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TJ's Miserable Childhood, (6/04/1999)
Gary DeWaay wrote: >Kids birthday parties have themes now? How come so many kids think life is so tough? All these cool toys, and birthday parties with themes! All I ever got was a ball for my birthday, and it was flat. And I was damn glad to have that ball! I also had to walk barefoot in the snow to school..
Ball? You got a ball you your birthday?All I got for my birthday was an extra teaspoon of gruel and they let me blow on the tinder when they started the fire in the pit they dug outside the tent since they couldn't afford candles, and even if they could, they were afraid of fire because the tent was just old newspapers picked up along the road. Feet? You had feet? My parents sold mine to some company that bronzed baby shoes and needed them for some part of the process. They said they were sorry they had to do it, but it kept us in gruel for several years. Later, in high school, I started my own business selling rags that I scrounged from dumpsters to a paper company. I earned enough money to buy back my feet which I nourished back to health and normal growth by soaking them in a nutrient solution made from various things I salvaged from the dumpster and stole from the biology lab. I wanted the doctors to re-attach them, but they said I was crazy, that it couldn't be done, so in chemistry lab I invented Crazy Glue and reattached them myself. I was so excited that I got the left and right reversed; I couldn't afford shoes, and having the feet reversed unnerved the smaller children, so I invented a solvent to undo it, and put them on correctly. Crazy Glue could have been the financial salvation of the family (we were even worse off since the tent got repossessed and we had to live in a culvert), but my chemistry teacher stole my formula and eventually sold it to some right wing company who changed the "C" to a "K". But am I bitter? Of course not. Stuff like that builds character, and I've got more character than you could shake a stick at. Just ask my probation officer. What's the matter with kids today? TJ |