Hello. My name is Rue DeDay. *or* So, Tell Me About Yourself (Newbies Welcome)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Did you know there was a limit to how long you can make the title to a thread? Strange but true. I had to go with the short form of the title for this week’s Monday Morning Post. It was supposed to be
“Hello. My name is Rue DeDay. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
or
So, Tell Me About Yourself (Newbies Welcome)”
but whatcha gonna do? (Remember that “You killed my father. Prepare to die.” part. It’s important in a second here.)

Enough of that. And on with the thread…

Ha ha! No, I’m not saying you really killed my father. He’s still alive. But if I were to put money down on who would kill him if he met his fate at the hands of another (actually unlikely), I’d put it on Mom. She’s been married to him for 38 years. Everyone has a breaking point.

While most of you will know some of what I’m going to put here and some of you know most of it and a few of you might actually know it all (because I do blab on, don’t I?) still this is a bio of sorts of me. (And I’ll ask you to put one on here too. If you want. No pressure.) So, with no further ado, for this week’s Monday Morning Post, a subject that will keep you on the edge of your seat-

The Story of Me
by: Rue DeDay (age: 35 1/2)
First, I’m a boy. This is fairly common knowledge, but some people think my screen name is girly for some reason and they get confused. But I’m a boy. And I’m one of those boys who likes girls. A lot. You could say, and be pretty accurate, that I’m easy. This could cause unseemly complications were it not for my natural monogamy. No, no! It’s my steadfast honor. Yeah, that’s why I don’t chase the skirts, because it would be wrong. It really wears me down too, seeing how much chicks dig me. I try to live by the saying “Be my friend and you’re my friend for life. Be my enemy and I’ll ignore you till you go away.” I can also be a small-minded hypocritical bastard, but I try to limit that when I can. My favorite color is red-orange. But let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?

I was born in 1967 as the second of four kids (not that they knew they’d have four kids (sister, me, brother, sister) at the time, but that’s the way it worked out) and grew up on the west side of Cincinnati in Delhi Hills. It was a lovely place to grow up if you liked hills and knothole baseball. Other than that, it was Suburban Purgatory. Not quite Suburban Hell, but next door, and there was a swim club down the street. As a child I was a Boy Scout and through no fault of my own I reached the exalted rank of Star Scout. More through momentum than anything else, I stayed active in my troop until I went off to college. Mostly because that meant I could go camping a lot and burn things. That was really the whole draw to Boy Scouts, the burning things on camp outs. Not once did I help a little old lady across the street. But I did get pretty good at knots.

Then, because I graduated High School and wanted to put off actual work as long as I could, I went to college. Ball State University in Muncie Indiana. Ol’ Ball U. Luckily my childhood in Delhi was the perfect preparation for Muncie so things worked out pretty well. I learned I don’t like beer all that much and… no, about the only thing I learned at Ball State was that I don’t like beer. And it’s a really bad idea to be in the middle of your Graphic Design program when they decide it’s time to revamp the entire Art Department. So I finished up an Associates Degree in Graphic Design back home at the College of Mount Saint Joseph on the Ohio, not 10 miles from my childhood abode. Yeah, that was great.

I did a lot of driving in college. It just worked out that way. It’s one of the things you’ll do for True Love. Drive a lot and come back from the dead. But you need a miracle for that second thing but for the first you just need a Plymouth Horizon. (Top speed: 82 MPH) Why was I driving all the time? you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. Oh wait, it did. True Love. Yup. Whilst I was at Ball State learning that beer isn’t so good I fell in love with the Little Woman. She stayed in Muncie while I went to The Mount so on weekends I’d drive up to see her. When we got married I had 107 Moose cups from Hardees, all thanks to that long long drive through the middle of Indiana. There’s not much to do but look at corn and cows and drink 64 ounces of Coke when you drive through Indiana.

After college, we got hitched. Then we moved to Indianapolis and I got a job drawing art for phonebook ads. Ah! That was the life! The money! The glamour! The I got laid off. So I learned to groom dogs. While I was going to grooming school (Animal Arts Academy of Pet Grooming in Carmel, Indiana) I got a gig working the kennels at a vet clinic (Avalon Animal Clinic. Hi Doc!). I was the Kennel Boy. The HEAD Kennel Boy. This was the best job I ever had. At least the most fun job, but then I had a really great boss. They started teaching me to Vet Tech along with my Kennel Boy duties, and then we had a kid. (By “we” I mean the Little Woman, but I helped!)

The deal was whoever was making more money once we started to procreate had to keep working and the other one had to… I mean “was lucky enough to” stay home and raise up the young 'uns. Kennel Boys may roll in a lot of things in the course of the day, but money isn’t one of your options, so I became a Stay at Home Dad. Not a big jump from Kennel Boy-ing all in all. That was January of 1997 and Soupo came into our lives and hearts. In May of 2000 he had to make room for Katcha. Wow, the timing was great on that one. The Little Woman’s company (not actually hers like she owned it, she just worked there) got bought out and her department downsized. That’s when we moved back to Cincinnati (actually North College Hill, but don’t quibble). Just in time for her new company to get bought out and moved to Cleveland. Her job went to Cleveland, but we didn’t. So she got a new job. (Which again got bought out and now they’re threatening to move her job to Memphis. We’re not going there either.) The plan now is to get Soupo started in school and then got back to school myself. Most likely to get a Veterinary Technician degree. But that’s a couple of years off right now, so we’ll see what we’ll see when we see it.

