as I have INFINITY^2 work to do.

Originally Posted by guerilla

i wasn't born yet, hmm go figure i didnt learn about it in school, they only teach us in school that "america is the greatest nation in the history of the human race" garbage

Well, America used to be one of the freest nations in the world, but that leaves people open to doing a lot of very ugly and stupid things.

If you want to learn history, you're going to have to do it on your own... and recognize that the history books themselves are always written through the filters and blinders of the authors. There is a very rich history there though. I'm really not surprised they don't teach it in school, as it was the culmination of the Great Society Programs that pretty much destroyed the families of the inner cities. That was the beginning of paying people to do nothing, penalizing them if they were married and rewarding out-of-wedlock births.

It's all a pretty fascinating history, going back to the Southern Democrats and the Jim Crow laws and people coming to the big cities of the north for jobs and seeking refuge. All fascinating stuff - and all essential to understand if we don't want to make the same mistakes twice. All these "new" ideas have been tried before - and a lot of misery resulted.

so nobody read my little snippet of my life?

Sure I did! I commented on ALL the bios when mentioning how much I am enjoying this.

Okay,

Aug. 12, 1992 - I made my mom go through hell to get me out, in a medium-sized town in Wisconsin, where I still live. And I cried a TON. I literally cried for MONTHS on end. (I guess that's why I don't cry much anymore, I used up all my tears)
Early 1993 - Could walk, talk, and my first memory: Being hooked up to life support. (I don't know why, but I always wonder)
1993 - I ate dirt, and they had to use a hose to rinse it out. I was such a goofy kid.
1994 - I read my first words after hearing my mom say them so much in this book she read to me a lot.
Nov. 5, 1994 - Good times are over. My little bro was born.
1995 - I started my education at a 3 year old preschool at Chapel Heights.
1996 - Went to preschool at Chapel Heights and Lowes Creek Elementary Preschool
1998 - First day of school at Meadowview Elementary. I only had to go there during the afternoon back then, good times. Learned Math, made my first friend, who is still my best friend today, and got hurt for the first time. Owchie!
Also, was the best reader in my class, and was always ahead of the others, always looking to learn. I was such a nerd...
Got the crater scar on my forehead, which remains with me today. Whatever, girls dig scars.
1999 - Had to go to school all day in 1st grade.
2000 - 2nd grade... And first fight. I am friends with the person I fought now though.
2001 - 3rd grade. Not much happened
2002 - 4th grade, nicest teacher I've had, and other stuff I don't care about
2003 - 5th grade, worst teacher I've had, got in trouble all the time, but I developed my cunning and erased information so I wouldn't get busted. I was a little demon then.
2004 - Middle school, made about 2x the friends I had in elementary, fought this one dude so he would get busted and he was suspended, while I was off scot free!
2005 - 7th grade, 1st date and 1st dance.
2006 - 8th grade, on top of the school, but I was about to get out.
2007 - Started High school, got like 4x the friends, and didn't get the snot beat out of me.
2008 - Not much yet...

And that brings us to here.

Pt. 1

I Was born in calgary foothills hospital on December 29, 1984.
I don't Remember too much from my early childhood. My earliest memory is standing up in a crib crying for what seemed like a long time and nobody came. I probably just fell asleep.

My father wasn't around in the early years i guess. I remember various outings with him tho, going hiking and watching movies but not much else. It was quite obvious my mother didn't like him. she use to yell at him all the time if he came to visit. She would tell me things like to stay away from my dad, because he wasn't who he said he was. In fact according to her there were copies of him running around calgary, some had even formed a biker gang.
We went to church often, in fact the pastors son use to baby sit me and my brother, we'd always make him go rent the ghostbusters 2 movie.

I was a gullible kid at about 5 or six, when a boy my brothers age offered me a chocolate bar and punched me square in the stomach. I think i learned my first swear from that bully too. when i was happy to show my mom the new word i had learned i had my mouth washed out with soap. We started moving around calgary a lot, i remember living at a lot of different places. My mom always seemed to find something terribly wrong with the neighbors or housemates. One time she got so fed up she decided to move me and my brother to vancouver and live with her mom.

Her mom was a seventh day Adventist. I think she had always suspected something strange about my mother but she never had mentioned anything to me or my brother. She would just give a fake smile and leave the room if my mother started to rant. I soon made a friend with the next door neighbors Son. I remember my mother urging me not to play with him, because his parents were Communists. She thought that because they would often play loud music. so one day when my mother went to the store i went against her wishes, my friend seemed fine to me so i played with him. I lost track of time and my mother came back shortly and was furious with me. I couldn't sit down a week after that.

