You Probably Didn't Know...

1. I grew up in a trailer on a hill in Calhoun, Louisiana. Once we got a little money, we added a house to the front so we could have more room. Still kept the wrecked Buick parked in the back yard. The grey van too. Neither worked. The story was that they were going to be used for parts...that was well over 25 years ago. My parents have long since moved to bigger and better (conveniently after I left to go to college), but I think the car and the van are still parked in the same spot.

2. My brother ran away when I was brought home from the hospital.

3. My 2 younger siblings were born at home...by choice. No, my dad is not a doctor...he just thinks he can do anything he reads about in a book.

4. I once stood in a bed of ants and had bites up to my knees. I must've been in shock cause I just couldn't move. My mother had to soak diapers with rubbing alcohol and wrap my legs up so that they could heal.

5. We had like 273 pets during my childhood. Stray dogs and cats were a way of life. We had a bird, but he flew away. My sister had a cat named Ruby. She was kinda weird...had a nervous tick or something. I had a dog named Lassie (I'll show pictures another time). We had a dog named Chuckie. He was a cross between a poodle and another odd dog. We had fish. When I was real little, we had chickens. We had reports of other wild animals. Strange "big cat" noises at night. Rumors of black bears, cougars, etc. Never actually saw one though.

6. I once swallowed a bottle of aspirin and had to get my stomach pumped. According to my brother, I had to eat bananas for a week. I don't remember any of it. To this day, I'm not sure that it's really true. Brothers do lie you know (see #7).

7. I used to think that I was adopted. (That's what my brother would tell me). It didn't help that I didn't look like anyone else. I even had a dream about who I thought was my "real" daddy.

8. A few days before I started the 3rd grade, I swallowed a nail and had to spend a few days in the hospital (it's a long story, probably worthy of it's own blog). This was also the year that I was taken out of some of my regular classes and put in Special Ed. classes because I finished my work too soon and apparently, my teachers didn't know what else to do with me.

9. When I was in 4th grade, I won the state art competition for the World's Fair (it was in New Orleans). My painting was on display at the World's Fair and my family and I won 4 tickets to Disney World as the prize!

10. The summer before the 5th grade, I discovered that I probably needed to wear deodorant for the rest of my life. In short, it was an embarrassing day.

11. It was in the 6th grade that I found out that I could sing. My 6th grade teacher, Cordia Snowden, made us audition for the choir by singing "My Country Tis of Thee" accapella. She taught me how to add "color" to my voice.

At the end of the school year (6th grade) I contracted chicken pox from my sister and developed my signature forehead scars.

Also that summer, I had my first exposure to drugs. I grew up in rural north Louisiana and except for on TV, I had never seen anything remotely related to drugs, outside of snuff or alcohol (we only had 4 channels). So, we're in Newark, New Jersey at this seedy hotel (another blog entry for another time) and I go running back to the room to show my mom what I had found in the stairway by the window....(drum roll please)....a CRACK VIAL!!! I was so excited because in the late 80s, we had just started hearing about crack on the news and here I was holding it in my hand. I'll bet no other kid in Calhoun had ever seen one of those! Wow...the glamour of the big city.

And all this before I turned 12! Oh well, that's it for now. I have 20 more years to cover, so check back later...