Along with my two boys and my lovely wife, I also have two dogs. Though really I have one dog and the Little Woman has one dog, but we share, so I have about a dog and a half. We figure between the both of them, they have about one brain total, so it’s a good thing we have an Emergency Back-up Dog. Her dog (Nicki- short for Copernicus. And no one thought that Astronomy class she took would come in handy.) is a Shetland Sheepdog. Did you know the Sheltie consistently rates as the #1 dog? Yeah, #1. But that would be for barking, so we don’t brag much about that. My dog (Lucy) is the much better dog. If you squint. She a Jack Russell terrier and, well, she’s a terrier. You make allowances for them.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

So what’s yours?
-Rue.

2

Well, I don’t * remember* killing your father, but if he died I’d be glad to blame it on your Mom, the six-fingered wench. This thread sounds like fun, so here goes:

The Story of Mon

I was born in 1973 in a small town close to Munich. I was a disappointment to my father’s family, as they had bought all sorts of football equipment showing the logo of the family’s favourite team (TSV 1860 München). But alas, I turned out female. Rejoicing commenced in 1977 when my younger brother was born. Alas again, he developed no interest in sports whatsoever.

Went to school, graduated and then felt the need to leave town & country for the US of A. I decided I’d be an au pair, because, let’s face it, I have no talent whatsoever of coping with a pair of screaming brats and I needed the challenge. Spent one year in Cranford, NJ in the house that was later used by the Nickelodeon people for their “Pete & Pete” series (fun fact!)

When I came back my parents immediately carted me off right from the airport to enroll into university which I did. Computer science it was to be and for one semester it was. After that, I decided I did not want to hear the word “lemma” one more time and switched my major to business management.

To earn my living I became what is commonly known as a “trolley pushing hussy” aka flight attendant. That somewhat lowered my ability to concentrate on my exams, however, and I failed one of my main exams. Since I had discovered that I did not care about the GNP one wink more than I did about lemmata (?), I did not mind much and fled the country again.

This time I worked at EPCOT (Evil Polyester Costumes Of Terror) at Walt Disney World in Florida. No, I was NOT Mickey Mouse, but thanks for asking. I was wearing an “authentic German costume” cough, cough, serving Bratwurst and Beck’s beer (sacrilege!) and generally celebrating Oktoberfest all year round.

When I was done celebrating I went home, moved to Munich where I changed my major (hey, I am a flighty person) to psychology, with which I finally landed a hit. After all the trouble it took me to get to psychology I now am really glad to be rid of it when I finish my final paper, just as soon as I finish posting here.

Which I will now.

End of story (so far)

3

This has the makings of the world’s longest thread, in terms of number of words, if not actual posts. I’ll see if I can put something in here after I have a day or two just to type out all of the places that I’ve lived. Yikes.

Won’t this be strange to see a whole thread full of posts like this with the Rueian influence of bizarre writing style

4

**FIRE!!! ** :smiley:
The story of Tir`Tinuviel

I was born in London, but only because my mother was there at the time. I am now thinking it might have been a better idea to have been born in Dublin…
Anyways… I did the dropping outta school thing, did the disturbed teenager has to see the Shrink thing (quite a stigma when I was 14). Did the leaving home and moving in with a bloke who beat me up thing. Only ment to be back at home for a couple of months while I sorted myself out, umm… 7 years later? oooh dear.
I was engaged for 5 years, it ended, but we’re still friends.
I met TwistofFate at the Londope last year, and he’s lovely thankyouverymuchindeed.

Some 8 years ago I had my upper canine teeth removed, and titanium inch-long fangs implanted. I used to have 24 piercings, but I’m back down to just the one now. I currently have 3 tattoos, but lots more planned.

I’ve had various jobs, from boring stuff like banks, factories, wharehouses to the more interesting stuff like sculpting, mortuarys, The London Dungeon, The Fantasy Channel, and now I just started up my own Web Design company.

Ummm… I like kitty cats, Beer, hitting people with sharp pointy bits of metal (mediaeval reenactment), more Beer and FIRE!!!

:smiley:

5

The Life and Times of Hyperjes (Thus Far)
by: hyperjes (age 25)

I’m a girl. I guess technically, I’m a woman, but that feels weird, so I just say girl. I like guys. Men, I guess. I used to like lots of them, but for the past several years, I’ve confined myself to one at a time.

In 1977, I was born to two people who had to get married. That happened in Toledo, Ohio. I don’t remember much about it. When I was two, Mr. Biological Papa and Mom decided they didn’t like each other very much and got divorced. Papa went away and Mom got me a nanny. All I remember about Ohio is the house we lived in, my Irish setter, Toby, and my neighbors.