At school, i was a strange kid. I never had any kind of social skills built into me at all. All i was told was to stay away from people because they were out to get me. I remember one time some girls were chasing me around the playground so i chased them back. I thought they were after me so I pushed one girl down. she started crying and i felt like i had done something wrong. I even lacked any sense of game playing it seems.

Pretty soon, According to my mother, The people who worked at the school were communists and also drugging their students with cafeteria food. She came to this conclusion after i met some kid my age by the cafeteria dressed as a chef, he also had a real chef like moustache. I thought "no way!" how can a kid my age have a moustache? he was carrying dougnut box, held it up to me and said in the most bizzarre high pitched voice i had ever heard "Want some drugs?". I was shocked and ran up the steps. I knew what i had just seen wasn't real. But to make sure i waited by the cafeteria step every day to see if this strange kid with a moustache would show up again.

My dad actually came to visit once in vancouver. He made sure to come by at a time when my mother wasn't around. I remember touching his face and asking if he was real. because my mom told me there were fake copies of him that were out to get me.

My mother got fed up with the school for some reason and put me and my brother in home schooling. A few weeks later when My mother was out, Two strange men came by the house and asked me and my brother some questions. They said they would be back in a week. A week later The same men showed up, Told me and my brother to grab a stuffed animal and to come with them. We asked them where they were taking us and all they said was "to a better home". I asked and pleaded "why?" all they could say was "She's not fit to take care of you" and said nothing more.

I was put in a foster home. And my brother into a group home. Months later i was able to join my brother in the Group Home. We learned a little bit of discipline. At 8 years old i learned out to ride a bike and to tie my shoes.
My mother would get visits with us under supervision. when she earned a visit without supervision she snagged me and my brother onto a greyhound bus. We both came willingly. By the time we reached Kamloops BC police officers found me and my brother at the bus station and flew us back to vancouver.

My dad finally showed up for visits. He earned custody of me and my brother and on the drive to our new home of Chilliwack b.c. He thoroughly explained what had happened. My mother, He said, was a paranoid schitzophrenic. He explained that such people often see and hear things that aren't there, but in my mothers case she remembers things that never happened, causing her to be paranoid. The funny thing is, I understood exactly what he was talking about. I was 8 years old and understood PERFECTLY, yet NO ONE ELSE thought that me and my brother could handle the fact. I can remember being very pissed off.

anyway this is way too long so far, I'll continue this later.

I should really be doing other things, but this sounds like an interesting challenge and I did lots of responsible things at work today .

Rather than a story, which would go on forever, I'll try to hit some of the moments and experiences that have really stuck with me.

I have random memories from ages 1 to 4, two of which stand out and maybe say something about who I still am: learning to walk and considering whether it was worth crossing a splintery floor (I remember it almost like it had teeth) to try to get outside where it was sunny (outside was the greatest thing imaginable), and sledding down a hill in my backyard that I remember as practically vertical and shooting right through the woods to fetch up on a frozen creek, staring up amazed at the interstate bridge farther down the canyon.

When I was four, my mom and I moved with my grandparents, teenage aunt, and little uncle to the little town where I spent the all of my school years. That house was the 3rd or 4th rental place I'd lived, and the first I remember clearly. Two memories there: I made my little uncle (5 months younger, so 3 or 4) pick up pieces of a broken lightbulb, and dark red blood spilled out of his hand; paramedics carried my grandmother (who I called Mom just like everyone else in the house) out on a stretcher. She was in shock and dehydrated, and had to have a hysterectomy.

Also, my mom's wedding where I held the ring, and my grandpa explaining beforehand that I couldn't call him Dad anymore, but I didn't have to call this guy Dad, either.

There were lots of great times in the fields and woods and creeks and canyons, some pets and pet deaths, lots of walking all around town tossing a coin and thinking, lots of building fantastic things out of Legos, and drawing, and just laying in bed making stories. I played with whatever kids were around, when I felt like it.

Next is when my stepdad's mom died. My cousin came and told us, and when I didn't really respond, she bawled at me, "What's wrong with you?" My thoughts were, she died surrounded by family and believed very strongly in Jesus and Heaven, and death relieved her of a lot of pain, so no matter where she was or wasn't, she was probably okay. We went over for softdrinks with her pastor and family and friends with her body still contorted in cancer-death on the couch. At the funeral, my mom and I were the only ones not crying, which was awkward.

