I was never much of an outdoorsman. I was never much of a man, come to think of it. But lord knows, my old lady was. Figuratively speaking, she was a world renowned pheasant hunter. But, in reality, she was little more than a convicted exhibitionist. Now days, she remains locked up in a maximum security Siberian Gulag on three counts of indecent exposure, and I can’t help but feel a little responsible.

Looking back at my schoolyard days, growing up an only child with no parents, money, nutrition or legal records was tough—especially with seventeen younger brothers and sisters who looked up to me for moral guidance and emotional support. As I matured into a catlike, moneyed, strapping young adult, I felt I owed it to myself to honor the family tradition. There was little I could do but set up a Michael Jacksoneque amusement park, complete with chimpanzees, Liz Taylor, surveillance cameras and restraining orders. I even constructed the “Indiana Jones Express ”, where the motto stands “you must be at least yea high and wearing pants at least yea tight to ride ” I was hounded for days by the Fox TV News crew, until I finally caved in for a reserved and modest interview. Days later, I found my good name tarnished. Instead of being heralded as the unlikely hero, the snappy and hard-hearted Fox news-anchors instead depicted me as a likely social deviant. And for what? For befriending an orphaned monkey named Bubbles because I could relate to another species out of the goodness of my own heart? I found that my benevolent intentions, not to mention my philanthropic soul were all for naught. I found that the world was far crueler than I had allowed my naïve cardiac organ to believe.

In the days that followed, I was consoled only by the smooth, smooth light jazz styling and improvisation of Kenny G. and by some choice passages from the Good Book …of Catfish Lovers, that is I was, as the French Bourgeois often joke, crossing the River Jordan with no shoes on and carrying a basket of bricks with a lady tigress on the prowl. On the verge of breakdown, I felt my moods swinging like a non-literal pendulum. So I turned to crimping my hair, wearing ripped up Quiet Riot belly-shirts year-round, parading in knee high buckskin footwear, disrobing in poor taste and talking back to my momma. I threw around words like, “you don’t know me ” and “you don’t know my story ” as if they didn’t mean anything …as if they didn’t hurt. I wore mascara so thick that I could scarcely see. But little did I know then that I was really blinded by the tears in my eyes and severely pained by the makeup-chemicals that were stinging and infecting my mucous membranes. Little did I know then that my blindness was actually metaphorical; much like the blindness of Oedipus. But hey, to each his own. To each his own, I say.

My mother had no other choice. She did the only thing a loving parent could do. She took me to a trip down Chastisement Alley, with a stop at Learn from your Mistakes Drive where I put my hardcore outrageous teen antics to the test on the Sally Jesse Rafael show. It was my first time in the Big Windy City that Never Sleeps, and there I was, greeting the ample red headed duchess herself. SJR, as she’s commonly refereed to by coworkers - or “Salmon” for short—wasn’t kidding when she told me I would learn some good, old-fashioned antebellum manners after she was through with me. She was kidding, however, when she asked me what time it was when an elephant sits on your tent. And, to my horror and disgust, she was still kidding as she quickly responded that it was time to get a new tent. My failure to laugh only fueled an otherwise robust fire, not to mention an otherwise robust woman. I watched as my depleted self esteem came crumbling down at the feet of Officer Julu (the token sassy talk-show drill sergeant).

Since I love a man in uniform, I didn’t much mind going to the local county Juvenile Detention with him. And I didn’t much mind learning a thing or two about growing up, maturing and dealing with anger in new and productive ways. I left New York a new person; after I found out that I was switched at birth and presented with a new birth certificate. Turns out I was born in Littlesville, Smalltown, U.S.A. where the air always smells like summertime, and the locals think a traffic jam is actually a brand of fruit paste. The world could not be sweeter, nor could my augmented psyche—nor the genetically superior five-foot corn, nor the manually collected strawberries that took so many innocent lives. Breathing is a little easier in the country. I felt like I had entered heaven’s Iron Lung, and I’ve been scot-free of Polio ever since.

I was reunited with my birth mother and immediately sold for thirty sixpence on the black market in British Columbia. Within the confines of the Canadian Border I found true happiness and joined a low-ranking and oft-ridiculed branch of Canadian Mounties. I was resident Do-Gooder. Much like a modern-day Robin Hood, I stole from the rich and gave to the poor in highly provocative clothing. Now I’m serving time in a Lincoln County Jail for armed robbery, wearing a striped ensemble with a ball and chain around my ankle. Here, I finally found my calling and made fast friends with the baldest, and by default, toughest jailbird this city has ever seen. And all it took was a little patience and a triumphant victory in a hard-boiled egg-eating contest.