INCOMING GIANT WALL OF TEXT, SEE CLIFF NOTES AT THE BOTTOM IF YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE TOO LONG DIDN'T READ PEOPLE
You have my apologies in advance, as this is going to probably be pretty long. Not only do I wish to share lots with you guys, but a lot has also happened to me in my brief 23 years!
I was wrought into this world at a little after midnight on a Friday the 13th in May (which I'm sure made a lot of you just go "Oooh, NOW I understand!"
. The doctors apparently tried their best to have me born before then, but they also thought I was going to be a girl, so apparently I had noob doctors. Mom knew better, and said I was going to be a boy.
Hi, my name is Michael.
I am named for my grandmother's first child, which was stillborn. I might have ended up the same way, but when a similar incident happened during labor - my heartbeat changed - my grandmother demanded that the doctors perform a cesarean. That mental image still makes me laugh...I can just see her tiny Panamanian frame, screaming at the poor doctors to cut me out. That woman would become one of the defining influences in my life up until her death, and is the closest thing I have to a personal hero.
My biological parents divorced when I was one or two; I don't really remember. Though I was born in Tacoma, Washington, I apparently lived before the divorce out in a house in Port Orchard. I have a very very faint memory of being carried down the hall by my father in that house, but my real memories don't start until the apartment that my mother and I shared in Puyallup. My father moved up to Sitka, Alaska to be with his father. He and I keep in loose touch and see each other about once a year; he's a nice, funny guy and his child support payments helped me through college, so I have no beef with him at all. My mother and I are very close, and look very much alike - she is just like me in that she doesn't seem to age, and we have been confused for siblings at times. She's a hard-working, generous, sensitive woman and I have a lot of respect and love for her. Neither parent will speak on the reasons for their divorce, but from bits of information that I've pieced together, there was a much greater problem than just an argument about living location.
My mother was a medical technologist at the time, and worked very hard to support the two of us. Funny story about the two of us in the apartment - one night, I was very very very sick. I crawled out of my bed, toddled across the hall, and straddled my mother (who is a tiny woman at about 5'1"
. "Mommy...mommy, I'm sick..." I weakly said. She started to sit up and said, "Oh, honey, what's-" and I vomited all over her. She carried me to the bathroom while I was puking the whole way, but by the time she got me to the toilet, I was cleaned out.
When I was three, she met my stepdad (whom I will pretty much refer to hereafter as dad) and when I was six or seven, they were married. Dad is a giant of a man, 6'4", and while he and I have certainly butted heads over the years, he did a damn good job of helping to raise me. He is the hardest-working person I have ever known, very driven and motivated, and despite his big, soft heart he wasn't very good at expressing his feelings until I was much older. He also taught me to ski, which I began doing shortly after he and my mother met.
After they were married, we moved to a house in ghetto-ass South Tacoma. It wasn't as bad as, say, South-Central LA, but it certainly wasn't the most friendly place for a child to grow up. We lived next door to various drug dealers the entire time we were there, and a registered child molester also lived a few doors down. In the interest of keeping the wall of text a bit shorter, I'll cut out a lot of the crazy-person stories I have from there, but if you're really intrigued, I can post more later.
Elementary school was pretty rough. I was small, extremely intelligent, and have an unusual last name, so I was made fun of a lot. I went to one school until first grade, when I had a teacher who literally would beat her students using a yardstick, which she called 'The Board of Education'. My mother tells me that every day I would come home crying, and I remember nothing but terror in that classroom. I was quickly transferred to a different school, and last I heard, that teacher was forced to quit teaching. My new school wasn't much better; I had excellent teachers, but lots of difficulties making friends. The one really good friend I did manage to make moved to Montana when I was in the third grade, and I didn't really make another quite like him until Middle School. In Elementary School, I was in the Bells Choir, I was vice-president of the student body, and I won a lot of spelling bees.
