I learned to read at a very early age (probably about 1.5, maybe 2 years) thanks to a series of videotapes that my grandma bought me. They were some odd cartoons with animals that explored ancient ruins while also teaching about consonants and vowels and such. Once I mustered up the ability to string a sentence together, I started reading anything I could get my little hands on. With the help of a dictionary, no word was too challenging for me to tackle; if I didn't know a word in the definition for the first word, I'd look that up and keep going, until I'd spend whole hours just looking up assorted words. Soon, reading things took up almost all of my free time as a tyke.

Reading also gave me a way to get away from the drama around me. The romance between my parents was never all that stable, and it only crumbled more as I grew older. Little disagreements grew into heated arguments, and those heated arguments soon became bouts of violence. There are few things that can fuck a kid up more than watching one's own mother going toe-to-toe with a man nearly twice her size and not being able to do anything. Of course, being the valiant little lad I was (thanks to reading books about knights and heroes), I did my damnedest to slay the evil "dragon monster" my father became on those drunken nights; more often than not, I came away with nothing more than a smack to the head and an order to go to my room. I still considered this a victory, however; the blows I took were blows that my mother did not, and after getting his anger out on hitting SOMEONE, my father usually lacked the motivation to hit anyone else. Of course, me being wounded also made my mother stop egging him on to focus on caring for me, so that may have helped too.

Four years into the dysfunctional shitstorm that my parents called a relationship, my younger sister Lana was born. With another actual baby in the house, battles between my parents became more infrequent as the time to have them grew shorter. Of course, with this lack of time to argue, they also began to lack time to really bug me over anything. This gave me the leeway to live as freely as you could expect a toddler to want to; keep in mind that I was rather intelligent at the time. My parents (and my family in general) say that I went from "2 to 12", intelligence-wise. Most of my youth, then, was spent staying up until ungodly hours listening to Loveline and watching Comedy Central. Good times, neh?

Most of my adolescence was spent moving every two years or so. In my immediate youth, I lived on a house on the corner of Olcott Avenue in East Chicago. Sometime after my sister was born, we moved to an apartment on White Oak Avenue in Whiting. A couple of years later, we lived with my Grandma Mabel in Hammond. Then, it was a move to Birch Street. Then, to River Drive. Upon leaving there, we moved into another place on Olcott, which became the coolest house I ever lived in. I still adore it and wish I lived there. After the inevitable kicking out of my father (the permanent one, unlike the many before), we moved in with my Grandma Pauline, a few houses down that same street. I'm still there/here today. The house is alright, but nowhere near as wonderful as the other one; you'll have to speak to me personally if you want me to explain why.

Anyway, during all that moving, I still had one thing remain constant in the face of ever-changing schools, friends, and environments: my family. Namely, my Uncle John (who we lovingly called Uncle Homie for years on end), my Aunt Mayela, and my cousins Michael, Johnny, and Vanessa. Any of you who know me decently enough know that Johnny is one of my best friends, and that I'd take not just one, but a whole clip-load of bullets for him. Whenever something is fucked up in life, or I'm torn up over something, or I just want to have fun and hang out with someone who gets me, he's the first guy I turn to. Michael and Vanessa are awesome in their own ways, but Johnny is truly the brother I never had. To an honest point, they all serve as my surrogate family; Aunt Mayela is just as loving as my own mom is. I could never thank all of them enough, but I certainly try.

Not all of my extended family members are great, however. My Aunt Lucy, once a nice woman, became what can only be described as a psycho hose beast after marrying a kook by the name of Roman. They gave birth to two of my cousins, Eric and Alex. Eric is now 26 and getting married to the same girl he's been seeing since I first went over to their house and played WWF Wrestlemania on their Sega Genesis. Alex is turning 20, and still just as much of an asshole as he always was. See, Alex has cerebral palsy, a condition many are familiar with. Also, sadly, like a portion of handicapped people are apt to be, he is a douchebag. I am led to remember one day, long ago, when I was hanging out at Johnny's house and Alex was there. Alex had been calling me fat all day (because, well, I was kind of chunky. No reason to call me out on it, though), and I was becoming thoroughly pissed as 8-year-olds do from time to time. He kept going, and he eventually pushed me to my breaking point. Johnny tells me that I said some sort of incantation and threw a broken metal broomstick like a boomerang, swirling it through the air and making direct contact with Alex's big douchey forehead.

Both his mother and Aunt Mayela went crazy with anger at me. "You know Alex has problems!", they said. "You can't hit him like that! That's dangerous!" Of course, they may have been right. I can assure you all, however, that Alex has not bothered me ONCE since I did that to him. Mission accomplished? You decide. Regardless of that, though, my other aunt, Aunt Cheryl, was nothing to write home about either. Kind of chunky, not exactly the kindest person you could know..She's changed a bit now, though. I think marriage and childbirth have made her into a different, better woman. Neither of these aunts nearly rival my Aunt Mayela, though.

I should note that these first family members are all on my father's side. My mom has brothers and sisters (and, through them, I have an extensive network of other cousins), but none of them have ever really had a significant impact in my life. I've never gone to their houses for cookouts like I've done at Aunt Mayela's so many times before. That is why I'm not really bringing them up; my mother's family, other than my mom, my grandma, and my grandpa (R.I.P., 'uelo) is really a bunch of addicts or former addicts with a flock of children from various parents (except for my Uncle Rick, who is currently childless and not addicted to anything). So they're lame.

I've always been kind of husky, and definitely intelligent. I guess I have some element of handsomeness, but I haven't found my "groove", so to speak, until very recently. As a result, I had the expected geek's level of success with the female gender. While most of my friends had girlfriends in middle school, I was the guy who knew a lot ABOUT women, but couldn't seem to get one. This all ended once I found the magic of the internet. Girls on the net don't care as much about your looks, since that's rarely the first thing they see about you. If you have a nice personality, you tend to become pretty attractive, since people get a chance to know YOU first instead of how your body looks. I had a couple of in-person girlfriends, yes, but the real connections came with girls I met online.

Now, as any of my fellow geek brethren and sistern will tell you, online relationships kick ass, until you realize that most of the time, you're not going to see that person in person. Not soon. Hell, not ever. The relationship can live and thrive for quite a while just through IMs and chats and phone calls and maybe even camming, but without actual contact, things soon get kind of stale after a good while (unless you are amazingly dedicated. If so, more power to you). Because of this, the majority of my online relationships followed a set timeline: