Phase One - Early Days

Late 90's to Early 2000's

It's hard for me to really remember an 'earliest' memory. A lot of the times when I think about what they could be, I then ask myself if i'm actually remembering the event or if i'm just remembering us watching old home movies on the vcr. Initially, people recorded random stuff of us but that eventually stopped not long after it started. I need to find who has those.. There's a lot of scattered memories, which is what all of this will be, scattered memories mixed in with some reflection here and there. though I will try to refrain from constantly correcting or justifying my younger self every couple of sentences.

My Parents split when I was really young, after having two daughters. I really don't have many memories of them together, being in the same place, even though during some of this time they lived in the same town. There's a few reasons why they split, but one of the early reasons I knew of was because she was against spanking kids or pets, and he wasn't. I was never ever abused or beat by him, but I was spanked with belts, or paddles if I did something deemed bad. One example being, I got caught throwing rocks at cars as they drove by, so he spanked me for that. I can remember the wooden paddle actually had holes drilled in it and a duct tape handle. My grandmother wouldn't chase you but she'd wait until you sat down, and then she'd smack your legs with a 'switch', a little thin branch/stick. One random memory is my sisters and I being at this little trailer in a big field. I think it was my uncles trailer and my father was staying there until he got his house. I remember a really windy day, and my dad and my sisters outside with me and we're all trying to fly these kites he got us. I don't remember much of that place at all, my father eventually got his own house.

My fathers father, one of my grandfathers, would often walk me down the sidewalk to this tiny little barbershop around the corner for haircuts. I remember loving this big mouth billy bass thing the owner had, you pushed a button and the fish started singing. I thought it was great. My grandfather liked getting my hair cut short. Sort of a mix between a flat top and a crew cut? I don't know what you'd call that. I remember afterwards the barber would always give the change back to me instead of my grandfather, but I'd always have to give it back to my grandfather when we left the shop and started walking back to his house. He was previously in the Korean War, although I'm not too sure what he did during it, he never told me and I didn't know until after he died. Though I do remember seeing him getting dressed one morning and seeing him wearing his dog tags and this cross necklace. Mixed emotions with him. One memory I have with him is very fond in memory, we were out on his porch one morning and he's telling me to look at this hummingbird that was at one of their feeders, I remember us sitting there and just watching it, silently. But then, another memory I have of him is him not liking cats. I remember him shooting a bottle rocket at one that was in the tree in the front yard.. He was apparently pretty rough with my father, verbally abusive, but I don't know how far that went. I don't know much about him. After he died, I was looking through some of his cigar boxes of stuff, he had a bunch of pins and patches with the freemason symbol on them.

Before that house, those grandparents had another house in town not far away, and another funny incident happened there. I don't remember it but family members who were there would often bring it up when I'd see them. apparently we were outfront one day at that house, and I'm sitting under this bird feeder that's mounted high up, just staring. Apparently a squirrel that was eating from it then fell/jumped on my head haha. I don't remember it, I don't know how I handled it, I'm sure I was freaking out though. I don't remember having any cuts or scratches or anything. There was a fire at that house that I'm reminded of but I don't really remember that either, just being outside with everyone. a memory I do remember at that house was during one of my birthdays. They had put up these balloons along the roof of the front porch and gave me a needle, telling me to stand under them and pop them, one by one. The gimmick being, one had a bunch of glitter in it that would shower down you when you popped the balloon that contained it. Eventually they thought to put swimming goggles on us before popping them.

Before my mother moved us up to another town, we had a small house around other family in the area. It was pretty small from memory. My mother, my two sisters and I slept in the same bed for awhile, along with the dogs my mother had. though we eventually got seperate beds in that room. Not too many memories of this house, I remember one day I got in trouble because for some reason I grabbed a knife and just started stabbing this reclining chair that was in the living room. no idea why. I shredded the arm of it with that knife though and my mother was pretty not happy with that haha. Another random memory is one day my father found turtles at his work, and gave them to us. so we have them outback in this little plastic pool and we're inside. well we go back outside and they're gone. they're gone!! It turns out, one of the boxer dogs we had at the time ate the poor turtles. at the time we were just told they must've gotten out. On a brighter note, One day that's a nice little memory is my mother and I walking to this little bakery and getting some donuts. I remember getting and loving sugar cookies. That was Great.

Both my parents loved dogs, and each had some at their houses. My father had one, and my mother would always have a couple. she loved boxers. One of the ones she had actually scared a burglar away from that little house she had. I often thought that cemented her love for the breed but apparently she had one when she was a little girl that she loved, named Bruno.

Another early memory would be a car crash. I was in the car with my grandmother and she was driving us somewhere, we were downtown. Long story short we end up getting T-Boned by this car that was backing out but it wasn't bad enough to hurt either of us or damage the cars too bad. I think it might've broken the passenger side window on me but nothing extreme.

