My very first memories are when I lived in Guam back in 1967-1969. I remember getting a toy airplane jet that rolled on the ground, lit up and made lots of noise. It was at this time I knew I wanted to fly. I also received my first cork pop gun. I got in trouble with it for shooting my brother Jeff and the neighbors at the Naval Airstation. I was smart though I would jab my gun into the ground and get mud in it and then shoot everyone ~chuckles~ It was only a matter of time before the gun was taken away from me. I remember my mom and dad had a black Corvair convertable and I use to sit between them in my little car seat that had a sterring wheel and a horn.
The bad memories were the time I had the worse case of sunburn the doctors had ever seen. It was gross I had huge puss filled blisters all over my body. I actually had blisters on my blisters. My mom and dad had left me in the sun far too long. The other bad memory was when my friends talked me in to taking down a yellow jacket nest. Boy was that a mistake, I had taken several stings in my ear and around my face. Luckily I was not allergic too them.
We moved back to the United States in a place called Pasedena California where my Grandma and Grandpa lived. We had to live with them because my dad was off in Vietnam working as an electronics engineer on the minesweepers and swiftboats. I remember my mom crying a lot because she missed my father. During this time my Uncle Vance use to scare the hell out of me by making me think I could get flushed down the toilet. He was always smoking pot and drinking with his friends. One time someone stold my new bike and my Uncle Vance went and kicked some ass and got it back YAY!
My dad finally got back from Vietnam after breaking his leg in half water skiing behind a minesweeper. I remember begging my mom to let us go to the hospital with her too see him. He was pretty messed up when he got stateside. They thought they would have to amputate his leg, fortuneately this was not the case and he made a full recovery.
When my father got back from Vietnam we moved to Zion Illonois and lived on a farm house. This is when I learned that I was adopted. It didn't matter to me then because I didn't even know what the hell he was talking about when he told me. It was in Chicago where I learned to hate my brother Jeff because he was more agile and more intelligent than I was and it cause a great envy within me. I tried to kill him a few times but was unlucky. Once I hung him by his neck on the clothes line. That didn't go over too well with my mom or dad. My brother also locked me in the barn one day when it was 17 degrees. I almost froze to death but instead built a ladder up to a glass window in the barn. I broke the window out and screamed till my mom and dad finally found me. I was bleeding pretty bad and needed some stitches.
We moved to Santee California after that where my mom and dad bought a house on Rumson Drive. A nice area in the suburbs that was at the end of the county line and the begining of nothing but desert. I spent a lot of time catching Horny Toads and running from Scorpions and Rattle Snakes. One time my friends and I were having rock fights with wrist rocket sling shots. I had just won a pair of these glasses that make everything look like your drunk and stoned. Well the combination was not good and I got shot in the head. I quickly wrapped my shirt around my head and applied pressure until i got home. I then made the mistake of showing my mother who freaked out and took me to the hospital for yet more stitches. I met my first girlfriend in Santee. Her name was Stacy and she reminded me of Darlene on the little rascals who i had a big crush on. My mother and father both worked and her mom ran a daycare center in the neighborhood(I would meet stacy again several years later and we got together again). While everyone was in the TV room watching Popeye Stacy and I would be hiding in the bushes touching each other and kissing. I couldn't let anyone know because they would ridecule me and say I had the cooties.
I went to school late in Santee because the school wasn't finished until October. We lived by the school so we would always walk there in groups. The school was called Carlton Oaks. It was here that I got my second crush on a girl named Sally Ellingson. We use to do everything together and I always fantasized that I would marry her someday. Kindergarten and first grade were rough for me. I never really fit in because I was overweight and would get called fatty and crap like that. There was this one kid on our block named Scott and he would always kick my butt and my father would make me go back and fight him over and over, so I got my ass kicked over and over ~chuckles~ but when he wasn't kicking my ass we would explore the sewers and desert of Santee. It was on the explorations at the age of 5-7 that we first started smoking cigarettes. Boy were we cool!
The other memories I can remember were mostly bad ones with a few good ones in between. My father had a bad temper after Vietnam. He wouldn't really beat me too death, but emotionally he abused me and scared the crap out of me, so I naturally I clung to my mother and my brother Jeff was Dad's boy. I was still trying to kill my brother. Once I told him to jump this thing and I threw a Tonka Fire Truck right in front of him and smashed him up pretty good but he wasn't dead yet. The next time I tried to push him in front of a car. Unfortuneately for me it turned out to be a cop car. I had to go to kid court and the judge made me write a 1000 word essay on the laws of bicycling. All my dad cared about was that he might have to pay money which really hurt me.