A Scar is Borne
I was born the sickly, premature child of nameless drug addicts. No, not really. But it makes a point about how people will believe almost anything you tell them. More on that later.

My mother's name was Denise Kohan. Apparently, my father's name was Danny Toepper. At some point, they split up, and she married Johnny Christie, who adopted me as his own. Legally, anyway.

Along the way, they had two more kids, John (the third, his grandfather being the first), and Heather. I love my siblings dearly, although I don't see any of my family much.

We lived up north, in Illinois, for the most part. One of my earliest memories was coming home from the hospital. Maybe it was when John III was born? Johnny carried us on his shoulders, the snow was so deep.

Anyway, I do seem to remember the time before they were born. We're fairly close in age, so this is all questionable. But I do seem to remember being alone, and watching a lot of Sesame Street, Electric Company and Spider-man. This is how I learned to read, basically.

One halloween, they had been saving carpet fuzz for a while for me. We made a panty-hose mask and glued the carpet fuzz on it and made a wolfman mask. The effect was horrible, of course, and not helped by the fact that some of the carpet fuzz was green and not brown.

I remember a babysitter who lived nearby, and songs like 'The Night Chicago Died' that she listened to on the radio. I also remember walking to kindergarten (what the hell?), and feeding a squirrel part of my breakfast.

Now kindergarten was a trip. I seem to remember two different schools in Illinois for that year. In the first, I failed skipping. What a crushing thing to do to a little kid. Another time, we were writing the number eight, and I used a yellow crayon on white paper. And instead of making an eight, I made one circle on top of another circle, and I got crap for that.

But, the thing is, I learned to read really early. Say between ages 4 and 6. So the other kindergarten memory I have in Illinois is this black teacher I had. She was going to read us 'Babar the Elephant'. Except she said 'Barbar the Elephant'. So I stopped her and told her than his name was Babar, not Barbar. She got irate.

There were a lot of good memories in Illinois. My Grandma and Grandpa Christie lived there. Grandpa Christie was a gruff sort of mafioso type. Grandma Christie cooked the most fabulous meals, them both being Sicilian. She used to let me eat raw hamburger, back when such things were done.

They both spent endless hours each day working on these puzzle contests. They all (to my fuzzy memory) seemed to involve finding the most two-letter words in the world. Grandpa Christie died a long time before his wife did. He had a hell of a stamp collection that he showed me once. Grandma always used to walk with me to the store and buy me comic books, which also fueled the reading thing.

I remember once I was allowed to go to the candy store with a somewhat older neighborhood girl. There was some argument as to exactly how much money I had to spend, and she told me "That's all you get, and if you don't like it, I'll leave you here." We also had some cool snow forts and snowball fights, back then.

Another cool thing back then was my Uncle Pete. My grandma had a cat that had been around since Pete was a kid. We were in the front yard of their house once, and Pete was playing monster with me. When I attacked him, the damn cat jumped on my head and cut me to ribbons.

I stayed with Uncle Pete when he was a bachelor, once. We went to the store and got some steak for dinner. Then we watched 'Trilogy of Terror'. Then I got so scared, I puked up all the steak. I don't think I stayed with him again after that. He was (and is) a photographer and a Beatles fan. He pointed out that just because a record had a green apple on it, that didn't mean the song was about green apples.

We moved back and forth from Illinois to Louisiana a few times, or at least visited, and so I will leave off here, for now.