When I was very young, my mom had a simple day care that she ran out of her home. I have very few memories regarding that day care other than those where I tortured a baby. There was only one, but for some demented reason I liked hearing it cry. So, when my mom would leave the room, I'd reach over the side of its play pen, and stretching my little arm as far as it could go, I'd swat that baby's nose. It really was a reach for me and often as not it was no more than a grazing of fingertips across nose tip, but it was always enough to set the baby off. My mom would rush back into the room to soothe it, and I would sit back and listen to a job well done. Yes, I was a monster. To that unknown child and its parents, my heartfelt apologies. That was around the same time that I showed some older kids during an open house that it was perfectly ok to pee in the corner of my bedroom. I proceeded to show them how.
In kindergarten, as my friends and I walked unsupervised to school (it was a COMPLETELY different time) we threw glass bottles over a fence around the school's track just to watch them shatter when they hit the other side. That same year, I threw a stick like a spear at my best friend, cutting his head and forcing him to get stitches. I ate a clump of dirt from our compost pile that was rich and black and I mistook for the Oreo I had in my other hand. I broke my collar bone when I fell backwards off a slide. Not the top of the slide, and not because I'd gone down the slide backwards. I'd been sitting calmly at the bottom of the slide when I lost my balance and fell over the side. Snap! I went through a whole roll of my parents' film taking "modeling" photos of two of the girls from church that I had a crush on. That wouldn't be the last time I used that move. In first grade I nearly lost an eye when I had a pine branch I was attempting to break off of a tree suddenly let go and snap back into my face. I sat and cried for a while and never told my parents. A good friend hit me in the back of the head with an aluminum baseball bat. Somehow I retained consciousness and we went back to playing. I was given my first pocket knife and promptly had it taken away after threatening a neighborhood girl I didn't like with it. In second grade I had a student teacher, Miss Fox, that I was constantly trying to see down her shirt or get a peek of bra. In fourth grade, when turning in a school library book, I accidentally included an illustrated booklet of sex positions tucked in the pages of the library book. Somehow I convinced the librarian to give it back to me AND not tell my parents. Between first and fifth grade, a number of events occurred that I can't say when exactly they happened so I'll just lump them all together here. I broke into several "abandoned" houses, one of which had all kinds of treasures like kitchen knives that we (including my pre-k sister) took and threw at things. The neighborhood kids had an apple fight one afternoon, throwing apples at one another until one of my throws hit my friend's 6 year old brother right in the face. He ran straight to my mom and that game was done. Because apparently we really liked throwing things, we took my dad's hatchet and axe out into a nearby woods and practiced throwing them at trees. Another afternoon we spent time taking turns jumping one kid's bike off the road into a drainage ditch as far as we could without smashing into the low hanging tree limbs in our way. We did that until the bike broke and then everyone left and let that kid walk his broken symbol of freedom home. I fractured my collar bone again. This time while playing tag. I cussed a neighborhood kid out until he cried only to turn and find my dad standing behind me. Between sixth grade and my sophomore year of high school: I ate live ants on a dare; found them to be sweet. Shot my sister with a bb gun after she made me angry. She in turn pulled a knife on me. My best friend and I hunted each other with bb guns. A year later we'd have a fist fight in the church over boy scout poinsettia sales. Fought another boy in the church yard; tripped him flat and as he got up, I kicked him in the ribs. In front of his girlfriend. Then my dad came out. The same kid and his friends thought it would be funny to antagonize me on the bus. I wrapped my fingers around his trachea and we got in-school suspension together. Cut the back of a kid's neck with a dull planer blade that I thought was a ruler. Then cut my own thumb to see if the blade was sharp. Had the cops called on me when I tried getting into the locked church through a window. Was banned from Mammoth Caves State Park for harassing a female cave guide. Never did get her number. Made my mom cry when I told her I planned on having sex with the first girl I could. Found a loose circular saw blade while exploring new construction sites with a couple of friends. We used it like a frisbee and threw it through the walls of a new house. Along those same lines, I made a set of sheet metal ninja stars and threw them at my bedroom wall. Junior and Senior year: I explored my sexuality with my girlfriend in her car, a bean field, a cemetery, two schools, and a church basement. Got a three day suspension for carrying a knife at school. Spent hours exploring inside the ceilings of the school. Crawled through gaps in the concrete block and out along trusses or conduit. Even went so far as to cut a shortcut in a wall. These kinds of things certainly didn't stop after I graduated, but I think this sufficiently illustrates how I was. SO, when I'm asked whether I'm worried about having a son, the answer is fuck yes I am. However, I'm also ridiculously, stupefyingly excited and happy. I can't wait to meet our Wesley Charles and get to work at protecting him from himself. Wish me luck!
