in the beginning..
i like to tell people that i was born in memphis. i was - but only because the little town my parents lived in didn’t have a hospital that could do a c-section..safely.
so everyone took out their calendars and decided the day i would be brought into this world.
that day was - september 23, 1982. i was ripped from my mother’s womb at 9:55 am.
then back to arkansas to that small little town where my parents met at a roller skating rink and fell in love.
i wasn’t the first child they had. my older brother was born the natural way. we lived in that small little town till i was 2 and moved to a bigger town.
little rock.
i’ve always heard people talk about their first memories as a child. i’ve tried so hard over the years to try to figure out my very first memory. and so far, it’s of my papaw. ( for those who are not southerners- my grandpa )
i had to be about 2 at the time and he had come to visit us in little rock from that small town and i remember riding in his chevy blazer. the next memory i have of him is at his wake. i remember my mother screaming and crying because she didn’t want to see him laying in his casket. i was 3 at the time and i remember holding a relative’s hand at the back of the funeral home.
i guess i should have a better sense of my childhood. but i don’t. the ages that things happened are all kind of fuzzy to me.
i remember being a little different than most boys. i still played with trucks and things like that but i also did strange things that most boys probably didn’t do.
when the door was shut, i would take a t-shirt and put the neck of the shirt on the top of my head. i was trying to make it look like long hair. after i would do that i would run around my room.
strange. i know.
i had a fairly normal childhood. my parents both worked hard and took care of me and my brother. they fought sometimes. my dad had (has) a temper and my mother can be hard to deal with sometimes. so now i understand why they fought ( fight ). but still, my parents did everything they could to make sure my brother and i had a normal childhood.
which is kind of confusing to what would would come of me when i grew up and moved to new york city…..