Mom and I moved to Altoona, PA when I was four. She decided she needed to “get back on her feet” and moved us in with her parents, my Grammy and Pappy. We lived there. I had a pair of slippers with the alphabet on them. Mom worked. Then she met Steve. Steve was a nice guy and liked me, so Mom married him. I puked at the wedding. Really.

We moved out of my grandparents’ house and got our own house. A few months after the wedding, Mom had a baby boy. I hated him. Then, Mr. Biological Papa showed back up. He wanted me to stay with him for the summer. I went to Ohio, but I stayed with Biological Grandparents. I don’t know where Papa was.

Eventually, Steve adopted me and became Dad. Childhood went along smoothly, until Mom went psycho when I was around 8. Everything pissed her off, so she hit us. All the time. Dad worked 12 hours a day, so he didn’t pay a lot of attention. He had decided, by this time, that he didn’t like Mom much, so he found some other ladies to be “friends” with.

When I was 15, Mom decided she didn’t like having me around. I moved in with a friend’s family for a while, then my parents gave custody to my Mom’s mom. I lived with her until the end of High School.

After High School, I went to A.I.P. in Pittsburgh. That’s an art school. I did pretty typical art student type stuff- majoring in drugs and partying. It pretty much sucked. Fast forward…

In 1997, I met Tom. Moved in with him. All was well. We decided to move to Buffalo, NY, which is where he was from. All was well- for two months. We broke up. I was sad.

  1. Met d_redguy at work. “Dated” (re: had sex) for three months. Stopped partying. He moved to NC with his folks. Three months later, I moved there too. Lived with him and his folks for a while. Got my own apartment. Dated for four years. Moved in together. Got married. My parents decided to get a divorce. Mom is marrying the most recent step-father pretty soon. Whatever…

I got my NC Teaching Certificate by testing out of classes and through work experience. Did that for a while, then decided to stay home to “do art” and keep the house livable. d_redguy works for Mega-Super Huge Computer Company here in Durham. It works out pretty well.

We have three cats and seven hamsters. We didn’t mean to have seven hamsters, but the “male” hamster we brought home from PetSmart had six babies a week later.

That’s about it.

Next. :slight_smile:

6

And dots. She likes dots. And dots and dots and dots and dots and dots and dots…

7

The tale of Tripler:

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away . . .

. . . they lived happily ever after.

Tripler
Born to a family of scruffy lookin’ Nerf-herders.

8

I promise. I’ll type something up. I mean it. :smiley:

Tripler
Still scruffy lookin’.

9

Until I have time to put mine together, here’s the bed-time story my older brother used to tell me:

“There once was a girl named miamouse. She was born, she lived, and then she [will hopefully at a much later date] died.”

10

[quote]
did a lot of driving in college. It just worked out that way. It’s one of the things you’ll do for True Love. Drive a lot and come back from the dead. But you need a miracle for that second thing but for the first you just need a Plymouth Horizon.**
“True love, well yes, true love is the most noble cause in the world. However, he said ‘To blathe’, which of course means, to lie. You were probably playing cards and he cheated and…”

:smiley:

You really don’t want the story of my life. Trust me on this.

You’re still gonna get though. As soon as I can find the time to type it.

11

Just so everyone knows, this isn’t a contest. If you happen to be, say, a 15 year old boy who still lives at home with his first set of parents and does OK at school and likes to hang out with your friends, we’d like to hear about that too. Or you could make something up. (Like there’s rules about this stuff.)

For Tir:
…
-Rue.

12

The story of screech-owl

I was a wee hatchling in upstate New York (or as I call it, “the Canadian side of New York City”). I had a somewhat normal childhood: owned a couple of parents, a sister sibling, a bicycle, a cat. Went to school and was a really good kid, studious and all that. Went to college and got my degreee in music. Got a job teaching elementary school. Got my masters’ degree in music. Kept on teaching.

Somwewhere along the line, I decided two things. I didn’t like teaching. And I liked sentence fragments. So for the first, I decided I needed a change in life. So I joined the carnival and traveled the east coast by train. Yup. Good little white-bread, refined sugar, suburbia angel becomes a carny. And loved it.

Traveled around the coast for awhile, and settled right in the middle of ThemeParkLand. Woohoo!!!

Got a couple of semi-respectible (but low-paying) jobs. Changed careers, and got a job with a large (inter)national conservation orgaization named after a guy who shot birds to paint pictures of them (but back in the 1800s, there were lots of birds, and he wasn’t really into conservation, just painting them). I did mostly secretarial and librarian work and some work at the rehab center. That’s where I got my name, having been bitten by my namesake, and all its powers were transferred to me**. I also had an injured vulture throw up in the backseat of my car, but I thought the owl story was much better.

Kept that job til early last year, when budget cutbacks (post-9/11) forced across the boards layoffs. Got a couple of other jobs. Finally ended up in one section of ThemeParkWorld (Universally known, doncha know). For now.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings. And I still like sentence fragments.
** I become a small, loud, cute critter with a weird quizzical but pissed-off expression, with the ability to blend in and not be seen when need be - haven’t mastered blending in with treebark yet, but at a party, I can hide against the wall very easily.

