Black Sheep Saga
Let’s take a quick journey through the life and times of yours truly—for no other reason than I’m bored and feel the itch to scribble.
Rather than beginning on my date of birth, let’s back up a few months and fictionalize my conception. It’s late February in 1984. My father is laying brick on the future site of the McDuffie County General Hospital in Thomson, GA. He and the other laborers are drenched in sweat—between the searing heat and southern humidity, it’s impossible to keep from breaking sweat. Without frequent breaks and gallons of water, my father would collapse in a violent sunstroke. During one of these breaks, he is approached by the foreman who tells him my mother is on the phone and in hysterics. He rushes to the phone in the office trailer and snatches it from the desk. Through the line and high into his murky cerebellum traveled news of my mother’s pregnancy. I’m sure he dropped his hardhat and trowel that very moment and probably buckled at the knees.
Nine months later, on November 2, 1984, my father raced to the hospital in nearby Augusta—likely under the influence—and my mother gave birth to a blue-eyed demon child. I imagine myself screaming and pissing violently the moment the doctor tugged me from my chambers, my mother matching my screams with shrieks of her own. Sometime later, back at home in the basement of my grandparent’s house just outside the Thomson city limits, I slept while my parents drank themselves into a stupor.
The earliest memory in my mind is the first day of kindergarten, but the stories go back much further so we’ll start with them.
It’s four o’clock in the morning and my father is roaring down a side street in his Chevy pick-up, homeward bound after a night of heavy drinking and drug use. I’m sound asleep in my car seat on the passenger side of the truck—strapped in, fortunately. My father fumbles to change the dial on the stereo and the truck veers off the shoulder. Before he can jerk the wheel to the left and get back between the lines the truck barrels head-on into a telephone pole, crunching on impact. My father sustained a few injuries but I was unscathed. Unfortunately, this experience wouldn’t stop him from driving drunk, and other such incidents would occur later on.
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