I was born in Opelousas, Louisiana on August 16th, 1980 in the General Hospital. In that town, I was raised by my father and mother, Keith and Heather, both very average people with average lives. My circumstances weren’t dire in any way. Everything was very ‘Average’. The community in which I grew up was small and ordinary. While this childhood setting doesn’t make for a good start in any other type of written work, it’s well worth writing about. The landscape of my burrough is one of the legacies led by my family. It all started with my great grandfather, John Jacob.

John was the second oldest of seven children, but the task was his to help raise the remaining five while his father and older brother ran the furniture store, Abdalla’s, on Main street. It’s my understanding that the store also doubled as their home, but as I’m writing all of this from memory, it will have to do. There is an aerial photograph of the store in my family’s possession that bears witness to a sale at the store. The streets were crowded with people, shoulder-to-shoulder. You could see several men with a leather couch heft over their heads as they carried it over the people they passed. I remember the first time that I saw the photograph, perplexed that so many people would gather in the streets just to buy furniture. While this was never answered, it’s one of many accolades that my great grandfather would come to collect.

Another aerial photograph was snapped of my great grandfather’s house when there was nothing but feilds abound. Even for a country-type home, it was stellar. Its towering two floors, complete with attic and ancient central heating, cast a long shadow over what is now Cresswell Lane. There, he would live with my great grandmother, Mary. She was an orphan brought by ship from Ireland, relocated to survive the potato famine in 1901and taken in by an acadian couple who’s family name was Tujague. Apparently, there was a scenario of ‘love at first sight’ for John and Mary. They married and had three children. John Jacob continued his affluence and came to have a hand in building most of that area of town, erecting an elementary school named Park Vista and a shopping center by the same name. Houses were built and roads named after his brothers, sisters, children and grand children were paved. He was a staple in the community and, if you’re in that part of Opelousas, you can still see the fruits of his work. His love for his home is still compelling, even long after his passing. The houses are still nice and the town still blossoms. Yes, industrialization and poverty is gradually overtaking the majority of the surrounding area, and most of the people who now live there don’t know the history behind every house and street- but his smile still shines brightly over that community.

When I came of age, I was placed in a kindergarten. My caretaker’s name was Ms. June. I don’t remember very much from this period in my life except for that and three other things. The first, pumpkinseed pie. I remember helping with quarrying a pumpkin and removing the seeds, a few of which I was told I could eat. The next day, the pie was served. The second, a boy with whom I would share a class during the highschool years. The third thing I remember about kindercare is the smell of the plastic detention tube. Apparently, I didn’t mind my manners as I should have- so I was sentenced to a period of time within a yellow tube with a single glossy wooden plank attached to the insides to sit on. I recall the dull echo of everything I did while I was inside, like the shuffling of my shoes on the shag carpet, the shifting of my bony butt against the hard plank and the eventual thud sound that was made when I struck the meaty part of my fist against it repeatedly in protest.

I was put into a day care for a short time along with my sister, but I can cite many more events from this place. Mrs. Maggie was what we called our guardian. Her day care facility was pretty much a barn erected on top of cinder blocks and outfitted with linoleum floors (nailed down), numerous cots (metal racks suspending flimsy, dull blue-green Lenin sheet with springs, stackable), built-in toy compartments (including Castle Greyskull and more barbies you could give to any twenty children of your choice) and a fenced in back yard (a metal grid making up huge rectangles- possibly to keep cows or some other large animal). There were no more than ten children at a time here, of which the age ranged from baby to ‘almost teenager’. The only group events were nap time and the daily PB&J feast. We were on our own, with very little adult supervision. I usually spent my time sitting in a metal barrel that had both ends open and secured to a concrete slab or was playing in the mud. I found some twine once, so I gathered some sturdy branches and constructed a crashed ’star ship’. I followed to climb into it and, over the next hour or so, proceeded to ’survive the crash’ and slump out of the wreckage onto the alien soil. The other notable thing I did back then was make a stag skull out of mud and sticks, place it on the top of the slide and kneel at the base to worship it.

Being in a suburban area, this daycare was located in a very natural and almost woodsy environment. I had plenty of chances to play with silkworm nests with my sister and with spiders by myself. One time, I found a small tree frog and placed it next to my cot for nap time. When I woke, the frog was in the exact same position in which I left it, but dead. Looking back at that, I think it dried out, but it’s very hard to consider why. Speaking of the natural environment, my sister and I were playing a game one day- in which she took on the role of Mother Nature. I took this flimsy stick and whipped at the ground, asking her if it hurt. “No” was her response with things that I hit. I came across this massive tree with a small shrub at its base and whacked it. “Does THAT hurt?” As soon as the question left my lips, a searing pain shot through my whole body at once. I hadn’t much time before my legs reacted for me, sending me running at a full sprint in no direction in general. My sister swears to this day that I jumped over the street to get away from that tree. When I regained control of my body, I fell to the ground and started pulling bees out of my legs. All this excitement beckoned the attention of the neighbor’s bulldog, which came and started chewing on my ear as I worked on the bees. I have no idea how many times I was stung, but I suffered little reaction from the stings. Welts formed, swelling was minimal and I just became very tired. Mrs. Maggie’s husband rubbed a salve on the little burning wounds as I started to drift asleep. I think I remember my sister laughing the whole time. Later, she told me, “It certainly hurt you, didn’t it-”. Lesson learned.

The first earth-shattering event of my life took place at that daycare. I was clutching at the fence watching a snow-white dog walking down the street toward the front of the building. The dog stopped still and looked at me briefly before changing its course to inspect me. It was huge and coming closer, but I wasn’t afraid. I reached out of the fence as it continued its advance; and when it stopped to lap at my hand with its soft, wet tongue, a little girl behind me let out a loud, chilling scream. This was enough to divert Mrs. Maggie from her soaps to investigate the situation. When she emerged from the building, her lips peeled back to reveal every gnarled tooth in a gleaming outrage when she saw the blue-eyed dog. Darting back inside and coming from the front of the building, this lady reeled back her newly equipped aluminum bat. The dog stopped licking my now frozen hand to look at what was coming for it- in time for the bat to crash into its head with a bone crushing ‘tink’. Like a demon, Mrs. Maggie gave chase to the sprinting dog, beating it bloody. I didn’t see the dog give up but I didn’t see Mrs. Maggie for a few hours either, once both ambled back around the front of the building. While the she-devil was gone, I scolded the little girl with every ounce of venom I could afford. It was her fault that the white dog with the blue eyes was possibly dead now. That would be my last day under the care of that cruel woman, but that dog would be burned into my memory forever.