Why ever would you want to know?!

Umm, yer still here…

Well… let’s see…

I was born in a strange, far off place known as Springfield. That’s in Illinois. Then I was adopted and carried to an even stranger place called Granite City. A steel town, not far from the banks of the Mississippi River, still in Illinois.

For the first twenty years I lived with a frequently absent father, (He traveled a lot for Anhersuer Bush) a mother who was long on issues, three dogs and a series of other animals, and a brother who made trolls look clever. It was a balanced childhood, not perfect, not absolutely horrendous.

At five, I learned a lot of things. I learned that some things can hurt worse than you ever imagined, and even people who mean well can hurt you.

I didn’t, however, learn how to tell time, not totally. I was in the hospital for an operation on my back when they taught that. Never really did get the hang of all those minutes. Was really happy when digital came along.

The state and health of my back was a major preoccupation for adults around me for the next five years. ‘You can’t do that because of…’, ‘Be careful of…’, ‘You might hurt…’, all favorite lines. I was in the hospital for surgery several times.

Once to have my tonsils out.

Needless to say, I got as far away from the adults as quickly as I could.

Movies and books are two of the greatest escapes.

I went to high school and rebellion was full blown.

We were a disaffected lot, reckless, careless, and hopeless. We smoke, drank, and partied, climbed bridges and power towers, hunted water moccasins for fun, and waited for the other bomb to drop.

We had the party all planned. When the big one flew, we were going to meet on the parking lot of McDonald Douglas and party hardy.

By the way, yer invited. ‘Cept now it’s Boeing.

We were livin’ fast, lookin’ to die young, and we didn’t care about the state of the corpse. A couple of my friends proved that graphically.

Here the story turns to pulp fair. There’s divorce, death, abandonment, abusive relationships, drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

Somehow, I made it into college.

And then I dropped out and got a job.

And then I went back, for a little while.

And then I met a nice boy and we settled down together.

We both dropped out to get jobs to pay the bills.

We worked at maintaining a little safe space for ourselves and collected: books, cats and other animals, Comic Books, movies, cartoons, Magic cards, ideas, and thoughts. The conversation kept us together. It was never easy, and we had our problems, but it was interesting. For fifteen years, we were happy with each other.

Now he’s gone and everything is a subject of change.