13

I can do this.
The story of Lsura:

It was a dark and stormy night. Wait, I’m lying. It was a lovely September night in 1973. My parents had been attending the wedding of my mother’s brother, when I decided that I wanted to join the party. So they went to the hospital and got me that night. I had two older brothers, but I was a girl, so I was special. Really.

I went to “Tuesday school” for a couple of years at the YWCA next door to where my brothers went to elementary school. I had a teacher there named Miss Pat and when she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was always “a teenager”.

Things progressed, and sometime around 1978, I started kindergarten. Then first grade, second grade and so on. I was in Catholic school, and until sixth grade, I wore brown plaid uniform skirts. When I was in second grade, my younger brother came along. I call him Lil’bit now (because he’s about a foot taller than I am), but then I just tried to avoid him. At the end of sixth grade, my school closed for lack of enrollment (heck, there were only seven kids in my sixth grade class) and the next year I went to another Catholic school, this time with blue plaid uniform skirts.

I started high school (and shortly thereafter acheived my lifelong goal of becoming a teenager) and began wearing green plaid uniform skirts. I still weep thinking about the number of polyesters that died over the years providing these uniforms.

When I was a senior in high school, I decided I wanted to go far away to school. So I went to Maine. That was only abotu 1200 miles from home. While I was there, I dated Dorkboy. He wanted to get married, and I thought I wanted to as well, but when I graduated and moved back to my parent’s house, I realized that I didn’t really like him or love him that much. So I broke up with him. My first job out of college was at a place called Cheeseburger Charley’s (it may have been Charlie’s, I don’t remember). I got laid off from there. By this time I was no longer a teenager and thought that all my life’s goals had been reached.

Then I got a job at a payday loan company as a customer service representative. I worked at that job for more than four years, but I kept getting promoted so it was ok. I moved to Murfreesboro and Nashville when I became a branch manager, then down to Jackson, Misssissippi when I became an internal auditor. They moved me to Atlanta in November 1999 where I was going to be a district manager/internal auditor. But then they laid us all off in May 2000. So I started working for another company as in internal auditor. That job was cool because I got to ride the train downtown every day and I got to go to cool places like Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

I liked that job, but I got burned out badly and started puking every day before I went to the office. While this is good for the figure, it’s not so good for the general health. So I had a little breakdown in my boss’ office, after which I decided to go to grad school.

So I applied to grad school, got in, and last August moved up here to Knoxville. I have a neat apartment, even though I’m broke most of the time. I work in the reference department on Saturdays and write a lot of papers. I’m going to be a librarian. I’ll be moving again next spring, but I don’t know where to. That depends on where I get a job.

14

or

A True Account of How a Bad Man Made Good.

The year is 1972. I don’t know what was going on that year. I was a mere fetus after all. Jeez, how can you expect a guy to write aobut himself if you’re going to hold him to an impossibly high standard?

I was born in Frankfurt, Germany because I’d always wanted to be born in a foreign country. Well, that’s not strictly true. My dad was in the army and stationed there at the time, and mom was with him. But I like to think that even if they weren’t stationed there they would have acceded to my wishes and gone out of the country for my birth. As long as it wasn’t Canada. Can you imagine anything less romantic than saying “I was born in Canada, you hoser”?

I spent much of my brathood moving. During my school-age years I went to a different school every year from kindergarten until I graduated high school. I also spent a lot of time causing trouble and playing pranks. I was quite the prankster. I’m sure that there are still victims of my professional-grade toilet papering out there that remember the day they woke up to see thier house covered in white streamers with reverence and horror. And the eggings. The burning dog shit in the paper bags. The spray painted cows. The blown up mailboxes. The…well, I don’t want to give any of our younger viewers any more ideas. Let’s just say that there are kids that cause trouble and who’s friends parents beleive to be a bad influence. Then there are kids like me, who are not only a bad influence but will almost always arrange things to frame the sucker accomplice. Anyone want to play a game? It’s really cool. We won’t get into trouble, I promise.

Like Rue I was a Boy Scout. Unlike Rue, however, i was not a career Boy Scout. I was only a Boy Scout for one day. For some reason the scoutmaster doesn’t like it when you beat up his son at the first meeting you attend. Not that his son didn’t deserve it. If anyone deserved a good beating it was the scoutmaster’s son. Even the scoutmaster knew that. He just kicked me out because he had to. I think that if he’d had his choice he would have kicked out his son and adopted me, and we would have created a roving gang of Hell’s Boy Scouts. Kind of like the Hell’s Angels but we would have ridden ten speeds and worn uniforms. And no tattoos. I’m 31 and my mom still won’t let me get a tattoo.

Also like Rue I went to college and did a lot of driving. I did a lot of driving because I was going to school in Virginia and most of my friends lived in Tallahassee, FL. So on Fridays I would skip class and drive from Fairfax to Tallahassee, drink until Sunday morning, go to church, and then drive home. Okay, so I wouldn’t go to church. That’s probably for the best. I’m sure the other church goers would have looked down on the staggering drunk who smelled like a bar. Also, when I’m drunk I tend to offer criticisms and/or encouragement to anyone who is speaking. I really can’t imagine how the priest would have reacted upon hearing me shouting “Amen to that Father Joe!” or “The wages of sin isn’t death, it’s about $400 per week if you go to the right fence!” Catholics aren’t really known for interactive church going.

