The earliest ancestor of mine I can find was John Hinchman, called "the progenitor of the Hinchman family," who was in Flushing, Long Island, in 1675, among the French settlers. After John Hinchman, the next earliest ancestor I can find is a fellow named Job Evans, who was born in 1800, in Baltimore County, MD, and died sometime after 1863 in West Virginia. For the first several generations, my ancestors were accumulated in the West Virginia area, venturing to Pennsylvania but not staying there long enough for any of them to die in that area.

The first family member to leave West Virginia for good was Della Henrietta Evans, who died in September, 1933, in Medford, New Jersey. Her daughter, also named Della Henrietta, was born in Summit, New Jersey, and married Harold Thomas Hinchman in 1910 in Evesham Township, New Jersey. Della was the mother of my grandmother, Anita Doris Hinchman (now Slomin), and had several other children, those still alive being my great aunt, Jenny Della Hinchman, and great uncles, Frances Roberts Hinchman and Milton Edward Hinchman. All the children were born in Medford.

Harold Thomas Hinchman was the son of Samuel Hinchman, who in turn was the brother of Joseph Hinchman, who is the closest to a celebrity my family has, besides the second John Hinchman. Joseph Hinchman had purchased the Snyder's Mill area of Medford and began growing cranberries on it, at which he was very successful, growing them in the mill ponds. He also invented several machines for sorting and cleaning cranberries. The second John Hinchman, who was likely a father to Samuel and Joseph Hinchman, though I cannot find proof of that, was the largest cranberry bog owner in the entire country at one time, owning almost 3,000 acres of bogs; he lived in the Taunton area of Medford, though not until after living for a period in the town of Denville Township. A letter he wrote describing the oral history of Denville and the origin of the name are prized in that community.

Joseph followed in the footsteps of John Hinchman, however they were related, and at this time the Hinchmans were the wealthiest family in the area, and, in fact, owned much of Medford. Unfortunately for us, the only remnants of that is the existence of a Hinchman Street in Medford; Harold Thomas Hinchman and the other descendants of John and Joseph squandered their wealth, and suffered like everyone else in the Great Depression.

I remember very little before the first day of school. The only image I have of any events preceding this is of another girl, who may have been my sister, standing in a doorway with an overly long Tweety Bird tee-shirt on. Why this is remembered by me, or even the exact identity of girl clad in the too-big Tweety Bird top, is unknown.

I believe the school day I remember was when I started kindergarten. I know that before attending this school I had been in preschool in Corbin City, New Jersey, at an establishment called Saint John of God, where I was taught sign language to make up for my early language deficiencies (I didn't really talk until I was four years old, my first word was "moon"). However, I have no memories whatsoever of Saint John of God or much sign language, except that I loved milk and would always ask for it by signing "more milk." Corbin City was about thirty or so miles from the town in which we lived at the time, Somers Point, and I remember fixating on a barn that was passed about halfway along the ride this first day. Every other day after that all through the school year, I'd keep an eye on the window, looking for the red Bachelor Farm.

I don't have a firm image of the first day of school that I remember, but rather, just fragments of it. I remember vomiting on the new red velvety dress I had, and having to be changed out of it. I remember wearing a light green scrunchie in my hair, and pulling it out to look at it, as green was my favorite color and I thought the scrunchie looked pretty. Other images of this school are not that numerous, and I am unsure if they construe events that happened during the first day or later on in the year – basically, the only other things I remember is a rocking horse shaped Christmas ornament sitting on a ledge in the bathroom, and a worksheet involving clown faces.

From this school, I went to another for first grade, this one in Ocean City. No longer having the Bachelor Barn, I instead focused on a smokestack that overlooked the Atlantic as the bus crossed the bridge that led to the city. The smokestack looked like a rocket ship, and I always referred to it as "the rocket ship going to the moon." This bridge was of a special kind; I cannot recall the name for it, but it had parts that lifted up to let boats pass through. Oftentimes, rides to and from school would be delayed by waiting for the bridge to lower again, which led to fears in my young mind of the bridge going up while the bus on the special lifting parts.

