Ah, isn’t internet anonymity great? I would never use this anywhere under my real name. I’m still working on a few articles for the publisher I mentioned a while ago. Aside from humor, the occasional serious piece won’t hurt my chances. This is the first line of narratives trying to explain how I got this way. The angle I’m going for is a blog format, based around the idea that my love of the outdoors all stems from the fact that I don’t really fit in the modern world. In case you don’t catch the point this one is really about how I became almost exactly like my grandfather. I haven't given it a good proofreading yet, so go to town.
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The door slammed behind her. I sat at the table in front of the meal I had painstakingly prepared all day. The last words she screamed echoed in my head.

“Do you feel anything? Look at you! You don’t even care now.”

I don’t remember if I loved her, which is essentially, why she was so upset. I felt something, but I doubt using the same word I have used to describe my feelings for blueberry pancakes and Kamel Reds accurately portrayed it. I couldn’t express the feelings to her because I have trouble with my emotions, in the same way a kindergartener might have trouble with algebra. I don’t even know where to begin.

Some of my friends say I was born in the wrong era. My best friend, a family and child counselor, actually wants to write a case study on my family and me. She is incredibly interested to know what forces conspired to create me.

My first real memories are of my grandfather. He is the kind of man they just don’t make anymore. He is all the characteristics that made the Golden Generation the greatest group of men to walk the planet rolled up into one grizzled hide. When I was a child, I wanted to be exactly like him. None of the other adult men I knew could begin to compare. Seen through my young eyes, he was Atlas. He stood, uncomplaining, shouldering the weight of the world.

I followed him everywhere. I gardened with him, dug holes, and “helped” him build all kinds of wonderful things. He never treated me like a child, mainly because I never misbehaved around him. I was as frightened of him as I was in awe. To this day, all he has to do to calm my rambunctious cousins is pull his glasses down over his nose and glare at them. I’m convinced he is still alive because he ordered the grim reaper to sit in the corner until he was damn good and ready to die.

With my father often gone long hours on business, he became the dominating male influence in my life. He his house was right next to mine, separated by the gigantic field he owned. I remember racing ahead of my mother everyday after school and in the summers to visit him and play on the gigantic tree swing he built for me.

Then, when my second sister came along, we moved. We only moved a mile up the road, but with my mother juggling three kids and my grandmother falling ill, it just wasn’t the same. I saw him once or twice a week. My two younger sisters and my incredibly paranoid and overprotective mother trapped me. I was seven and my father wasn’t really around. I didn’t stand a chance.

I don’t put much stock in psychology, but I’m sure a shrink could have a field day with my mother. Normal parents tell their children not to talk to strangers. I imagine they calmly explain the danger inherit in the situation. My mother would say, “If you don’t stay close to me a stranger will catch you and he’ll cut off your arms and he’ll cut off your legs and he’ll cut off your head.”

Guilt was her favorite form of retribution. If my sisters and I were fighting, she wouldn’t punish or scold us. Instead, she would claim that we were making her sick. Then, she’d tear up and claim that no one appreciated all she did. I can’t tell you how many family nights her antics ruined.

When I was twelve, I was overweight, painfully shy, afraid of everything, and the slightest tension would drive me to tears. Oh, and I still had to ask permission to leave the yard so my mother could glare from the porch and watch me. This was in the middle of nowhere, PA. I guess you can’t be too careful, as my mother would always say, “kids get abducted in the middle of cornfields in Nebraska.”

Saying I wasn’t popular with my peers would imply that I had peers. The smelly kid with gigantic hearing aids who occasionally pissed his pants functioned at a higher social level than I did. I came home battered and crying at least four days a week. This strengthened my already unhealthy dependence on my mother.

Then by the grace of god or nature, puberty hit me like a runaway logging truck. The testosterone rushing through my veins roused some dormant gene. I went to bed one night a boy, and I woke up a yeti.
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I think I exceeded the character limit. Continued in Part two, post any comments there.