I spend a lot of time feeling vaguely upset with myself for being so self-obsessed that I am utterly incapable of writing fiction.  But I just had an idea.  What would I be like if I had not been abused.  It would be interesting to try to write two chapters in parallel going through an imaginary life I could have had while comparing it to what did happen.

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You never know the full impact of your life until you are dead.  I don’t want to die yet.  I figure I have at least fifty more years.  Given that I am thirty that means I have a long way to go before I hit halfway through my lifetime.  I hope I am grown up by then.

I was born the fourth child in an established relationship.  My mother was a stay-at-home mom who excelled at cooking, baking, sewing, and being involved in all aspects of her children’s school.  She often babysat for half the neighborhood because she was just good at managing children.  My father was a printer.  It was the family business.  He tended to work graveyard shifts because it earned a lot more money.  My father was also kind of the suburban ideal dad.  He coached many sports teams.  He was heavily towards boys, that’s normal.  He only wanted to teach things like sports, heavy Sci-Fi novels, and appreciating alcohol.  He figured that was his role in the family.

The first few years of my life were just a continuation of the same-ole-same-old my family had been doing for years before me.  My father was apt to say “no” to things so my mother learned how to work around that.  My mom thought that her little boys should have linoleum in their room because all they wanted to do was play cars and the carpet was terrible