I went back to part 1 to make some minor corrections and add three pictures of me when I was young. Take a look when you get a chance. I'm not quite done with the years prior to 1974, so bear with me. As I mentioned in my article, Why Am I Still Alive, there was one serious incident that I remember:

When I was still a very short child, I was using a bicycle as a form of ladder (I didn't say I was a bright child) to get over a corrugated tin fence in my front yard. The wood braces were on the other side and my side was smooth. I put my arms over the fence and put my hands on the top support brace. The bike went out from under my feet. I wasn't weak. I held myself above the fence by grasping the top wood brace on the other side. The top edge of the tin was barely touching my armpits. I knew that if I let go, I would be seriously injured. I was frozen in fear.

The whole situation was odd. Only one person in my family, besides me, was home at the time. My oldest brother (about 10 years older than me) was in the den at the back of the house with the TV blaring loud enough for me to hear from the front yard. I couldn't yell for help. Like I said, I was frozen in fear. I remained there, frozen on top of the fence, for what seemed like eternity (although it turned out to be less than 30 minutes). All of a sudden, my brother came out of the front door of the house, walked over to where I was, and lifted me off the fence and put me on the ground. He didn't say anything. He then went back inside.

In 1973, my mother gave me a scolding because one of my sisters thought she saw me walking down the street, with a friend, holding a cigarette in my hand. The guy I was with, who was 12 years old like me, was the one who was smoking. He smoked at home, so it was no big deal to him. It shouldn't have been a big deal to my mother even if it had been me that my sister saw. At the time, both my mother and my oldest brother smoked. I was constantly exposed to it. The reason I even mention this is because I believe that exposure is what got me started smoking later on. I'll talk about that in the next installment.

In the meantime, here are a couple of more pictures from that time period:

Blog Appreciation:

Edward Wolf (a pen name for a professional writer) has three blogs that he contends with. Ask, Believe, Receive is a blog where anyone can share their stories of magical gifts obtained through asking, believing, and then receiving. His Pretty Women Blog is designed to highlight women as objects of art instead of objects of lust. The pictures are adult in nature, but not pornographic. The blog he started with is called Urban Iconoclast and it's where he publishes his thoughts and ideas as well as information on books that he's written. Get to know Edward. He's a unique kind of hermit.