A shadow shall fall over the universe…and evil will grow in its path…and death will come from the skies.
Er, wait, wrong story. This one might be longer.
It was Tuesday evening, September 25, a moderately average day in Long Beach, CA. Mom was in the delivery room, Dad was in the waiting room, watching through the windows—they were showing Hatari at the drive in across the street. Around 9:30 am the next morning, I finally make my appearance; Dad goes out and prints up birth announcements that look like theater tickets—I’m a star!
Both my parents were in college at the time (Dad a theater major and Mom an English major) at CSULB, where my grandfather was Dean of Education. What, a child? Dad goes looking for a job, and finds one teaching at Lower Columbia College, so we move to Long Beach, WA.
That didn’t last all that long, they split up when I was 2, and back to Cali I went. A few years later Mom is teaching and I’m in preschool classes at a private school (Pomona Valley Christian), where my friends and I got in so much trouble that they put us in separate classes for Kindergarten. Around about this time I develop the desire to become a paleontologist when I grow up (Mom being the English fiend she was, I could even spell it at that age).
I was in summer school pretty much every year when I was young, cause mom had to teach summers for the extra cash. But I got to stay home to watch the first moon landing, which was amazingly cool. That and the steamer truck full of Major Matt Mason toys I’d acquired by then changed my career inclinations from paleontologist to astronaut. Me and every other kid those days.
By now, Mom’s gotten married again, to another teacher. He had curly hair and a beard and wore daishikis and played protest songs on his acoustic guitar—enter Ozy’s hippy phase. They took a year off from school, and we traveled around Europe in a VW poptop camper in ’69 and ’70. Just what I remember from that trip would be a post all its own even longer than this one will end up being.
Though what I learned on that trip kept me ahead of the curve in school for pretty much the rest of my school years.
I remember standing next to my mother on the Berlin Wall—she got out a lipstick and some napkins, and wrote peace slogans, and held them up for the East German guards to see.
Back in the states, I get to see a ton of the country, as we drive from NY to CA, by way of NC. We end up stopping by to see some friends in San Francisco, where we catch the Broadway cast production of Hair—all hippy tendencies are thereafter firmly cemented.
About a year later, Mom and her second hubby split up, and we end up in the left armpit of the nation, otherwise known as Porterville, CA. Egads, I spent so many years trying to escape that place.
My sister was born shortly thereafter (April 1973). Mom was still teaching, and working nights as well, so I ended up pretty much raising my sister.
I continue to do amazingly well in school, always at the top 1% of my class—though I suck terribly at PE being a bit round and very uncoordinated, this ends up costing me Valedictorian status in Jr. High. Jr. High sucked anyway, as my mother taught at the same school I attended, and was the most hated teacher on the campus, which many students often tried to take out on me. Ah well, this too did pass.
The summer between JR High and High School, my mother married again, a chiropractor this time. I had a bad feeling about him from the start, which feeling ended up being dead on.
I’m terribly bored in HS, as it’s evident to me at this point that the public school system has very little to actually offer me. I pretty much stop ding homework and studying, and start cutting classes, but my grades don’t suffer (not yet, anyway). Spent three years on the water polo and swimming teams, which at least was distracting. Oh, and I was in band as well, both marching and concert, played the clarinet. I’d been playing piano and cello, so a new instrument was pretty easy to pick up. Bought my first guitar somewhere in there as well, though I didn’t really play it—I played
with it. Spent a lot of time playing frisbee in the park when I supposed to be in some of my classes.
By this time, things are not going well between my mother and her third hubby, here ever after known as The Evil Nazi Chiropractor from Hell™. He beat my mother. And me. And my little sister couldn’t sleep at night, being afraid he would kill her while she slept, despite the fact that she was the only one he never raised a hand to.
So, out the door I went, in the middle of my senior year.
(Hmmm, this is getting long, I'm taking a break for lunch.)
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Ozymandias
President, Republik of Ozymandia
http://barrettblank.homestead.com/files/acsigs/Ozymandias.jpg
We just rape and pillage and go home.--Sharon Osbourne