It was in Elementary school that I got the long scar above my right eyebrow. I was playing basketball one day during a rainy-day recess, and the floors were very slick. I tripped over someone's foot, and went skidding across the floor into one of the metal supports for the wooden benches that ran the perimeter of the gym. I don't remember feeling any pain, but what I do remember is standing up, looking back at all the horrified faces staring at me and going, "What? Why are you staring at me? And why is there so much water running down my face?" Then I looked down at the blood covering me and the floor and freaked a little bit. 32 stitches later, everything was patched up.
When I was seven years old I was first introduced into the world of sex. Some friends of the family had been invited to a cabin for a weekend getaway, and they had a little girl about my age; I think she was 8. She suggested that we play 'house', and as I was bored, I agreed. We 'pretended to go to sleep', and suddenly she was on top of me, dryhumping like crazy. This went on for awhile (I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say, it was a real eye-opener) and then we stopped. My parents got quite a shock, as I was still fairly religious at the time (more on that later) and felt guilty about it until I told them. Turns out the little girl had a teacher who had some anatomically correct dolls in her classroom, and was a little too forthright with knowledge in that department.
When I was 8, I took my first trip to Panama to visit my mother's side of the family and see much of their heritage. My grandmother was one of 10 children - her mother Panamanian, her father French. They never married, but settled down in Panama and started a large family, which grew and grew into many members. Manuel, one of my grandmother's brothers, has been dead for four years, and we're
still finding his children.
Anyway, Middle School was better than Elementary School. I made a lot more friends, girls started showing interest in me (though some of you would probably be horrified if you found out how one of them expressed it) and I found my wit, which stopped people from making fun of me and gained me some popularity. I also found that I really enjoyed writing as well as drawing, and had quite a bit of skill with both. A friend of mine and I started writing a 'choose your own adventure'-type fantasy book, with supplemental drawings and whatnot, which I still have (though it's incomplete, and honestly not very good).
Dad remodeled our old house while I was in Middle School (he was a general residential contractor until very recently...like, last week recently) - jacked the roof up a story and
put the framing for the second story in. We lived in a trailer on the property for 9 months while this was happening. Fun times!
My parents had always wanted a bigger family, since I am an only child, but conception proved difficult. They tried all sorts of fertility treatments, and just when they had given up, mom turned up to be pregnant when I was about 11. Unfortunately, she had a miscarriage a few months later, so I remain an only child to this day. She was absolutely devastated by the loss, and never tried for another child again. (Incidentally, being an only child is not all that it is cracked up to be...you are alone quite often).
I also started swimming competetively when I was in the 8th grade. Swimming would take me many places I hadn't been before, and become a staple of my existence all the way up through High School.
Speaking of High School, it was pretty good, all things considered. I attended Henry Foss High School (where that stupid shooting took place a couple months ago) because of the International Baccalaureate program that they had there. For those who don't know, IB is kind of like AP, but supposedly more difficult and also competitive on an international level. I was very popular in High School, despite it being about 2,000 students in size (and despite my still diminutive stature). I was a Varsity Swimmer, Varsity Water Polo player, and played golf for fun in the off-season. At the end of my freshman year, my family finally moved out of the ghetto and back to Puyallup, but I continued to attend Foss until my graduation in 2001.
When I was sixteen, I had sex for the first time. You may find this odd that I mention it, but the events leading to it, the incident itself, and past it are rather interesting and a somewhat defining point in my development. At the time, I was very interested in a young girl who claimed that she was interested in me, but just couldn't quite get past her boyfriend, who was older and in the military. She also decided to play me and an exchange student off of each other, for ****s and giggles. By the time the exchange student and I realized it (and became friends) her boyfriend had come back and she was back with him. We were angry, and I became slightly depressed, as it always seemed that women would simply use me for whatever end they wanted, and toss me back when done. I grew up constantly hearing, "
ou're too small, you're cute but..." etc, and it was starting to drain on me, since I was stupid and wanted a more serious relationship.
