It's weird being me, part 1

So the other day Sport sucks back a Diet Coke, slams it down on the table, and asks, "Do you ever think about how weird it is to be you?"

I knew what he meant. He'd probably spent some time contemplating how he came into existence, and freaked himself out. I thought, how odd that he's asking me the very same question I used to ask myself when I was his age. Is this something all children go through, or did he get this little personality quirk via half the genes I'd passed on?

How did I get to be me?

My parents tell a story, perhaps apocryphal in nature, that when my father was bringing my mother and me home from the hospital, he missed the exit because he couldn’t take his eyes off me. My mother says it was because I was such a beautiful baby. I think he was plotting the trajectory of my flight off the front seat toward the dashboard should he slam on the brakes. This was 1964, in the days before child safety seats and the like. I was simply placed on the seat between my parents in the front of the car and my survival was left to fate or angels. (Wasn’t it obvious to my parents that if hitting a good-sized pothole, I’d be propelled up and over the back of the seat, and possibly out the open back window?) When he hung a quick right at the next exit, I tumbled like a doodle-bug into his lap and he nearly lost control of the car.

It was a difficult birth. My mother remembers scraping her nails up and down my father’s arms the night she went into labor. 42 hours later I was born – blue, underweight, cheerless. Dad's arm looked like hamburger. I stared out at them with unreadable eyes and a swollen face. The doctor gave a quick diagnosis: I had brain damage and would probably never be able to walk, read, or properly butter bread. My father refused to believe him and later sneaked us out of the hospital early, hoping to remove me from an early stigma and to save money on the doctor’s bill at the same time.

Little did I know that I had only 381 days until the tranquility of being an only child was brought to an end. Only a year and sixteen days after I arrived, my mother gave birth to my sister, and soon after that, a brother. It’s apparent to me now that I was damaged irrevocably by this upset in my routine. For a brief period of time, I was the center of my parents’ world. They thrilled to my smiles, were amazed at my babbling, wildly anticipated my first words. Then, in less than 2 and a half years, there were three small children in the house, and focusing on any of us for more than a few minutes was a virtual impossibility. And yet, despite this childhood trauma, I eventually did walk, learned to read at age 3, and didn’t worry about putting butter on bread as I loathed the stuff.

Looking back, I can see now that I was a weird child. Though the doctor had misdiagnosed me, he was right in some respects. I was hyper-sensitive, hyper-shy, and socially stunted. When someone talked to me I stared right in their eyes, forgetting to blink. Soon my eyes became watery and red, my nose began to run, and all thoughts flew from my head. I could barely hold a conversation, so conscious was I of being looked at. Why, then, did I stare so fervently at people? Obviously, there was something wrong with me. I felt things too strongly and heard things too loudly. Even complete silence was painful because my thoughts seemed too loud. I mourned the passing of insects and small birds, as if their deaths were somehow my doing. Sunlight was too bright, darkness too oppressive, and the whistle of a passing train made me cry because it sounded so sad.

Doubts of my own existence later haunted me. Was I real or a character in someone’s dream? If my mother had married another man, would I still be me? And then the really profound questions bothered me. Does the universe continue to expand, and if so, into what? What is outside of the universe? Why did it sound so strange when I repeated the same word over and over again?

I doubt my parents had time to see how weird I was. With two others in diapers, and my brother’s bout with pneumonia, I was often overlooked. Yet, the worse was yet to come. It was in grade school that I faced probably the worst 6-year period in my life.

But that's another story.