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I grew up in a two bedroom house with thirteen people. Privacy was unheard of in my home. My Father left when I was three months old and my Mom started running to the bars when I turned about three. Thank God I have wonderful grandparents that took on the responsibility of raising me. Without them, I don't know where I'd be today. Growing up wasn't easy as I was teased a lot because I had to wear hand me down clothes and my family didn't have enough money to put braces on my teeth.

I can remember that in one bedroom we had three beds, one that I slept in with my grandmother, one my grandfather slept in with one of my brothers and my other brother slept on the couch. In the other bedroom is where all of my uncles and my Mom slept when she was home. There were six beds in that one bedroom. We had one television in the entire house and sometimes if I was lucky my uncles would let me watch cartoons, but that was few and far between. I can remember that if I did anything bad or got into trouble during the day that my uncle would wait until after I got out of the bathtub and then he would spank me with a leather belt while I was still wet. I never understood why he hated me so much, but as it turned out, he is the one that does the most for me now that I am grown up.

My grandparents did their best to raise us the best they could, but they had so many mouths to feed that they just didn't have the time to spend with us like most families do. My one uncle used to come home drunk every night and he would beat us with the same leather belt for no reason other than he was drunk and didn't know what he was doing. I can remember my older brothers trying to fight him off of me, for some reason he always wanted to hit on me, I was his pick to hit on.

We didn't have the money to go out and buy all the nice new Nintendo's and toys like all the other neighborhood kids did, so I would always go to my friends house and play with their toys. Of course they would rub it in that they had this and they had that and I didn't, but I guess they just didn't understand that my family just couldn't afford to buy these things. We were fortunate to have enough food on the table to eat.

Then there was the problems that I had at school. I needed braces desperately and again my family couldn't afford them. My Father had a good job and he could have bought them for me, but he never did anything to help me or any of my brothers. He raised his step-children, but when it came to us, he was never

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