Anyway, I ended up being a counselor at a camp for young kids for a few weeks, and one of the other counselors there happened to be my first grade teacher's daughter. She was 18, and apparently a big slut, though I didn't know it at the time. I was depressed, and she was interested in my mythical Penis of Time. She woke me up at 2am one night by sticking her tongue in my ear, and I said, "Meh, what the hell" and rolled over and nailed her.
It was the story of the year at my high school. My sex life was VERY public, and became embellished by people other than myself, to the point where I was near-legendary. I never really spoke to or screwed that chick again, though, and just gave up really wanting to do anything remotely close to a relationship. This 'fame' was compounded even moreso by an incident that happened at my church when I was 18, but I'll save that for the religious section.
Shortly after the sex incident, I had the opportunity to travel to China and compete in a swimming competition there through a program called the Washington Cultural Exchange. I spent 14 days in China, visiting Hong Kong, competing in Guangzhou, and then taking a trip to Beijing, and had an absolute blast. I also brought back Tuberculosis with me, QQ. 9 months of Isoniazid killed those guys, though.
When I was 18, I traveled to Floriduh for the first time, for another swimming competition, this time with the Boys and Girls Club that I swam for on the side. This was another fun experience, and I got to visit lots of the theme parts and whatnot in the Sarasota/Orlando area.
I graduated HS with honors, tested for my full IB diploma, got it (it was ridiculously easy) and went on to Central Washington University. I had plenty of opportunity outside the state and in (Gonzaga offered me a $20k scholarship) but I didn't have the money to go out of state and I didn't want the huge student loan debt.
College was simultaneously the best and worst time of my life (and you guys are really going to get cheated, because I'm going to have to cut a LOT of cool stories out, otherwise you'd be reading this crap forever). I walked into college deciding I would be a Computer Science Major, as computers had always interested me and I was pretty good with mechanical stuff, and I also decided that I wasn't going to try for any sort of relationship, I was just going to screw as many women as possible, and nobody was going to be let inside.
Of course, two weeks after I got into college, I met Kellie. She was a cute girl who was a lot of fun to be with, and we quickly started a relationship. Our relationship, however, was rather rollercoaster-ish. While we were still freshmen, she started hanging out with my next-door neighbor (Scott) a lot more than me. I knew she was interested and told her as such, but she denied it vehemently. Eventually, I just broke up with her. The next day, of course, she was in his bed.
I was pretty upset, since she was my first real love, went home for a visit, and ended up messing around with a friend from HS in her boyfriend's house. She had always wanted me, and ended up coming to Central to 'finish the job' as it were. Kellie got really jealous, and I made a dumbass move and decided to get back together with her. Our relationship ended about a year later, as she started to change into this person I really disliked. Shortly thereafter, Kellie and I started a 'friends with benefits' type relationship, which would end abruptly.
During this entire time, I had been talking to her friend, Marie, who went to a different school, online. We were pretty good friends and I had helped her through some really rough times and clinical depression, and about two months after Kellie and I had broken up, we decided to meet in person. At this point,
nothing had happened between us and we were still friends, though both of us were wondering if there was more to it than that. Kellie, seeing this coming, decided that she'd invite Scott over (despite the fact that the two of them hadn't talked in ages) for a weekend of ****y sucky, to try and make me jealous. She even went so far as to tell me that she'd had feelings for him the entire time we were dating, despite the fact that nothing had happened between me and Marie as of yet.
Marie and I asked Kellie if she would mind if something happened between us, to which she expressed her decided disinterest in me and what could happen. Marie and a friend came to visit, and naturally, I took them out partying. When we got back to my place, Marie realized she'd forgotten her purse somewhere, so a buddy of mine took her to get it. While she was gone, her friend (who was engaged) jumped me, and we ended up messing around. I stopped short of actually screwing her and, being incredibly drunk, decided to call Kellie.
*ring* "Hey, do you know where Marie is? I just got done with one of your friends and I kind of want to do the other one..."
"I don't know. I'm going to bed." *click*
As you can imagine, that went over pretty badly...evenmoreso when I followed through and nailed Marie.