I dropped out of college because I couldn’t afford it any more because my dad got sick. The place I was working for got bought out and the new owner told me that he didn’t want me as an office manager because his current office manager was good at her job. I also suspect that I wasn’t as cute as she was. So he told me I could become the computer guy or find a new job. Oddly enough, the field of computers appealed to me immensely all of the sudden, and I became the computer guy. This is still my career.

Eventually I outgrew my employer (translation: I disappeared for a week on a drinking binge and got fired for not having the courtesy to call in and lie about being sick). I decided that the big city wasn’t for me, so I moved to Tallahassee instead, and became a computer geek there. That was fun for a while. I quit working for one guy because he was a bastard and started doing software development and tech support for another that wasn’t a bastard but who’s business wasn’t doing well.

Circumstances eventually caused me to relocate to Daytona Beach. I won’t go into the circumstances. Suffice to say that even if you tried, you couldn’t find the sealed court records if you wanted to. Awful mysterious, no?

In Dayotna Beach I opened my own company which did very well until one of my partners cleaned the place out over the weekend. I also met Welbywife in Daytona Beach, which was the best part of the whole deal. It’s a remarkably romantic story, so romantic that I could probably put it into words and make millions off of it. Hey, now there’s an idea! Now I can’t tell you about it. Be sure to look for the book though.

After the business died I toiled at a thankless dead end job for a couple of years until I got up the pluck to decide to get the hell out of dodge and find something better for me and the family. Next thing you know, Welbywife and I are packing the bags and heading to Virginny again. During this time the thread that is referenced in my sig was closed by Eutychus. I don’t know if you can tell, but that had a big impact on me. I cried for days.

So here we are. Anything else that’s pertinient you can pick up in my recent posts.

P.S. So, um, Rue, I know you said this isn’t a contest, but if it were, do I win?

15

[sup]hmmmmmmmmm… the story of swampbear[/sup]

I’m a boy. Most people already know that. I am a boy that likes boys. Think most everybody knows that too. I live in south Jawja but I was born and raised in north Jawja. I am a middle kid. I have two older brothers and a younger brother (now dead) and sister, who are twins. Oh, and I was born in 1954, which makes one of them boomer types.

I have a bachelor’s degree in elementary/early childhood education from a small college in my hometown. I taught school for a year and a half after college (graduated in 1976), then decided that was enough of that. So, I started teaching adult education and started doing some basic education classes at a center that served persons with developmental disabilities. I kinda liked that, so when a job came open there, I went for it and was hired.

I went back to school part-time and worked full-time and got a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling from the University of Georgia (UGA! Go DAWGS!). I moved to south GA almost 12 years ago now to take over as director of vocational services for an Easter Seals. I am still here. Only my job has changed. I am now assistant director, which means I am the rules and regulations/policies and procedures sob that everybody hates to see coming, cause they know i’m gonna carry on about compliance issues or accreditation stuff or, possibly, fire them. I do a lot of that round here. Fun job, huh? Actually I like it.

Childhood was typical. Middle class upbringing and all that. I was a good little boy growing up. Did what I was supposed to do. Most of the time anyway. I figured out for sure around age 15 that I like boys and I still do. I’ve had one big relationship that lasted around 12 years and ended early last year. I had another relationship going that I thought would be a big one for about eight months but recently ended that. So, I’m single. But don’t feel obligated to fix me up with your funny uncle/brother/cousin, ok?

That’s about it for now anyway. Oh, and in case I get real missed or something, I have to be out of town the rest of the week after today, so I probably won’t be posting a whole lot.

Oh, and Rue gave me a sig line. You’ll see it at the end of this post cause I’m gonna use it today.

16

This is gonna’ be easy.

My Autobiography
by Exgineer

Born in early 1968. Two other kids showed up shortly thereafter. Nothing much interesting happened for the next 18 years or so.

Went to college, dropped out. Took a series of crappy jobs, got disgusted. Went back and finished college.

Got a job, got laid off. Got another job, got laid off. Got another job, still got it.

Had a brain cramp in there somewhere. Decided it would be a good idea to get a master’s degree. Night school. Waste of time and money.

Um, that’s it.

I probably could have fleshed that out a little more, I suppose, but you’ve got the gist.

17

Ack ok my turn :slight_smile:
Tanookie’s twisted tale.

The following is not for the squeamish… turn back now you have been forewarned. It is dark ahead and you may be eaten by a Rue… er no wait… a Grue… that’s it yeah!

Once upon a time the two most incompatible people on the planet had unprotected sex. Not knowing what else to do they moved to New York and pretended they got married! In the middle of a blizzard on a sunday morning in December of 1972, having interrupted the birthday festivities of a certain obstretician, I was born.

In 1973 my grandfather had a massive heart attack and guilt brought my family back home to be closer to my grandparents. Time passed.

My parents bought what can only be described as hell house when I was 4 years old. My mother still owns this house today. It is so decrepit that the addam’s family wouldn’t live in it.