The school was just as interesting as the bridge. While I do not remember any specific names of children, I remember several distinct personalities. One girl, who may have been named Julie, but I cannot be sure, spoke everything in a nasally voice and had an unusual obsession with anything having to do with Nintendo's Mario franchise of video games (an interest I would develop later due to video game crazy siblings). Another boy had a G.I. Joe named Firefly, while I had a My Little Pony named Firefly; this shared name often led us to playing games with our respective action figures together. I seldom remember having to do any real work during first grade – most of my memories revolve around playing with mathematical cubes, making "Christmas trees" from Reader's Digest magazines, writing stories (I wrote prolifically then, as I do now), the playground (it had a dome-like climbing structure, and four little animals that bounced as you rode on them; I instantly adored the zebra), and watching cartoons (that I brought in, the vast majority of the time.)

Reading has always been important to me. My first book was Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss, and I quickly developed a favorite genre that is still my favorite to this day – animal stories, and especially stories in which the animals talk. Books I remember reading during the time I lived in Somers Point are ones called Jamberry, Millions of Cats, Blueberries for Sal, The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, Fritz and the Beautiful Horses, and a poetry treasury I still own today. I had my favorite television shows as well, the vast majority of which I still enjoy today; some titles are Care Bears, Eureka's Castle, Pinwheel, Muppet Babies, Legends of the Hidden Temple, and my very favorite, My Little Pony and Friends and its spin off series, My Little Pony Tales. Not only did I watch the show, but I had a huge herd of the ponies (mostly collected from yard sales as most of them were made before I was born or when I was very young), along with various other goods related to the franchise. To this day I still have some pony-related goods.

There were many toys I enjoyed, as well. Besides the aforementioned My Little Ponies, my other favorites were known as Magic Nursery Pets. They were stuffed animals that came in a variety of colors and species; however, the catch was that you never knew what species the animals would be until after you bought them, took them out of the package, and pulled its ears and tail out from inside its head and back. My older sister and I were both enamored of these, and we had a massive collection, and when I say massive, I really mean it. We must have had about forty of them! I also had an extensive collection of Littlest Pet Shop pets. My sister had a few Barbies, but I hated dolls. As my taste in books extended to those involving animals, so did my taste in toys. Anything animal-based was appealing, really, but the ones mentioned were special favorites.

I still remember two dreams I had during the Somers Point era. The first involved a giant tube slide extending from a silo/water towerish type building. A very long ladder led to the top of the building, where you could then take the tube slide back down. In the dream, I watched as each member of my family went up the stairs and down the slide, coming out on the other side of the slide as hairy, frightening monsters. Never again have I gone down a tube slide. To this day, I refuse. The other dream I remember involved those machines at grocery stores where, when you put a quarter or two in, candy or little toys come out. The machine in my dream had Bart Simpson and several other cartoon characters I do not remember upon it, and was called "Can You Watch?" I put in a quarter and the picture of Bart instantly started frowning and he crossed his arms and said, "You can't watch me." I did not watch The Simpsons again until I was eleven and had fully gotten over the dream.

We moved to Vermont from New Jersey in 1993. The prime reason seemed to stem from the divorce my mother got from my father, something I remember very little about. There was at least a year between the divorce and the move, as I remember visiting my dad at the blue apartment house he moved out into in Ocean City. During the divorce, I would have been maybe five or six. I don't remember any of it. I don't remember any fighting, any anything. I don't know if I'm subconsciously choosing not to remember, or if it simply went over my young child head at the time. The fact that the next romantic partner my mom happened to choose was a woman, Bridgette, also didn't faze me at all. I remember being more into the cats in her apartment than with thinking at all about why Mommy was with a woman now.

