It's all in how you see it..

Friends and some family have joked for some time about my writing a book, I plan to write a memoir, an ode to the dark side and a hopeful forward motion toward the lighter side.

Weather or not this will be a publishable finished product, I am unsure, either way I have enjoyed writing the account of what has brought me to where I am.

I think I will start sharing some of the finished chapters..

"I grew up in what was considered a suburb of Chicago. Three bedroom ranch style homes one car length between each other, ethnic & Greek restaurants were easy to find, mom and pop grocery stores seemed to thrive and seeing different races was expected.

We lived a few miles from Gary, Indiana. The Armpit of the united states. Notable for many things like home to many southerners settling north for work, hometown of the Jackson Five, the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street was filmed in Gary (not entirely), and it had it's special place on everyone's top ten list of dangerous cities and murder capitols. It wasn't always that shady.

Our neighborhood wasn't too bad, we lived in Hammond, Indiana. I only remember one or two kidnappings. A public school teacher lived next door (my closest glimpse of a formal school teacher as a child) and her husband and son, she helped teach me basic math I would desperately need later in life, very nice lady. 

Two doors down was our neighbor who was married with two girls, one just younger than me and another my brother's age. I can recall over 16 years all of us siblings going down to her house to complain about our parents or life in general. Perhaps our bitching strained my Mother's friendship with her. Across the street was the neighborhood alcoholic family, nothing too exciting there. Just down from them was the religiously awkward family, I recall busting out their garage door window and being surprised by my strength and later let down to find out it was already cracked. Some labeled their Dad a fairy, that might have been true.

Across the street were twin girls my age, I was labeled a pyro for hanging out with one of them. The house next to them changed faces a lot, presbyterians, mexicans, white families, you name it. The poor shutters had grew an inch in paint.

And there was a paranoid military man whom everyone claimed booby trapped his yard, I felt bad for the elderly couple next door to him. So I guess our neighborhood was typical."