Sometime around here my daddy decided that since I wasn’t a boy I was his property to do with as he wished. He wished to do some pretty unspeakable things. This is a family thread though so I will not go too far into detail.

In 1981 my parents bred again. Then they had a boy. He’s in prison now … Celebrated his 21st birthday in jail with a hostess cupcake and a matchstick. 'nuff said.

Right about here I was diagnosed with a big nasty kidney disease that was supposed to have rendered me kidneyless by the age of 18. small spoiler… I’m 30 now

For my 14th birthday my father brought me a ouija board and convinced me (through methods not fit for a family board) that I was haunted by pissed off ouija demons.

I spent my high school years on about 3 hours of sleep a night doing lots of housework and taking care of my brother. When I could drive I also assumed the life building skills tasks of chasing my parents for their paychecks so I could pay the mortgage and light bills and do the grocery shopping. I was den mother and baseball mother. I went to my brother’s parent teacher conferences and sat across from the same teachers I had not a decade before.

Then I went to college and while I did not earn the Physics degree I set out for… well I learned that there was a life beyond hell. I met my future husband too!!!

We shacked up in a little apartment while I worked full time as a cake decorator at a big supermarket chain and he started at a software company in tech support.

We got married on a beautiful saturday morning in september of 1996. Then we bought a house and I went to school again to study English this time. As you can read… I didn’t learn as much as I probably should have.

Somewhere in here I had a fight with my mother about how she could have allowed all of the above to have happened and why was she actually still with this man. (They got married at city hall shortly before the boy was born) She said she felt the stigma of divorce and apartment life was a worse alternative than daily abuse. Thanks ma! But she did divorce my father finally and I have not seen him for many many years. yay!!!

Then miracle of miracles… I got pregnant. (and they told me I was infertile!) So I quit school again. Lucky for us hubby is no longer in tech support! He’s some kind of lead software developer or something. That helps :slight_smile: We also learned our house was not big enough so we had to buy a new one.

That was last march. Guess what happened this January? I got pregnant again! And now our new house is again not big enough! This time I think we’re gonna raise the roof! I don’t wanna pack again!

Oh and we have 4 cats, one dog and a hamster. I don’t think the dog has any active brain cells at all but that’s probably the safest thing for her really. I like cookies and computer games and wandering the message boards :slight_smile: I drive a mini van hang oh and I still have both of those poor little kidneys I mentioned earlier :slight_smile:

I know not what the future may bring but as long as my hubby and the munchkins are here with me… we’ll muddle through just fine :slight_smile:

18

I’m a girl. There aren’t a lot of girls named Jessica, but you never know, so I thought I’d make it clear.

I was born in lovely Gallipolis, Ohio, in July 1979. My parents had been married three years and I was the first of three. We had a German Shepherd, her name was Dixie.

For some reason, we moved to Kentucky when I was one. I can’t remember much about Kentucky, except for I got a brother while we lived there. His name was Josh. Josh was okay until he was three months old or so, and then he got sick. And spent a lot of time in the hospital, and my parents stayed with him in the hospital a lot, and I stayed with my grandma when they were all at the hospital. She used to read me stories and sing to me all the time.

After we lived in Kentucky for a while, we moved to Louisiana. I think I was three when we lived there, but I remember that we had lots of neighbors. I think my parents didn’t like living in Louisiana, so we moved back to Ohio. Plain City, Ohio. We lived in a big farmhouse there for a year or two, and there weren’t any close neighbors. It was pretty boring.

My father got a good job in Columbus, and we moved to Essex, Ohio, where I started school. We lived in a cute yellow house right across the street from my school, and that was great. There was a huge playground right across the street! I had stuff to play with all the time! Swings and slides and teeter totters and a merry-go-round and jungle gym! I loved that place. We had a great neighbor but her kids were older than me and younger than me, and the oldest were boys. I spent a lot of time being a wounded or dead cowboy or losing at Monopoly when I played with them. Our dog, Dixie, died when we lived there. We got a new dog, her name is Bell.

Pretty soon, my mom told me she was going to have a baby. That was supposed to be really fun, just like a real live babydoll! I asked for a girl, but she must not have heard me, 'cause she had a boy anyway. They named him Cody. I’m not sure why he didn’t get a J name. Shouldn’t he have been Joseph? His middle name is James, maybe that was close enough.

So we lived in Essex until I was 9, and my dad got laid off. So we moved to Gallipolis. I’m still not sure what they were thinking with that one. Gallipolis is pretty boring and uneventful. One year, the most exciting thing that happened was that we got a Wal-mart. :rolleyes:

Anyway. Although I had hoped it would be temporary, we stayed in Gallipolis. When I was 11, my brother Josh died. (That story is here 'cause it is long and it is also its own story.) That sucked a whole lot, and it had pretty rotten effects on my family. My father stopped working a lot and started drinking a lot. Eventually, we moved to Cleveland for a few months. That didn’t work so well. I thought there was no place I would like less than Gallipolis, but I was wrong. So we eventually moved back and I continued on with sixth grade.

