I_Make_an_Entrance.wps

I was born on March 6, 1982 around noon. The labor started at about 10:00 the previous night. My parents arrived at Northwest Hospital at about 2:00. My Godmother, [Godmother], stayed at the house to watch my brother, [Brother].

The file was last modified January 4, 1994. I was almost 12 , and it looks I’m dispatching an autobiography assignment.

I’m probably making up those details. I never took these assignments seriously enough to fact-check.

In my birth year, the book Schindler's List was published, Disney World in Florida opened EPCOT, lethal injection was first used, the 49ers won the Super Bowl, and the film "E.T." came out.

I was a mellow baby. I loved sitting on my mother's lap. I kept this up until I was seven. [Brother] pretty much ignored me, he was only two. I sucked my thumb with one hand and held either my mom's hand or my dad's ear with the other.

By the time I was 10 1/2 months I was walking. The first movie I ever saw was "Chariots of Fire" and I am still a rabid movie-goer. My mother heard me say "hot" when I was around one. I never had hair until I was two.

God, I can’t believe my first word was ‘hot’. I hope I’m making this up at this point.

When I was little, I was a plump, blond curly haired boy with blue eyes. I was very attached to my mother. I sat on her lap constantly and she took me everywhere with her.

When I was three, our family took a one-year trip to Sweden, because my dad had to do some research there. We left for Sweden in July 1985 and got back in June of 1986. We stayed in a town called Linkoping. I went to a day care/preschool for half the day. When in Sweden we traveled a lot. We went to Denmark, Norway, and England. I learned the language very well and I still have a slight Swedish accent. While in Sweden, my Grandparents and my favorite baby-sitter, [Favorite Babysiter], came to visit us.

That part about the Swedish accent is a bald-faced lie. I was three when we lived there. Apart from apparently chirping ‘hot!’ every third word like a gay teenager, I wasn’t saying much of anything, much less Swedish.

When I got back, I went to preschool for one more year, and I met Daniel, who later gave us the cat which we still have. It was his mother who taught me which shoe goes on which foot.

Having already established myself as truth-challenged, I have now moved on to fully developmentally disabled. Did other children have to be taught to put on their shoes?

My life was not all fun and games. I moved when I was eight, and I hated it. Not that I hated the new neighborhood, I loved it, but moving was, for some reason, upsetting and annoying. I think the worst part was leaving my first girlfriend, Claire. I have seen her twice since.

Jesus, stop it. What am I talking about? Who is Claire? What does ‘first girlfriend’ mean at age eleven? I genuinely don’t remember anyone named Claire in my childhood. I can’t decide which is more appalling: that I made up an entire person just to add filler to a two-page assignment in the sixth grade, or that I may have genuinely believed this.

When I was in kindergarten and other low grades, I would pretend I was a transformer and I turned into cars and other assorted vehicles.

After I found a BB gun bullet hole in our house, I decided it would be fun to be a vandal. I wanted to be one until third grade.

I was a disgustingly healthy child until I got chicken pox in fourth grade. I get sick about 1 time a month now. I got really mad when I got chicken pox because I almost missed a school camping trip.

My brother has been cruel to me ever since I was born. He harasses me constantly. Personally, I don't think he will ever stop.

I used to have a great fear that someone would invade my house, and make me bungee jump. It is funny to remember that, because now I want to bungee jump.

And … This is now officially the rantings of a madman. I’m amazed this wasn’t flagged by social services.

I remember getting the chicken pox, actually. My mom made me take an oatmeal bath, and I hated the creamy, granular feeling on my skin. I think I played anti-hookie and pretended to be well so I wouldn’t have to do it again. I hated camping, though, so I don’t know why I’m acting disappointed that I almost missed a trip.

I don’t know what to say about the thing with my brother. As well as being a lying, girlfriend fabricating shoe-tard, I also have a persecution complex. I would love to see the copy of this I got back from my teacher, all doodled with red pen. I wonder if she circled that paragraph and noted ‘CFH*’ (*Cry for Help) in the margins.

For the record, I no longer have any desire to bungee jump, though the idea of being forced to do so in the middle of the night remains mortifying.

I have won a few awards in my short life. I won an "Outstanding Student" award in first grade. I won a spelling bee in my first grade class but did not get an award.

Ahhh, there you are, Bitterness. I was wondering when you’d arrive.

In first grade we had a spelling bee, but we didn’t keep score. By the end, I was the only kid in the class who didn’t spell a word wrong. I spent the rest of the year lobbying for an award for my achievement like a little Berlusconi. Classy kid, I know.

I can play tennis quite well for my age, especially considering how much I've played.

Lie.

I used to think I played soccer well, but I came to my senses and now I know it's not my best sport.

True.

I do okay academically. I got into Horizon math, language arts, and social studies, even though I don't particularly want to be. My mother made me be in it.

Lie.

I get pretty good grades anyway, though, and I don't think my teachers hate me.

CFH.

I've read tons of big books, like The Stand, Needful Things, and The Mammoth Hunters.

Lie. The Mammoth Hunters doesn’t even sound like a legitimate book. I’m probably thinking of an episode of ‘Dino Riders’ or something.

I am a pessimist/realist. I either look at the situation as bad, or as what it is, depending on my mood. I can be an optimist when I want to, though.

Pointless, pointless lie.

I am very imaginative, but I have trouble talking about it. I like to write, but I don't like actually putting it on paper.

Lie. What am I saying here? My writing is great, just not on paper?

I do magic. I have a magic business with a friend of mine. We have done only one magic show but we could get a lot more business if we really tried.

Lie. We sucked violently. We only ever performed one show, at a nursing home. About four people showed up. Our performance was literally less enticing than sitting in an empty room and waiting to die.

My family is like other families in the sense that everyone is sane and not in jail or something like that. We are different from other families because we are dysfunctional. My brother and I are always bickering and my mom is always screaming at us to stop. My dad is rarely home for these little "episodes," as we like to call them.

This is a lie too, but just the last sentence. My dad was around plenty. He biked home from work every day, uphill, arriving just in time to sit down and drip sweat onto his dinner. I only had a fixation with having an absentee father because that was the plot of like 65 percent of children’s movies in the early ‘90s.

The ‘dysfunctional’ thing I got from my parents. We had a lot of ‘family meetings’ around this time, most of which revolved around the question ‘why are we so dysfunctional’? I could spell that word before I could kick a football. Or put my shoes on correctly more than 50 percent of the time, apparently.

It’s amazing that, at 11, I was able to project a sorority worth of insufferable, calculated self-loathing. My hormones hadn’t even kicked in yet. If it’s this dire now, how’s it gonna be when I discover sexual attraction, popularity, and body image?