E Pluribus Unum : Out of many one, or in other words, just another pudd'nhead.

 Life. One day you are floating in amniotic fluid at a comfortable temperature, having sustenance provided for you, doing nothing but swimming and learning, a paradise. The next, you are pushed out into a world you know nothing about, with creatures, lights, and noise all doing their best to confuse you. Welcome to the monkey house.

 At that moment, that so-called " blessed event, " my life became hell.

 I firmly believe that we chose our parents and our potential paths. I chose my father and mother because they seemed strong, supportive, and intelligent. Add to those qualities my father's pragmatism and my mother's humor. There was also an interesting brother and a surprisingly familiar sister in that family.

 One thing that you should know about me. I love a challenge. Give me a problem that takes a lot of concentration to solve? I'm in heaven. Fortunately, the family I had chosen to join lived in a central state in a confused and, unfortunately, rich young country.

 Unfortunately, there is a period before you remember what you know. And the circumstances, parenthood, placement, whatnot, that you chose, just to rub it in, influences how long it takes. So there will come a time, and I hope it happens for you sooner than mine took, that you will suddenly figure it all out. But you will.

 I don't remember my birth. Some people do. They have what is called an eidetic ( or photogenic ) memory. I also have one, but my memories only started when I was about two. However, my mother had a favorite story about how I started crawling and exploring when they left me with her after my birth. It only occurs to me now that I share this just how she loved me. She was happy that I was going to go further than she had. I had inherited her will.

 After my birth, my following memories were of living on a rural street with my family and our pet chicken,  named Chip- Chip. I remember walking down dirt streets to a neighbor, an older woman, who had a mule or maybe a burro. She was nice. One day, during a hurricane watch, I remember being stuck in the basement with my family and the damned bird Chip-Chip. We were not friendly.

 Soon after, we moved to a new city. My father had learned that the area we lived in was rife with KKK and other such groups and decided that he wanted to raise his family in a more progressive place. So he got a cup reporter job at a small newspaper in a growing midwestern college town, and I hope that is correct.

Now is where the confusion sets in. As far as I could perceive, everything was perfect. We had a wonderful little house on a great corner lot with a beautiful chestnut accentuating that corner. I was exactly where I thought I should be. Oops. The best-laid plans, as they say. Oops.

 My mother had a glitch in her system. It was a relatively minor glitch, but she was not as good at maintaining it as she may have been.

 When she was young, she got cancer in or on her thyroid. So they removed half of her thyroid and got rid of the tumor. The thyroid, small whatnot in our system, produces an enzyme that helps prevent what is known as schizophrenia in our brains. So if something happens to it, they have a pill that will supply you with the required enzyme. At the time, it had to be taken daily. My mother was willful. She didn't think that she needed help but could best it on her own. She was wrong.

 I remember being on a hillock by a gazebo with my family. We were visiting my mother at a psychiatric facility that she was put in after extreme post-partum depression, which wasn't actually recognized at the time. So I cannot imagine what she went through.

 But that memory stayed with me. It had no basis in what I thought was reality. Quite frankly, it made no sense. But there it was. It haunted me for years. Decades, in fact. I took pride in my memory. It really was astounding. I could remember shit that even before I remembered why I wanted to remember it.

 I was in the army. From nineteen eighty-three until nineteen eighty-six. The Reagan years. The  ( relatively )  peaceful years. The years that the world was relatively quiet. I was lucky. My first company was a small aviation unit in Germany. We shared a small airfield outside a larger community with a small company, group, brigade, or whatever we called regular army. Not to denigrate what they did, we understood their mission's importance, but ours was different. They blew up stuff and ran around shooting things; what red, white, and blue-blooded American boy doesn't grow up with that ideal?

 We supplied them with the equipment to do that., though most of them, being knuckleheads, couldn't quite grasp that. So they assumed that we thought that we were better than them for the wrong reason. Most of us actually envied those poor dullards. They were destined for glory, honor, and all that other crap our society thinks is essential should " the balloon drop, "as we heard back then. We were just Mr. Roberts delivering toilet paper and C-rations. We felt better than them because they were not very bright in our not-so-humble opinions. Ego. It's a bit of a motherfucker, if you'll pardon my Detroitese.