Junior high was pretty uneventful. I played the trumpet and there was that one time I almost got beat up because I wouldn’t let this girl, Becky, cheat off of me on a test. I used to get really good grades and she never studied and I wasn’t about to let her look smart through me.

So I finally got to high school, which was another four boring years. I went to the homecoming dance my freshman year and decided that was enough dancing, so I never went to any proms or anything. Mostly, I just got good grades and read a lot of books. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I figured I should just go to college anyway, so I went to the University of Rio Grande, which happens to be in Rio Grande, Ohio. I got a job waiting tables and finally got my associates degree. I kept right on waiting tables for two more years after the three it took me to get an associates.

Since life my life in Gallipolis seemed to be going nowhere, I decided to go back to college. So now I’m in Columbus, going to Ohio State. Waiting tables. I don’t know how long I’ll live here. My parents still live in Gallipolis, and they have custody of my dog and cat because I’m not allowed to have pets in my apartment. I’m 23.

And that’s it. Pretty boring.

19

Hey, you asked me to tell you about myself. Don’t complain!!

(Oh, and btw, this was written about 4 years years ago, but it sort of covers a lot of my life. My childhood was pretty ordinary, and my adolesence was as turbulent as everyone else’s. The years I describe below are more the ‘formative’ ones, in terms of my life today.) My story was published in the paper (The Age) in 1999.

It’s two years since the father of my children, my husband of 13 years, decided to end his life. He chose a pleasant autumnal morning to swallow some pills, drink a copious amount of wine and manoeuvre a hose from the exhaust pipe through the car window. He was always a fastidious chap, and didn’t leave anything to chance this time either.

There are many possible reasons why he committed suicide that day, some personal, others existential. As he came from an abysmally dysfunctional family, and showed signs of alcoholism even by the age of 18, some would say his life was doomed from the start. Yet he was not a case study for a third-year sociology exercise. He was different somehow.

When we met, the first thing I noticed was a copy of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf sticking out of his pocket. He treasured that book, the story of a man seemingly out of step with the world, like a born-again Christian clutching his Bible. I often wondered whether the Steppenwolf was the only role model he had, as the story was to become, in many ways, a chronicle of his life.

It was this mysterious aura that attracted me in the first place - that and his shock of frizzy hair. On one hand he was the deep-thinking intellectual, listening to obscure music and reading the classics. Yet fishing and watching The Simpsons also captivated him. There was an enthusiasm for the unusual, but I noticed in him a wistfulness that he wasn’t an average Aussie bloke. I thought I could save him, and offer him a normalcy that had eluded him so far.

We had four children together, yet our marriage was rocky from the outset. Over the years there were numerous separations ranging from weeks to many months. Alcohol and chronic unemployment were the reasons for the splits. My inability to resist his passionate promises of reform led to our living together again and again. The kids loved him dearly, yet barely batted an eyelid when he moved out of the house, probably knowing better than I that he would be back soon.

Our lives together were disorganised but eventful. The rent would be spent on impromptu holidays and lavish meals in restaurants. Thursdays were invariably spent scouring The Trading Post for an old wooden boat, then jumping in the car to travel to the wilds of Mordialloc or Port Welshpool to check them out. Other times we’d sit across the table, wine or coffee in hand, arguing the finer points of feminist politics or the Chinese Cultural Revolution. He always won.

For days on end he would retire to the back shed, ostensibly to work on his boats, but more often to consume vast amounts of cask wine and sink into a depression. On one occasion he set fire to one of the boats. Frustration at not being able to finance the restoration, coupled with an utter sense of meaninglessness, provided the fuel for the blaze.

I realise now that he was essentially unemployable. He found factory work stultifying (when he was not too hungover to turn up) and he lacked the self-discipline to return to study. In many ways, like the Steppenwolf, he was not of this world. There was no niche for him in which he could feel ease. He lacked friends of his intellectual calibre, and this led to an impenetrable loneliness that I could not truly comprehend. My dream that a family would fill this void was not to be. He explored some spiritual changes, and began the process of converting to Catholicism. The church was to prove too structured,yet this environment could have provided the boundaries he so desperately needed. He spent more time in the shed drinking more wine, our long-winded philosophical discourses became fewer. About five years ago we separated for the last time.

Sometime after that I began to notice changes in myself. During the marriage I had been the “superior” one. If not for his irresponsibility and selfishness we could have lived a comfortable life. Now I began to find that some of my behavior was emulating his. A loneliness and purposelessness descended over me, and I noted that I was drinking on more than just social occasions. I didn’t have a shed to “retire” to, but alcohol was equally effective in shutting out a world to which I didn’t feel I belonged. I began to spend money irresponsibly, sometimes seeking welfare assistance to provide food. I was feeling the ennuihe must have felt, yet I still refused to believe I was anything like him. If only I hadn’t married him, I wouldn’t be living in poverty, with four great but demanding kids, sipping on my third (or fifth?) glass of chardonnay. He was to blame.

