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Morning of August 31st, 1990, Anima feels her life about to change. She awakens, makes breakfast for her husband, sees him off to work, and goes about her daily household chores. Amid the heat of this August morning, she forgets she has been carrying a child for the past 9 months. It is via loud shrieks of labor pains that she is reminded of this being and hurried to the hospital, screaming all the while, of course. There, she is joined by her husband, in-laws, neighbors, family friends, friends of family friends, and distant relatives. Evidently, they are all here, to celebrate the birth of their protg: Me, XYZ. Sure, I may have looked like a normal baby; two ears, two eyes, a nose, and things of that nature, but in reality I was a non stop poop making machine. Had I been unable to run a simple errand, my mother would remind me of the loads of diapers she had to change. My comeback was always, "Pssh, I didn't ask to be born", essentially because at that point in life, I, in fact, thought it made me sound brilliant.

Now believe it or not, I have no memory, whatsoever, of my mother being pregnant three more times after me, and actually giving birth to two of my younger brothers and sister. However, I know they have been here, for a while, created in the same gene pool as I. There was one event, though, that I remember very vividly, and that was my younger brother's death. Coming home from school one day, an inattentive, speeding driver had hit him, causing a concussion on his brain, and it was out of the doctor's reach. That was perhaps the most heart breaking day of my life.

I'm not so sure I had much good to say about my elementary school in my hometown of Bergen County, New Jersey. There were numerous occasions when I wanted to set my school on fire. And if that was too complicated, I'd simply want to pull the fire alarm to the extent that it would be unfixable, and would buzz for all of eternity. Apparently, I hadn't thought that scheme through. School did, to my surprise, become exciting towards seventh grade because I had known it for so many years. Its hallways, cafeteria, and classrooms now seemed to have had an attaching draw to it. And who could forget the auditorium; the center for all the holiday shows, cultural events, and of course, a gazillion spelling bees that I lost.

In the summer of seventh grade, 2003, my parents decided to move to New York because that was where my father's job had been. So we packed our minivan, sold our four bedroom house,

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