Eventually mother would move us up to another city with someone else she had met. So for School, We would have to wake up really early and drive down. Every day back and forth. In the morning, we'd wake up early, get dressed in our uniforms (catholic school), and drive like an hour and a half to the school to drop us off and then drive back home. After school, our father would pick my Sisters and I up. Depending on the day, we'd either drive straight back up to mothers, or we'd stay down there with my father at his house for a couple hours, go to hangout at the Grandparents house, and then drive back up to Mothers. Every other day the other would have us, and every other weekend we'd go and stay with him. It seemed like we were always in cars, I sleep really really good in them. We heard a lot of music because of this. My Mother would play stuff like Michael Jackson, Prince, Elvis, or just the radio and my Father would play stuff like ACDC, Motley Crue, Metallica, and Guns n' Roses.

I had a really cool uncle, my fathers side of the family. He gave me this really cool metal olive green lunch box that i absolutely loved. He would sit and talk to me a lot at my grandparents house, but I really don't remember many of our conversations. I often just remember him with a big smile on his face, smiling at me. But one Christmas when we were at my mother's house, I was sleeping in the living room and had woken up to overhear my mother talking to my oldest sister. She was breaking the news to her that the uncle had hung himself.

When I think of Movies and what I saw around this time, I Remember 'Purple Rain' , my Mother loved it. I Remember 'Carrie' , specifically her walking down the street all bloody after the school incident. I Remember 'Titanic' , My Mother and my Fathers Mother had the two VHS set, who didn't. I watched it at my Grandmothers a couple of times. I Remember the Drawing scene with Kate Winslet. I Remember thinking the second tape was the better, more interesting one because of the sinking and how intense it was. I Remember watching 'Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers' with my Father, and how scared of it I was. I vidily remember being terrified at the scene of him on top of their car, reaching through the window. I'd start to cover my eyes but my father said "no no! keep watching he can fly!!" , and what he meant by this was shortly after in the scene he's thrown from the car, and get's hit by it after standing up, sending him flying backwards, "see??". I had Nightmares Michael Myers was following me around at the different houses i'd be at. Everyone laughs and jokes about the mask in Halloween 4 but it still creeps me out. He scared the shit out of me. I Remember 'Deep Blue Sea' , and Samuel L. Jackson getting ate by a shark. I Remember my mother and I loving 'Dumbo'. I remember loving 'Mulan' , to this day I think it's a good movie. One of my favorites was 'The Iron Giant' , I watched that a lot. I remember watching 'The Aristocats' , 'The Prince of Egypt' , 'All Dogs go to Heaven' , 'The Lady and the Tramp' , 'The Fox and the Hound' and 'Peter Pan' with my Sisters. We liked 'The Land before Time' movies. I remember we watched up to the 6th movie.

When 'Courage the Cowardly Dog' began to air on TV, I would always watch it at my Grandmothers house. The Dynamic at their house sort of felt like the one on the show to me. Her being the loving grandmother, smothering me in affection, my Grandfather being Grumpy, and then me being courage. Pretty much from when it first started airing until the series finale, I was watching it. I loved being at my Grandmothers. I was always staying at their house on my fathers weekends because of her. She was so sweet. My grandfather would sleep on a couch for some reason, and i'd always sleep in my grandmothers bed, she'd scratch my back until I fell asleep. She used to make me these pancakes that were the best. She'd teach me how to cook simple stuff on the stove, like scrambled eggs, hamburgers, simple stuff. Pancakes too of course, though I can't make them like she could. One day at this house, I was jumping from a chair to the couch for some reason, over and over. I was told that I should stop before I hurt myself. I continued to jump. Turns out, I should've stopped because I ended up falling on the corner of the coffee table that I had been jumping over, the corner of it caught me right above the eye and I had to get stitches.

I didn't realize it at the time but she lived on a kind of sketchy street. There was one guy who'd make and detonate pipe bombs. Often there would be a group of people riding dirt bikes up and down the street. One Christmas someone set a car on fire, I remember us all running out and being like "wow look at that". A brick was thrown through my Grandmothers window. Outside of all of that, it was honestly pretty chill. There was an abandoned church on the corner that looked pretty cool, but they eventually tore it down years and years later to 'revive' the east end with a 'spray park'. When looking into the area as of writing this, and specifically the street they lived on, I learned in 2021 two 15 year olds had a shootout there. That barbershop around the corner, someone got shot in the head there. They lived though apparently.

I Remember one time, my mother took me to the dentist. I'm usually very well behaved there, in the past I'd sing random songs to the dentists checking me out and sometimes they'd let me get two little toys from this basket instead of one for being "so well behaved". But, one day I went in with this cool little cap gun toy my mother had gotten me. It was a plastic little revolver, and you'd put caps in so when you'd shoot, it'd go "bang!" and make a little poof of smoke. She had thought it was empty, but it was not. So we get behind the lobby door and they see it in my hand and go "whats that, you got yourself a gun?" with a laugh and smile. I reply, "yeah!" and point it towards the ceiling and pull the trigger. It does the bang, and my mother looks horrified. she takes it from me and starts apologizing profusely. They laugh and tell me to never do that again.

This Phase would ultimately bleed into Phase 2, 'Jump off the Roof'