So I continued to drown in self-pity and dry white until one day pity turned to disgust. The frustration I had felt all those years over him was now focussed at me. Mornings I would wake with a pounding head and shaky hands; the strange looks and snide comments from the kids forced me to realise that I had major problems in my life. What had started out as his story had become mine. One Thursday morning I decided to commit suicide too. It seemed inevitable. There was nowhere left to hide.
Obviously I didn’t succeed; I’m not as methodical as he was. It was not an experience I would choose to repeat, and I don’t think that at the time it was a particularly conscious choice. It was not hard to cross the line between wanting to live and needing to die. I had straddled that line for a while without realising how serious my predicament was.

Even though he is no longer alive, in my mind he is still a culprit, albeit of a different kind. Now I find I need him to pick up the pieces of my disintegrated life. The children need their dad, not photos or memories that fade with time. The boys should have their dad to take them to the footy, buy their first Playboy, and teach them to cope with adolescent spurts, growth and otherwise. His daughter needs her old man to tell the queue of potential suitors to piss off. Somehow it sounds more convincing coming from a bloke. Mostly, I need to be held by someone who knew me more intimately than anyone in the world.

They say time heals all wounds, but with each day that passes, the anger and regret are strengthened - anger that he’s not here, regret that I was not able to comprehend his pain earlier. For then I may be able to understand my own. Perhaps we were destined to meet in order to learn from each other. The legacy that he intended for me is now clear, and I cannot continue to immortalise him by destroying my own life.

On the anniversary two weeks ago, we took his ashes to Mordialloc to bid him a final farewell. Sitting on the creek bank, we each gathered a handful of his remains and allowed them to drizzle between our fingers into the water below. There was no profound eulogy, no call to God to take care of him, just a silence while we sat with our own thoughts. Back in the car, the kids decided that Dad would have wanted them to go to Macca’s after such a sombre event. So, ketchup and ice cream dribbling down our chins, we laughed and reminisced our way home. I’m sure he would approve. It is time for us to move on too.

20

Oh, my, this is going to be a big thread indeed. But a lovely one. I enjoy learning about my fellow Dopers.

The Life and Times of Kn*ckers
By Kn*ckers (surprisingly enough)

I was born in 1980, one of four chillern in a bitty little town deep in the woodland wilderness of Northern Maine. My town was so bitty little that there was no post office, no high school, not e’en so much as the merest McDonalds. We shared a zip code, a school district, and fast food privileges with several (slightly larger) nearby towns.

I had a placid, quiet (some would say boring) childhood, for which I consider myself extremely fortunate. I was blessed (in a secular way) with loving, supportive parents, a quaint cozy home (so cozy that I had to share a room with my big sister. That was a little TOO cozy), and plenty of mud to play in. The mud was maybe the most important thing. We had a big bunch of boggy land (boggy land being a dime a dozen up thataway), and I had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the wonders of nature.
Selected examples of the wonders of nature:
–mud
–salamanders
–moss
–bunnies
–Misc. mosquitoes, butterflies, grasshoppers and other entomological phenomena.

In high school, I was a reasonably good student which stood in stark contrast to my classmates, the majority of whom planned to pursue technical careers and were not ESPECIALLY interested in the finer points of invertebrate taxonomy or dystopian fiction (though I enjoyed both of these things). However, I was not exclusively a nerd, as I also played soccer fanatically, which allowed me to develop some semblance of a social life in a culture that respects athleticism and looks down upon academia. It also allowed my to wrench the crap out of my knees, ankles and toes on many occasions.

I graduated high school in 1998, and left for the Big City (a town of 40,000 souls… or at least people) for college. I majored in Biology, as I had intended to do since Sophomore year of high school, when I had fallen in love with life science. Unfortunately, I made a huge blunder, in the summer of 1999, when I decided to pursue a pre-med track. I wanted to be a surgeon. I still don’t know why. It was the single worst decision I have ever made in my life.

I filled my bio and pre-med requirements (basically the same thing), and participated in some very interesting developmental biology research, during my college days. I also made some very dear friends, worked several different jobs, spent a semester studying in beautiful Australia, and had a largely enjoyable (if often stressful) College Experience.

In spring of 2002, I was nearing graduation, and was looking for work (I wasn’t ready to apply to med school just yet, and felt I needed some time out of school to prepare). I applied for, was offered, and took a job as a clinical secretary in Boston. I started work a week after Graduation (June, 2002)

I had been at this job (which is where I still work) for two weeks when I realized my mistake. I do not belong in a clinical environment, and, in fact, am not especially interested in humans. I’m also very, very shy, which makes this job quite difficult for me. Currently, I plan to stay in this position until spring of 2004, at which point I hope to turn my career more toward wildlife and ecological issues, and to move to a somewhat less urban area (I’m still a country girl at heart).

A few notes about me:

  1. I am female, heterosexual, and (woohoo!) single.
  2. I avoid argument and confrontation at all costs.
  3. I love kitties.
  4. I like cooking, drawing, and writing (though I’m a terrible writer).
  5. I enjoy mild-to-moderate forms of the following neuroses:
    a) Obsessive-compulsive disorder
    b) Generalized anxiety disorder
    c) Bipolar disorder
    d) Low self-esteem
    e) Social anxiety disorder
    f) Seasonal affective disorder

Thank you for your time. Please be sure to fill out the comment cards.

Love,
Kn*ckers