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my mythic autobiography |
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The first thing you should know about me is that I was
born a possum. A possum? you say. Yes, a possum. At this point you’re
probably thinking that perhaps I buy into that past-life business, the kind
where people always link themselves back to someone famous like Alexander
the Great or Cleopatra, or where, if they believe in the animal kind of
reincarnation, they were a lion or a wild mustang. Well that’s all
hogswallop, as far as I am concerned. True things are far more
interesting, and the truth is I was born a possum. Naturally, the doctors
were rather aghast. I mean, even I know it isn’t every day that a
full-fledged human woman from the suburbs gives birth to a hairless,
squirming 6 lb. 4 oz. pink possum. But there it was. The doctors were so
disturbed by the sight that they thought for sure that the whole thing was a
hoax and decided not to call attention to situation, because attention was
surely what the hoaxster was after. No newspapers were called, no tabloids
showed up to photograph the monstrosity that was me. They simply heavily
sedated my mother, who was understandably already out of it from the labor,
gathered around the bassinet on wheels they’d put me in for lack of a better
option, and debated about what to do with me.
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This has been a running theme in my life: What to do
about me.
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So the doctors and the occasional nurse peered over and
surrounded my bassinet, murmuring and wondering. I am under the impression
that they did a lot of poking at me to see how real I was. I’m always
rather surprised by the fact that they didn’t come to the decision of
snapping one of those little plastic anklets around my leg, wrapping me in a
receiving blanket, and plopping a tiny cap on my head any sooner than they
did, because quite honestly, I couldn’t have been that much funnier-looking
than any other pink-and-red-blotched, wrinkled, pointy-headed newborn in
that nursery. And they probably wouldn’t have come to that decision at all
except that my father, who’d been caught up in traffic during my delivery,
walked in about 22 minutes after I was born, peered over into the bassinet,
and asked, “Where’s its hat?” As far as he was concerned, I looked just
fine. |
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2004 |
s.spachman |
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