[SuPeRhApPyFuNlAnD] - This post is copied with edits from hax0r5hack.blogspoot.com
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December 17, 1968 - Before we went to the moon
I am a native Texan, I was born shortly after midnight on December 17 1968 in Hermann Hospital. I know little of my birth mother - I’ll go into what I do know later. I was already six months old when my adoptive parents were called to come see me by the adoption agency.
My adoptive father and mother met in Germany in the early 1960’s. My mother originally went to Germany a couple of years earlier to be with her (much older) sister who had married a serviceman in America and when he left the service they transferred from the US to Germany to work with Siemens electric. Apparently she had been living there a couple of years and decided to begin attending a church on base, thence to sing in the choir, where she met my father.
They stayed in Germany but left after the wall was built. I have heard much about the horrors of the early days of the Berlin Wall and if you like history I can fill in some of the details of that era. My father was then transferred to Houston some time in 1965-66.
Medical reasons kept them from having children (mother was sterile) and so they decided to try to adopt and waited almost 3 years before I was offered to them. By the time of my birth, my father had already left the Air Force to take a civilian job in the Petrochemical industry. My adoptive mother had been employed by NASA/JSC since the beginnign of the Gemini missions. She decided to quit her job and left NASA when I was brought home. I was born several months before the Apollo moon landing, a fact that still astounds me…
Early Years - 1968 to 1978
We stayed in Houston until 1972, when my father felt a call to the ministry and decided to use his GI bill funding to finish college at . Bryan College in eastern Tennesseeby and earning a degree in biblical exposition. So esentially the first 9-10 years of my life were spent living in a one-redlight town of Dayton. I miss that most of all as it was safe, locking the doors was unheard of, heck most people never even bothered to close the doors. Neighbors looked out for each other and as a young child I had a huge area to play in, riding my bike all over the place (I have extensive weblog entries on this)… and I truly miss it.
Now living in Tennessee would not be complete without exposure to country music and county fairs. As for the music, we would make summer pilgrimages to Nashville to attend the Grand old Opry (do you remember Hee-Haw that show?). Now I must tell you that my sole claim to fame and only brush with true greatness was a chance meeting with Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones at the “Grand Ole Opry” right before I came back to Houston. By the way Minnie’s hat price tag was $2.98 …
Discovering Terabithia (1977)
Early in my childhood my mother developed cancer and so the entire family’s focus was on mom, unfortunately the reality was that my sistem and myself ceased to exist for became “burdens”. I am not complaining, just stating facts here. Chemotherapy is akin to injecting battery acid directly into your bloodstream, it does HORRIBLE things to your body, in females, it will cause hormonal chaos, and remove all ‘limits’ on emotions, and even affect someone so badly they cannot relate to reality due to the intense pain.
Our house was alswys filled with high drama and emotions run rampant, almost literally like living in a madhouse. My mother would be swwet and kind and loving one minute and completly out of control the next . Withdrawal was the only way I could cope and I found solace in books. My I never got into drugs (at least not until my 20’s, anyway) but found these escapes helped and so virtually withdrew from my family…
I have to ask you if you have seen the movie “Bridge to Terebithia”. If you haven’t, please add it to your list! I read the book when it first came out in 1978 and really identified with “Jess”, who was horribly shy, gangly, and not particulary outgoing at the best of times. and that story could well have been written about me! I had a friend like “Leslie” during this time. I’m headed somewhere witth this and will come back to it in a future email, but the story forks and so I need to break off and describe how I discovered my very own Terabithia …
The ‘Great Escape’ (1981)
Now I thing almost everybody knows what an online chat room is, but few know where the whole idea if a chat room started. The answer is, of course the CB radio craze of the late 1960’s and 70’s. I had requested a CB radio for my eighth birthday when still in Dayton, after watching the movie “Convoy”. When I came to Houston I discovered a world within my radio. One evening I happened upon a club of CB’ers that used the airwaves as a giant conference call late at night. This group covererd almost all of Houston from as far as NASA to Conroe and nearly as wide east to west. I discovered conversations could be had with people I would have had no chance of meeting in person (and some 25 years later still have not met friends whom I still talk to) but still developed some of the tightest friendships I have ever known….
Sometime in the very early 1980’s, CompuServe put upa site they called a “CB Simulator” that took the idea of a geographic group and made it world wide. Now most of the younger set of the CB club were already online by this time (I’ve been on since 1981) and so already some CB friendships would carry over into the online world. But online …. Oh baby! The day I connected my modem and dialed up a friends BBS I discovered an entirely different world, a world where my imagination could run wild. It was a compact world of people INSIDE my computer, people who did not judge me by what they saw ( a gangly four-eyed dweeby freak who stuttered like a broken record). I was judged on what I wrote and to my surpride and delight, found that people would actually be interested in my thoughts and would read and comment to anything I wrote. And write I did! I suppose you could have called it “blogging” but it was more communal then, and people welcomed honesty and integrity and were not (overtly, at least) judgemental. Again to “Terabithia”, if you watch that movie you will see me, I am “Jess” … I’d be interested in yout thoughts and commentary on this posting and the movie in particular …
I’d love to hear your feedback!