The first place in Vermont we lived was a supposedly haunted house in the town of East Corinth. My mother and sister swear to seeing ghosts and varied other unusual happenings while living here; however, if there were spirits haunting the place I never saw them. I absolutely loved this house. The fact that it was old enchanted me; I've long had in interest in antiques and objects from another era. There was an area of the property my brother, sister and I called the "Big Mountain," a hill on which we could look down at the road. There was also a prebuilt woodpile; here my siblings and I hunted garter snakes, which we caught and attempted to keep in an old rabbit hutch found on the edge of some woods on the property. Our forty-odd Magic Nursery Pets went along for the trip, and they were involved in much imaginative play between my sister and me.

Second grade at Waits River Valley School was my first experience in a public school. I did well enough to not stay back, but not by much. I remember being picked on a lot, and hating recess. I was, and still am, painfully shy and don't especially like social situations, and the fact that I was such a "crybaby" – I'd bawl at the slightest teasing – was reason enough in the eyes of the cruel kids to pounce. I remember trying to avoid recess by hiding in the bathroom, which sometimes worked and sometimes did not. During times when I had to be outside, I remember sometimes playing with a girl named Heather, the closest I really had to someone I could call a friend. In third grade, perhaps as an effort to combat all the teasing I received, I became a bit of a bully myself, shamefully, of another girl named Sara Herb. I didn't keep it up for very long, I'm glad to say. Third grade in many ways was a good year for me despite the previously mentioned bullying of this other girl (and the fact I still got picked on myself). I read avidly, and had a reading level at about several grades higher than my classmates. Although I still enjoyed reading picture books, I also remember reading much longer books, especially Charles Dickens. Why I had such a passion for Dickens as a third and fourth grader I don't know, but I did, and read him avidly, although I didn't get everything that went on. Eventually, I was sent to join the fifth graders for reading time, and was also chosen to be the editor of the class newsletter, and wrote many articles for it myself.

In 1995, we moved again, this time to Bradford, Vermont, where my mom and Bridgette, and my younger brother, Zane, have remained ever since.

Fourth and fifth grade were pretty mundane, and there is little to report concerning them, other than that I was still shy and still got picked on heavily. I did, however, have kids I could really call my friends. Sixth grade was noteworthy because it was then I discovered the Internet and became fascinated with the idea of being connected to strange things called websites where I could find all sorts of interesting things to read, and paved the way for things to come in high school.

In seventh grade, I entered Oxbow High School. It was pretty stressful at first – running from class to class, and dealing with the much larger atmosphere, although Oxbow was not a large school, with only slightly over six hundred students. In an effort to fit in, I did some very stupid things, such as accepting idiotic dares and acting out in an effort to fit in with the group.

In 1999, I was in eighth grade, and a big fan of something that had been released a few years before – the television program South Park (which I currently have a love-hate relationship with, due to dislike of the direction in which the series went by becoming too based in current events and conservative leaning libertarian politics) and with a few other things, besides. Because of the aforementioned South Park interest, I followed Cassie's lead – she was mad about the show as well – and joined up with an Internet message board at mrhatshellhole.com (a now defunct South Park fansite). Posting on this message board was like being able to be social without having to actually deal with a person face to face, and it led to talking with many of the message board folks over AOL Instant Messenger. Late in eighth grade and early in ninth grade, I pretty much left mrhatshellhole.com when the format of the site drastically changed and got involved in a community at fanfiction.net, writing stories, and I am still active there to this day.

Nowadays, I’m just a geeky college sophmore with a messy dorm, lots of animation DVDs, a collection of stuffed animals, ceremic squirrels, and a small My Little Pony herd over the computer, and over nine hundred books, almost all of the talking animal genre, spaced out over my dorm and the house in Bradford. I run this website, write for fanfiction.net, draw, read, and do odd jobing in the library at Johnson College (my goal is to be a librarian someday). I play video games often, am often up late at night due to insomnia during which I watch the craziest infomercials imaginable, and daydream of things to come and things that never will be before I drift off to sleep. I worry about classes, fret, and generally, feel like a happy person. But that's enough about me!