Next is my stepdad standing in my bedroom all blubbery and howling, "Why did your mother leave me? Why did she do this to me?"

Next is riding home with mom's new boyfriend, alone for the first time, with him trying to make friends, and knowing that he was not a good man.

Next is this:

Spoiler for Release:

Thirty gallons of dirty fuel-oil killed his furnace
before we arrived; we stayed three years,
my mother and I, everything breaking and nothing fixed.

Twelve is old enough to tend a trash-fire, he said; I found
a coffee can and a use for soiled fuel.
Often as not, a poorly timed release left me stomping

infant grassfires. When summer passed, he dragged
in a wood-burning stove, knocked out
a pane for the pipe. We had a black rod to stir the fire.

Cast iron, four feet long and heavy; this is what I did not use
to kill him. He was sober, I think, my mother’s
feet in his lap. She was sleeping. He was trying

to connect, saying all the things he thought
a boy or man my age must think. His expression
was idiot mean, like I had only seen on children.

I would not respond, and he turned on her, tickling
a foot—not playful but mean, desperate. My mother
startled, woke the only way she could,

body-first and flailing. One blind hand
connected and he hollered. He punched her. One. Two.
Three times, stood, lifted, dropped her. Stooped, and threw her

to the couch again. He backed off, red
with bull-nostrils. I was close: two steps a batting stance—
would it be over? I half stood, hovered. He didn’t know,

or took his chances. I knew clearly then that he would
kill us, sometime. He would feel okay,
find reasons why he’d had to do it. Right now, blood settling,

he was deciding why it was her fault. I remembered
the conversation that night, his look
like a beaten child past crying. Crouched, reaching,

I had no idea suddenly what was killing,
dying. What would live?

Then this:

Spoiler for The Starling Tree:

It was summer, and my stepbrother and I had camped out in sleeping bags on the lawn, out in the woods (two of our neighbors were hunting cabins). In one corner of the big lawn was a pine tree about 5 stories high, where flocks of starlings would gather numbering into the thousands, so the sky would go black if they took off.

That morning, probably around ten based on the sun, I woke up but didn't wake up. Awareness dawned in me without any thoughts or volition, without me present. My eyes remained closed, but the sensory information permeated my awareness: the cacophony of the starlings, the warmth and light of the sun, the smell of the grass and the pressure of the earth. Except it wasn't broken up into different inputs: just one awareness, without subject or object, and no boundaries.

No telling how long it lasted, but my stepbrother, who had been up a while, came over and lightly slapped both my cheeks, really waking me up. "Hey, you'll get sunburnt," he said, and I just sat propped up on my elbows, staring at him, putting the experience together and realizing how far it was from anything he could understand. It had been so direct. I, my sense of myself, was an illusion. Separateness, the very idea of things, was an illusion.

Throughout was the roar, crash and bellow of drunken shouting matches downstairs.

Next is carrying four one-gallon jugs in each hand back and forth to the neighbor's well, because the Ape's relative's abandoned house where we were squatting didn't have a well that worked.

Next is tearing down the fence across the road to burn for heat.

That was the winter following the summer that I started certain I wouldn't make it through, living in isolation with only the Ape and my mother. If he didn't run us off the road drunk, I was sure I would take my own life before junior year started. I didn't want to do it, but if things stayed the same or got worse, I was sure I would. Instead, I kind of gave myself up for dead, and was reborn with a total equanimity. Like, "that's as bad as it will get, and I just lived through it." And so far, that's as bad as it got.

Then I took a test and was declared officially The Smartest Person Who Ever Lived in this town.

Then I signed the paper that said "Come here for college (whatever that is) and we will feed you."

Next is the Ape explaining that if I was 18 and had a summer job, I had to pay rent, while my mother sat beside him realizing that what sounded reasonable when he explained it to her might mean I wouldn't be coming home from college. Ever.

My uncle gave me a ride to a bigger town with a Greyhound station, with all my belongings in two bags except my stereo, which I mailed, and my art projects and comic books, which I think my sisters waited maybe a week to divvy up.




Well, that gets us to adulthood, and I need to break there. Perhaps to be continued...

Originally Posted by guerilla

so nobody read my little snippet of my life?

PJ's lived through history, man . Were you still around NYC on 9/11? A buddy of mine got trapped on Manhattan for most of the day wandering around with a mob of stranded commuters.

i lived about 50 miles from the WTC, so no i didnt see it go down personally, but we got the asbestos smoke come to our area about a week later.

was a surreal day.