As a small child I was very inquisitive. I was the kid that would silently search my mother's bag when she wasn't looking in hopes of finding a toy or a slip of paper which would say that I was adopted. I was lucky if I found a hard candy half the time. This was during the days before the bar. Before I would become self-conscious about my weight, looks or what people thought of me. This was before I would become a chubby kid who eventually lost the weight in exchange for phantom fat which would create complexes for life every time I would take a nosh. It was before the days of the Kardashians, and the Jersey shore. I was just a boy. My mother would always tell me stories about how I, much like Mc Guyver would always try to figure out things very quickly. In reality I was never really like him, I mean I never had the attention-span to build anything and it would be years before I had a mullet. My mother said that I always would create new ways climb out of my crib as an infant. She thought it was cute. In retrospect, it must have been my early instinct to want to leave home to travel the world, maybe do 20 minute sets in each city and entertain people with new classy dick jokes. I would keep calm while supervised, then during naps I would study the crib for new ways to escape. Often these missions would lead to success. I would find a way to move my soccer-sized head with legs over the edge of the crib or playpen and somehow end up making my way safely to the ground. As a child I looked much like Stewie from Family Guy, all head and a little body, a real characature type kid. Someone once said that I look like what would have resulted if Charlie Brown had sex with Barbara Streisand. Could I paint the picture clearer? I was climbing out of the play pen, during the age of innocence, was before I learned what fear was, before courage had to be earned. I just did what I felt like. Children always had it easier, farting where you want and making noises now and again just would make adults think you were even cuter. This, partially, was the mentality that remained with me through my adult life. Just as an adult I learned to drink and curse like a sailor. Point being as a child I worked with this mantra: do what you feel like, find out how things work and that’s it. When I was younger though, that concept was followed by, how can I get things to work and get people’s attention on me? If I didn't have two-left, flat-feet, I would have tap danced for attention.
Once, around 2-years old, my mother awoke to me looking like I had just came out of an alien movie. While I had always looked a bit alien-like with my HUGE head, this time it was a bit worse. This child-like creature, me, who resembled her baby boy was standing near her bed. As she wiped the sleep out of here eyes, she then realized that I was covered in what looked like blood. Her heart sank and she was ready to take charge, call an ambulance, lift a car from off of me if she had to, all within a hearts beat. It would be any mother’s nightmare to see their child covered in blood.
After a second or two I whispered in Russian, the only language I knew at the time, “I am pretty.” By this point I had already learned that the world had a concept of beautiful, pretty and that I wanted to be that. It was at this point that she began to smell fumes like phameldahide. She then realized that the blood-goo was actually globs and of a dark red nail polish in, on and all over my hand. This splatter pained all over the small infant-size body I once possessed. She immediately started a bath while she went for the nail polish remover before the nail polish stopped my skin from breathing. I got a fever as a result of this whole ordeal. All to be “pretty.” This would be just one of many missions during my childhood where I would aspire to be that one which one viewed as pretty or handsome. It’s funny how then the concept was so simple and not complicated by society and what the world around us tells us we are supposed to be like.
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