A glimpse into my distant past

Hey everyone, I'm in a grrrreat mood! Why? Because I have no reason not to
be. I get to sleep in until noon every day, don't work a lick, and everyone
is coming home next week. Well, almost everyone :) And I'm keeping myself
occupied by doing things around the house. I took a trip up to the ZA
Archives yesterday, and found fun stuff. Although I sorta had to crawl
around on the attic floor, which wasn't too fun because of all the tar and
grit from the installation of our new roof last year.

I saw the largest ant in my basement earlier tonight...
I have also played too much Diablo II and am happy to say I now have a Level
70 Sorceress. That just goes to show how much time I actually have just to
fool around.

JoeGags had me pull up an e-mail he sent a few months ago, and it allowed me
to look back and see what actually happened to me in the fall. I also
noticed that I wrote a lot of philisophical things back then and sorta quit
after awhile. Oh well, I guess I was looking to write more vibrant
things...things were sorta tough then, and I needed anything possible to
pick myself back up.

What I'm gonna write isn't exactly as philisophical as it is a reflection on
something I have been talking about "here and there" for the last couple
weeks. And that is about my past. No, not the recent stuff...I'm talking
about the events that occured as a child for me, and how it has shaped me to
what I am today. All this is sort of a preface to a reflection on life
since high school, which is actually the topic of my "really happy e-mail"
I've wanted to send for 3 months, but the time was never right for it. Oh
well, maybe this here will help me get a leg up on everything.

I'll start out by telling everyone that "My life began in high school". The
one event that began my "new life" was not actually Padua itself, but the
summer before it when I got contacts to replace my glasses. Sort of weird,
but it totally changed my self-image. I HATED my glasses...they always got
in the way, and I honestly could not stand looking at myself in them. I
played a lot of sports back then, and I got hit in the glasses with a
baseball or basketball more than once. Boo. Boo Crazy. I held on to a lot
of old grade school friends during freshman year, but they soon broke away
once the year was over.

Ok, well I'll first start out by explaining my family situation as a child:
My dad worked until I was 8 when he decided he didn't want to work anymore.
Mom never worked. My sister had moved out when I was a baby, and my brother
Carl lived here until I was 7, although I hated Carl when I was a little kid
because he always teased me and I wanted him to get a girlfriend. My sister
was more like a parent to me, so really for all intensive purposes I was an
"only child". Being an only child isn't easy, but it definitely has it's
benefits. First off, your parents spoil the hell out of you. That can
backfire, since they may want to spoil you "too much" and take away all the
normal things kids do. I NEVER did anything a normal kid did until I was
maybe 10. Between the ages of 4-9 I totally hated sports, all the G.I. Joe
cartoons, etc., since I'd rather play with numbers or cards or write or read
or play music. Sound familiar? That's what I thought. Then I had my
imaginary friends that I have talked about to you guys for awhile now. They
were there for me from the ages of around 4-11.

Then there was the mobile home in Sandusky. That was the single most
life-defining event for me. From the time I started kindergarten till the
end of 7th grade, I spent almost every weekend there during the school year
(excluding winter) and a majority of summers there. In short, I lived a
double life back then. Was it good? Yeah, some of it was...but no part of
it was complete. That's what I totally disliked about it. For example, I
couldn't play on a summer baseball team because I was always in Sandusky.
And I hadn't spent enough time at the trailor to really meet too many
friends or do anything else. I still go back there physically and in
dreams. Once I get older I'd like to buy that trailor back just to go back
there whenever I want to. It's a great place to be, but back then just
wasn't my time...

I went to St. Charles school. Most of my experiences there were pretty
positive, although I never achieved my full potential there (nor was it ever
recognized like it should have been -- and it still isn't) I was always the
smartest kid in the class, which was great because that meant you were the
most popular...well, up until about 3rd grade. Because of my social
ineptness I really didn't have too many friends and was a loner most of the
time after that, although I had a small circle of friends that I
occasionally did things with. I remember skating at the rink a lot during
4th and 5th grades, and other than that there wasn't really much more to do.
I usually behaved myself until around 5th and 6th grades when I went through
a long bout of depression and anger, which I'll explain later. During
junior high, everyone was a monster and I was the same way. But I
eventually settled down in time for high school.

Ok -- here's something I've never told anyone about: there was a time
between the beginning of 5th grade until around the end of 6th grade (and
maybe even into 7th) where I suffered depression and I was very unhappy. As
I mentioned before, I was a loner before, and I really didn't have much of a
problem with it. But then I realized I was getting older and couldn't go on
in my little "fantasy world" I was in. I tried as hard as I could to
"fit-in", but was never able to manage because of the fact that I lived in a
bubble for the first 10 years of my life. I became extremely self-conscious
and tried everything I could to be part of the crowd. At the same time my
family situation was not good either. I'd rather not get into that. And I
also got into a lot of fights back then as well, until I got caught and got
into a lot of trouble. So in that one year, I developed a huge interest in
sports, started listening to popular music (Q-104 baby!), etc. and I got
somewhat better over the course of the next couple of years. There was one
huge setback, and that was the death of my first Stink back on May 5, 1994.
That was sooooo devastating. The night before she died, I heard a Genesis
song on the radio "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight". That IS the reason I became
interested in Genesis -- because I heard the song the night before my dog
died. Can you believe that?

Wow, I can't believe I wrote all that stuff. You guys probably don't care
one bit but at least I got it out and everything was sorta interesting.
I'll carry on more conversation about it later on, I guess.