you probably wouldn't remember - February 11th, 2004

I was born on May 31st, 1988, on a blue moon, in Iowa City, Iowa.

I had a great childhood. I have thousands of photographs to back that up--as well as pictures I drew, stories I wrote, things I remember. I was a very happy kid, always curious and bright.

From the very beginning, I had good musical taste. Not to brag, of course :D But my dad had me listening to Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn at a few months old, and I loved it. I used to chew my Gerber cereal in time with the music. One of my dad's favorite stories about me as a three year old is this...
I was sitting, eating Cheerios. A certain Stevie Ray Vaughn cut that I'd never heard before was on.
Me: Is this Jimi Hendrix?
Dad: No.
Me: Oh. Who is it?
Dad: Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Me: Stevie Ray Vaughn was influenced by Jimi Hendrix.
Dad (picking his jaw up from the floor): Yes... do you know what 'influenced' means?
Me: Yes.
Dad: What's it mean?
Me: It means he listened to Jimi's music and tried to copy it!
Muahaha. My powerful vocabulary! Another time, when I was younger than that, I loved Beethoven and Jimi Hendrix more than anything. What a combination, eh? But I didn't know they were dead. I found out one day that Jimi Hendrix died. I started howling. 'What about Beethoven?' I asked. My dad told me that, no, Beethoven had been dead for a very long time. I was crying really hard, sobbing, heaving. My dad asked me what was wrong, why was I crying? My response: 'Because they made such beautiful music...and now that they're gone, they'll never be able to again.' That was the first time I understood death. I was crying for about two hours. My dad says that to this day he feels like a monster for telling me my idols were dead.

Another thing instilled from me from the beginning was a love for reading. My parents started to reading me when I could sit up, at about six months old. They read to me every day, several books. I loved reading. I spent my days at the Iowa City Public Library--I was there almost every day of the week. We would sometimes literally check out entire shopping carts of books. We never went over three shopping carts, though. I was in several reading programs, teaching other kids my age how to read. I was on a first-name basis with the entire staff. They let me make bookmarks to hand out, they gave me goodies, talked to me, let me help reshelve books. When I moved away, they gave me things. I still have the bendable Pink Panther that I lusted after every day for years, a parting gift from Ron, one of the checkers (er, librarians?).

Tolerance of other people was another thing I learned. I didn't even need to learn it; it wasn't a question about people. Children don't think bad things about lesbians, black people, people of other nationalities or religions unless they're taught to. One of my very best friends was the adopted son of two lesbians; another was the daughter of a black man and white woman; another was Jewish; another was a Japanese kid who didn't speak much English. And I was never, ever prejudiced against them, because I wasn't taught to be. It was what I knew, it was normal, and they were good people. If only all kids had parents like mine, there wouldn't be hate or racism in this world.

How to solve problems with words, not violence. I was never a violent or confrontational kid, but my parents taught me that violence wasn't the way, and that things could be solved with words. Here's the funniest story relating to that one:
I was three years old. I was playing with my friend across the street from me, Emma. Emma was a year older than me and quite a bit bigger. We were outside, along with both sets of parents and her little sister. We were playing on the slide. Or rather, she was. She wasn't letting me have my turn on the slide. She kept going down and then physically pushing me out of the way before I could go down. I was getting very upset. Finally, she pushed me for the last time, and I yelled at her, 'FUCKERRRRRRR!!' Hmm. Yes, that got her attention. As well as the attention of everyone else in the yard. They were all shocked into silence. And I got my turn on the slide, no one hurt!

Television. Or rather, lack of televesion. We were quite poor, and we couldn't afford cable. We had three channels. One was PBS, the other was Fox, and the final was...I don't know, golf or something. So, I did watch some TV. I watched Wishbone, Sesame Street, sometimes Home Improvement. Another thing was, we had the tiniest TV. I think it was five inches. Yeah. And we had that until I was ten or eleven, and then we got a bigger TV. But I haven't ever really been a TV watcher. At the moment, I watch almost zero TV. Less than 15 minutes a week.

Thinking! When I was born, my dad was working on getting his Ph. D. So it's really no wonder that he wanted me to think. I remember when he'd do Marxist analyses of toy commercials with me. I'd see a walking Barbie and it'd go a little like this...
Me: I want it!
Dad: Why?
Me: Because it's walking and driving!
Dad: Do you really think a doll can walk and drive.
Me: No...
Dad: If it can't walk and drive, why do you think they're showing it walking and driving on TV?
Me (after a pause): So people buy it.
Dad: Yes, that's correct! Do you want a Barbie that can't walk and drive?
Me: No.
He always encouraged me to think and come to conclusions on my own. He wanted me to have imagination, which I have. Something worked right :D

Value of money. We really were poor when I was a kid. I didn't get a lot of great presents, although my parents did their best. I was never unhappy because I didn't have possessions. We were so tight on money that my dad actually had to stop and think every day if he could spare fifty cents for coffee. I didn't have many material things. But I was so happy. And I really don't need material things, they don't concern me. I do have kind of odd conceptions of money though. But it's for the better, it's not a negative thing. I don't need things to make me happy; happiness comes from yourself and your attitude. I couldn't care less about money.

I also got an early introduction to computers. My dad had had computers since before I was born. As a wee child, I would write stories on the computer. Suffice to say, they were really really really bad and didn't make any sense, but hey, I was four years old! I can get a break. Because our library was ahead of its time, it had computer games. We could check out computer games from the library and put them on the computer. I can still play some of those library games, because we still have the ancient Mac. Yay for snowball math games!