Let me back up a bit and tell you something about my 'beginnings' which I don't really have. I just turned forty and I'm sure if you've been paying attention, you should know that. My birthday is August 13th.... I think.
Everyone should know their 'begin' story don't you think? I do. I realize right this second that I'm about to 'write my begin story' and so this would be it, which I don't yet have. I'm pretty excited about that.
I was born in 1968 somewhere in the middle of Vietnam. My family and I came to the US in 1972 I believe... don't ask me to verify by checking my 'papers' as I'm not sure about the accuracy of any of my junk anyway. I do know it was all legal and I'm a US citizen now So... that's the year plus minus some few months in kid memory.
I remember wearing this little red top and white bell bottom pants with a silver belt. It was my first plane ride and we came in through the Port of Honolulu some sixteen plus hours later. I ate a bunch of hard boiled eggs that my mother brought and I remember farting a bunch and laughing because the people thought it was stinky and I thought that was hysterical at my wise old age of 4 and some months. I love the things that entertain children. :)
That's about all I know to be true about my younger years - other then the story where my jade bracelet fell off my arm. I was two and we were in Saigon, but that's a story already told.
My brother and I grew up as Americanized as my mother could possibly get us. Hamburgers, pizza, newspaper routes and public schools which we very well walked to and from each day. The childhood was rough because mother was somewhat ... temper mental. A four foot, eleven inch, 113lb package of Vietnamese TNT, my mother. Loved us so much she could move the moon with it if she tried, but crazy enough to kick our ass without hesitation no matter where we were. Period. Makes for extraordinarily well behaved children in public places after the first public 'beating' takes place and the child learns that the mother shall never hesitate.
My mother and father met in Vietnam when he was in the war and we were existing there. I was a baby so i don't remember much, but... I'll get to this back story. We grew up pretty much in southern California until we came to Colorado when I was eleven. For the most part, I knew my family to be my dad, mom and brother and for the longest time, I thought we were all of the same bloodline.
Right around the age of 14, I started to notice the discrepancy between the anniversary of my parents marriage and my birth date... so I say to myself one day in my 14th year... "hmmm?" and I don't really think of it again until the following year. Sparing the long story of 'how it came to be', I'll just start with, that was the year I came to my 'dad' and outright asked about the math and what it might mean that I was born two years before they were wed. He sat me down in that 'serious dad talk' way and spilled his story.... and that was the day I heard the first of the many stories of 'Me'.
"... I met your mother when you were just over a year. I loved her right away and knew that was it, I wanted her as my wife.... and you were already here and I loved you just as much and you would simply be my child...."
"I was in the military and they were bringing us home, I just told them you were my kid and they issued you a green card, social and ... that's it, we came to California."
"Do I have another dad?"
"...he abandoned you and your mother but you'll have to ask your mother for that story..."
Well... that'll be a duzy...
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