This all happened within the first two years of college. The summer of my sophomore year, a lot of drama happened between me, Marie, and Kellie, because Marie was still seeing me. This 'hey, come over and let's screw' eventually turned into a relationship which is still going on today. I don't talk to Kellie anymore, and she refuses to talk to Marie when they see each other.
That summer was rough in more ways than one - I failed my first ever class and decided that Programming wasn't really what I wanted to do. I also drank a lot more than I should have, and was knocking back probably about three bottles of Jack with a buddy of mine every week. However, I got my act together with no small amount of help from my parents, and in the Fall I switched majors to Information Technology and Administrative Management. This was a very convenient switch, as I was able to push most of my CS credits over and graduate in another two years as planned.
It was during my senior year that my grandmother became very ill and eventually died. I got to watch helplessly as one of the most important people in my life suffer for two weeks. I wrote her eulogy and delivered it at her funeral, which about a hundred people attended. I would like to tell you all a lot more about her, because she's an amazing woman, but the amount of stories and nostalgia between the two of us would fill several hundred pages and you would all fall asleep. I will say that she is a large part of the reason why I have become as successful as I have been, and I miss her terribly.
After graduation, I moved back home while I looked for a job. There was some serious drama going on with getting my diploma (which I'll cut out in the interest of keeping this bible a bit shorter) but eventually I got it and I found my current job, working as a Network Administrator for a small series of medical and plastic surgery clinics. I live in Renton with two gay furries (one was a roommate in college...I've got plenty of roommate horror stories), and Marie lives in Everett. We see each other weekly.
Random tidbits:
-I was very religious until I was about 10, but I continued to be active in my church up through High School. I also nailed a hottie in the basement of a convent on church grounds during a church lock-in for a High School Youth Group that I was one of the leaders for
-I have a 'third ear'. It's a little bump on the left side of my head, right next to my ear, that has been there since birth. Supposedly it indicates intelligence, but after reading all this crap, I'm sure you'll disagree.
-I went to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama when I was in Middle School.
-I have been to Panama twice, China once, and have visited Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Alabama, Texas, and Florida. I had a brief layover in Seoul, South Korea.
-Me and a buddy once broke into my Middle School by picking the locks.
-I once skipped High School to go skiing with a friend, which led to a lot of shenanigans and my parents eventually finding out.
-I played baseball and basketball in various forms until I was in High School for our local Boys and Girls Club. I was terrible at it, and always got the crappy 'Most Inspirational' reward.
-One of my best friends never told me he was Mormon until after I'd known him for several years. He was afraid that I wouldn't be his friend anymore if I knew.
-I was introduced to Asheron's Call in College, and started posting on the VNs shortly thereafter. Lynea is the first person to ever reply to one of my topics, which was an auction for a crappy Major Leader Xbow that I was demanding like 6 Smalls for.
-My parents have always hated video games, so I always bought my own systems, from age 8 onwards. I worked very hard for them and in other places to buy the things I wanted.
-I have been a construction worker, a lockerroom attendant, a lifeguard, a computer labs manager, a construction worker again, and finally a Network Administrator. I have never gone a full year without having a job since I was fifteen.
-My parents are trying to adopt two children from Guatemala this year. Everything is in the process of getting approved. The cost is astronomical, so I've been helping them out as I can. I'm excited
-My favorite food is steak. My grandmother used to cut it for me and put it on a little TV tray when I would stay the night at her house. When she got too old, I would cut her food for her and help her eat it. We would laugh about how the tables have turned.
-My favorite candy is gummi bears. I once at a 2 lbs. bag in one sitting. They were good.
I could go on for days telling you guys stories, since I cut an incredible amount of crap out of this, but if there's something specific you want to know, please ask!
CLIFF NOTES: MY PENIS IS BIGGER THAN YOURS GAHAAHHAAHAHAHAHA
-----signature-----
Max Fox (AC), Zygran (WoW, SWTOR)
"We poison our air and water to weed out the weak! We set off fission bombs in our only biosphere! We nailed our God to a stick! Don't fk with the human race!"
DE/Mr Pants 2012
