reason for the disclosure of my own experience will become evident.
Chapter Two
WOMAN TROUBLES
The first, ... and most beautiful woman to cause trouble in my life, ...was my mother.
Ninety-nine parts angel, and one part reluctant martyr, she was, undoubtedly, the main proponent in the development of my unrealistic interpersonal expectations.
Together with her accomplice, ninety-nine parts saint and one part devil, ...my father, ...they conspired to project a steadfast environment of calm and non-drama.
I bathed in this stellar atmosphere throughout my childhood even as I and my siblings routinely made their lives a living hell. But then let's face it,.. that's what kids do for a living.
Now, as I have comically alluded, and convention would strongly suggest, this environment would have impacted significantly on my "formation".
Well, these days I'm not buying any of that crap, and convention,along with it's cronies, will be on trial throughout this offering.
Now while kids will be kids, especially at home, the peaceful demeanor of my adolescent environment extended to my neighboring friends. Relative social outcasts, we did not smoke or drink, and "drugs" apparently had not yet been invented. We operated on pure energy and curiosity, we didn't smash other people's stuff, hell, we even tried not to smash our own stuff!
Definitely nerds, we whined when we had to wear handed down pants with the crotch too low, ... they slowed us down...and it never occurred to us to wear our hats backwards in a cry for "identity"...whatever that was.
Many labels were lost to our comprehension...such as wealth, power, and freedom, ... we did not understand that we, of course, lived the essence of those ideas.
T.V. was a tenuous infant that we devoured on sparse occasions at our Grandpa's house, and cyberspace had not even been dreamed of.
We were hard and fast, but definitely "hick" not "hip". And, on our introduction, the "real world" hit us like a freight train.
Many of us careened off into the pits of social dementia, never to fully recover.
Chapter Three
THE REAL WORLD
I could not believe the wholesale fashion with which magic had been forsaken in favor of a crowd of sterile gangsters with monikers such as "society", "convention", and "progress".
But the mythos doth become the logos, and I am ashamed of the extent of my concession to their dogma. But I was strong, and fast, voracious for worldly experience, so I forged on, ...even as my translucent line between fact and fiction, ...was darkening.
Assisted,(or cursed), by a condition known as "hyper-thyroid", I began my reckless pursuit of exciting new labels, such as fame, fortune, ... and love.
Chapter 4
IN THE FAST LANE
Hyper-thyroid is the biological equivalent of a supercharger, and this little gem provided me with energy, strength, and speed beyond that of a normal person.
As much of my work was mechanical and labor-intensive, it was handy for getting extra work accomplished by avoiding the necessity of time-consuming devices such as jacks, hoists, or helpers. I did, however, lose my appetite for arm-wrestling after snapping an opponents forearm in two.
Since earliest memory, I had been fascinated by mechanical devices, but also by distant horizons. I gravitated toward a business that involved heavy equipment and long distance transportation.
Married at 20, business owner at 21, and father at 28.
A decade, a million miles, a business, a family, ...and while convention was suggesting that I had "arrived", ...my soul, inexplicably,yet clearly, ...still yearned.
And when I was awakened one night to discover my daughter of three conversing with a being in her room that I could neither hear, or see, I knew I had forsaken the magic for too long.
An attempt at a few years of "conventional satisfaction" put further chinks in my armor, and of course would not quell the longing of my spirit. Minor drawbacks to my "supercharger" were starting to appear, ...little things, ...like my heart stopping accompanied by a loud ringing in my ears. Invariably it would restart, but the process was somewhat annoying.
I suspected that one day it may not restart, and investigated my options. In those days hyper-thyroid was a rare disease for which the only band-aid was a pill you could ingest for one year. Reason being, it carried a nasty side effect of liquefying one's bone marrow.
How does that even qualify as a treatment?
Remember my observation regarding "credentials"?
I was further informed that there was, however, a radical (read: "uncontrollable") new "nuclear'' medical procedure involving the ingestion of radioactive iodine,which in turn killed some indeterminate portion of the thyroid.
Or I could just die.
So, being the selfish, fun-slut that I am, I pondered that bevy of attractive options at length, ...for five seconds, ...and craftily chose the one that did not involve CERTAIN death.
I entered into a process of a formidable battery of requisite analysis, interspersed with snippets of overheard conversation involving "guinea pigs".
I assumed the staff must have been referring to their children's pets.
And so, the day arrived that I stood, part incredulous, part exasperated, thinking "how the hell did I get to this?!" And a jolly fellow in a lead suit emerged from a lead-encased cubicle, to present a smoldering vial with his lead-gloved hands.
It was not deemed necessary that I be protected, as,after all, I was drinking the stuff!
Bottom's up!
Chapter Five
NEW TRICKS
My life became (more) interesting in many ways. My heart stopped stopping, but my hair and my teeth started, ...falling out.
I had developed a cardiovascular system twice that of a normal person, and now, without the extra adrenalin, I would be happily running up a flight of stairs or whatnot, and without raising my pulse rate, would completely overwhelm my leg muscles and collapse. Rather the equivalent of nitrous oxide in a V.W.
I suspect we killed off a bit too much of my "carburetor" as, in time, I had difficulty holding my head up or keeping my eyes open.
Amazingly, medical science had a pill that would SPEED UP thyroid, and it, supposedly, wouldn't even kill me!
Oh, joy!
At this point, the wreckage was becoming obvious. My joints, destroyed by decades of abuse, and no longer sustained by hyper-health, hurt continuously. But worse, my soul cried out that I was on the wrong track.
At
