WARNING: This seems disjointed and rambling to me. I have no idea how crazy it will be to you all. Read at your own risk.

I was born with six real fingers on each hand. The position was almost like a secondary pinky finger, and these little extras even had fingernails. Also, two of my toes are webbed together, which although it is no real advantage in swimming, does look pretty cool and is a good conversation starter.

From the time that I was born to the time that I was 1.5 years old I lived with my parents (starving students at the time) with a very low but cozy budget. Then my father got in the U or Rochester for accounting. So, we moved into an apartment there and still were pretty tight moneywise. But I learned important lessons from this.

I learned to eat everything on my plate.
I learned to spend as little money as possible, and only on necessary things.
I learned other things, too, but I don't want to list them lest I seem like too much of a braggart.

I really don't remember much about Roschester NY except the forests and a marsh where I would sometimes go...but these are memories like pictures rather than like film.

After getting his PhD at UofR, my dad got a job in Dallas, Texas as a professor of accounting. This was at a Southern Methodist University, although my family is strongly LDS.

I was baptised when I turned 8 shortly after I arrived to Texas.

I went to a school in the poorer part of town, where some tenements were. I lived in a cheaply made but somewhat overpriced apartment. Still, my parents struggled to repay debts acquired because my mother had decided to stay home with me rather than get a job and send me to daycare. The school I went to also had a few houses nearby, however, and in one of these houses lived my first real friend that I can remember. (This was in second grade.) I sat next to him on the first day of my new school, and we became friends. We shall henceforth call him A.

I often went to A's house to play, but we both didn't like going to my apartment because the walls were thin and the neighbors would complain of our noise.

In the second grade I was offered grade advancements (2 of them) but turned them down. I was not very ambitious and I was afraid of the older kids. (At this time I was smaller and weaker than my three-year-younger 'little' brother.)

Well, the schools were lousy and my parents were doing better financially with my dad's new job (having had a year to recover from the move). So we moved to a quiet and secluded neighborhood in Richardson, TX, where I went to school at PCE elementary.

I was somewhat lonely there, partly because I missed A, and partially because I was economically in the lower middle class while most of my classmates were between upper middle to lower high class. I met a kid named Alex, who took advantage of me at every turn. I was corrupted by his vulgar vocabulary and actions, because I had not been exposed to any evil in the apartment life or prior to that.

I joined an improvisational acting group (on accident, ask me sometime ) and had quite a bit of fun and first met my later obsession who shall be called K. She is a little small with long blond hair and is quiet.

I also met some other guys who, after a few years, I would actually get to know and who would turn out to be ok guys. But that did not happen when I would have liked it most.

But things did turn for the better, and A's family decided that their neighborhood and school was inferior to mine. So they moved over that summer. In the apartment they stayed in during the move, there was a fire, but with little incident.

And so A adjusted, and I left the acting thing that year while A joined. (On a sidenote, the year I left so did K. I'd like to think that there's a connection... ) In everything else, though, A and I were inseparable. Luckily we were in the same class, and this helped a lot with my social life.

I also joined a gifted program which took me to another school for one day each week. It was called REACH, although I don't remember the ancronym's meaning. I had a teacher named Ms. Stout who was over 6' tall.

The summer passed without event.

In the fifth grade, I rejoined the acting group, now called DI. So did K. (Again, notice the coincidence. ) It was then that I really got to know people in the school, and realized that I really liked to preform comedious acts. So I did. It was in fifth grade, I think, that I learned that I was soon to move out of the area. I vowed to live life to its fullest, but I have my regrets.

And then sixth grade. The choice year of my stay in Texas. (It was still at the elementary school in Texas due to a weird but, as I have seen through experience, preferrable, school district.)

It was a strange year.

I stayed in DI. The adult leader of the team was my sixth grade teacher, and, by bizzare fate, K's mother. It was good and bad, and I spent a lot of time at her house but made little social progress. A and I, along with a guy called S, were the preferred students in our class and were allowed to do a weekly e-paper. It was ridiculous and often embarassingly stupid, but very fun and very amusing to our classmates.

Everyone in the class had to write a short story (Most were pathetic and about 200 words) for English class. I don't know what happened to me, but I wrote a huge amount of text in three books. It was a wild and disjointed story made up of half satire and half stupidity and with the occasional lucky good part. No one read it because it was too long. (I think it was about 100 pages; I still have it but only read it when my ego gets too inflated.)

The DI thing ended and I had to stop going to K's house. But it was the end of the year and there was a party at her house.

I was a wild showoff and had a lot of fun.

K didn't seem to notice much; but I was trying to avoid eye contact in the usual foolish way.

And then, it came time for me to move. I had known for a while, but did not tell anyone except for A. Just after school ended, there was a going-away party at his house. I actually hung out with K then, but ironically it was too late. I was dead to them and lost.

Because the house we had bought in Westchester, NY could not be moved into yet, I spent an excruciating three months in Central Utah. I talked to A on the phone a lot, and K once or twice, but not enough.

I did get to fly down to TX at the end of the summer, and stayed at A's house for 4 days, where I went around and met people again. K's mom, my former teacher, invited us to crash K's party there, and we did. I didn't do enough those four days, but all good things end and I had to return to Utah before the final installment in my new 'home'.

I was taken to NY, land where all cultures meet and are rude to each other.

The schools here in the East are feces compared to the schools of Richardson, TX. But I adapted, and began genuine attempts at serious writing. I met a girl, and didn't know I had been dumped for a month afterward. (There was some time inbetween, of course.) I was only doing it because I was bored.

But the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike as does the sun shine on them. I still talk to A and K.

And tomorrow A is flying here to stay for 4 days.

And thus ends my tedious and long story.
 

Oh well, maybe someday I can have new ones put on...cloning could have a sudden burst.
 

Like celia, I really like this tradition, too -- and not just because so far I've been mentioned at the beginning of each one.

--Pop
 

I hope to read one (or more ) of your books some time in the future...

 

quote:

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ah, mini Leto - you truly deserve that name

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[This message has been edited by Leto II (edited August 15, 2002).]
 

Such a mistake!!!

I wasn't expecting that from you, Leto!!!
 

I'm trying to decide whether or not I'll have the nerve to write one of these, when the time comes in a couple of months...

Take care
-Justin-