I was never a chap, but it sounds better when using “wee.” Anywhos, like any story of life, humiliation, reckless times and experience there is a beginning. I find it to be only natural to expose a bit of my youth to somehow explain my current state and to perhaps bring a little more understanding to how and why shit is weird as hell. And so it begins….

When I was younger as you do, you think you are just a normal little mini-person cruising around like “Hey, look at me, I’m doing shit.” Like walking and coloring, things everyone else can do relatively easily. Looking back I think I was under a false impression that I was that mini-person just cruising around doing shit. I think I was very different, borderline weirdo. I grew up with the most wonderful family you could ask for, in a beautiful home and the world at my fingertips. I used those fingertips to build an array of useless shit to ornament the backyard with. I remembering building a water well out of a trashcan and some log things taped together with a bucket pulley (that I would just fill up from inside with tap water or it would rain..). I would only drink water out of this as I was convinced we lived in the medieval ages. I was pretty impressed with myself that I was able to bring water to my fellow countrymen (Mom & Dad). I also spent 2 weeks digging a large hole in our backyard because I thought we could do with a pool. I lined the pool with a tarp that I then anchored down with rocks, and wallah! pool. done. whateves. (money$$). Lastly, there was my tree house. Which was not in a tree but rather placed behind a large bush, it was my pride and joy. Everyday I would paint it…everyday. Due to its unnecessary amount of paint, a thick layering covered it and the house became very small and when inside you would kind of just stick to the walls a bit, so it wasn’t that fun.

After I royally ‘effed up the back yard I switched over to a more promising career of “indoor mayhem.” Mary and I (Mary was my favorite doll who also was life-sized and 3 ft tall, aka the largest thing on earth) would have action packed days of putting on plays, playing cash register lady, playing teacher and giving out grades to invisible students (Zach always got F’s, wonder where Zach is now..) and playing homeless (yes, homeless). I was infatuated with the idea that people lived outside, just will nills wherever they wanted to. Thus catapulting my “homeless phase.” I would dress up in rags head to toe, coating myself in about 15 layers of brown clothing and face paint my face with brown paint to recreate dirt smudges.

Mary would also be dressed in hobo-like attire and then we would hit the streets to panhandle (by streets I mean the living room or the trunk of my  mom’s Volvo station wagon). Mary and I would sit in the trunk of the car when my mom took her groceries in and panhandle like shit. “Listen, we know you have money, you just went grocery shopping, pay up.” I think my parents just hoped I wouldn’t do the homeless thing when they had dinner guests over, panhandling should be reserved for family members only I was not to harass guests. Other than that I don’t think they minded that much but probably hoped I would play princess or something like everyone else.

Leading with my homeless infatuation I would step it up to the next level and I had now been promoted to a live-in maid with my best friend Lida. We decided we would work in the basement quarters of her house and continuously wash everything, by hand (like that Cinderella chick). Even the clothes her real nanny had already washed (fwarks, she must have hated us). With this endless laundry charade we would sing “We work all day, but we get no pay” that was it, that was the whole game. (wtf?). After what seemed like months of living the hard life (for no other reason then inflicting a life of peasantry upon ourselves) we wanted to develop a more lucrative career so we pursued the theatrical arts. Nearly every weekday we would put on a performance ranging from “Random Shit We Made Up” to “Peter Pan.” Peter Pan was by far my favorite merely due to the fact that I created this hanging harness made out of sheets that draped from the ceiling that Lida was strapped into and would kind of swing around in a circle for a few minutes thus recreating Peter Pan’s flying sequence. I must say, epic rendition of Peter Pan. “Random Shit We Made Up” would consist of a few lines we read off a piece of paper, one brilliant stage entrance and then 5-10 minutes of cracking up laughing hysterically about nothing. I would also charge a fee for family members to attend these plays that they probably didn’t want to go in the first place. But on the other hand being an adult now (craps, I’m an adult), I’m sure they were actually funny as shit. Really? this is what you spent all afternoon doing? Kudos.

Among many things, there is one thing I remember being absolutely hilarious when I was young. And that was Rissa, my cat. She was old as shit like 21 or something and had dementia. She spent most of my youth sleeping in a drawer in the kitchen or getting lost in the basement. People would come over and they would be looking for something. “Oh, I’ll just grab a fork from over here” dumdy-doo-lala-loo “Oh! ..there’s a cat….” “Umm..sorry, I’ll just close this up for you..” (whhaha wtf?). That wasn’t her only trick of the trade. My brother and I had this closet that was connected in the back kind of like a secret passage way. One year a family friend came to visit and I slept in the guest room and her in mine. She had closed the front door to the room and suddenly the cat was in the room (Rissa had learned how to secret passage). She would put her out the front door and poof again there she was just chilling in the room. I can imagine how weirded out she must have been until finally she mentioned to us and was like, “Hey bro, your cat just keeps on appearing in my room, its whack.” (that’s not how she talked at all she’s Danish and was like 14). Just to freak her out we told her we didn’t have a cat.

Fast forwarding a couple of years to when I had to wear head-gear. Does this still exist? Seems pretty barbaric to me now.  I was lucky enough to have to wear it for a year out of my life prior to being brace-face. Come on, really? I’m a teenager, shits hard enough, do I really need to wear something fully strapped around my head, pulling the sides of my cheeks back to mold my face into this kind of frozen smile that was creepy as hell?  How am I supposed to have sleepovers? Just thought I would mention I had to wear head-gear….ya know just your casual head-gear wearing, whateves. no bigs.