by Mukheled Al-Amiry

Created on: May 12, 2009

Memoirs of an anti-hero.

When it comes down to creating people, God is a flamboyant chef with a warped sense of humour. Once in a while He concocts someone like me, then looks-in occasionally and has a jolly good laugh, so he used two equal measures of Woody Allen and Rick Moranis, threw in a liberal sprinkle of Mr Bean, placed the mixture inside an unwitting woman on slow-cook, and out I popped 9 months later and into a home that was neither happy with, nor interested in child-raising or parenthood.

Mom and dad were devout Catholics and abortion was not an option, as was decreed by my battle-axe grandma to whom I probably owe my existence. Six months after my birth, mom had a change of both heart and faith and absconded with a wandering preacher from some obscure church, who sold home-made soap with "soul-cleansing" properties to his parishioners. Dad gently informed me when I was three; 'She took one look at you and took off...' He was a man of few words.

Grandma who highly disapproved of my "beer-guzzling" dad and "floozy" mom took me in from the day mom left, she later told me that dad was on a plumbing job somewhere in our neighbourhood, when the preacher and his van pulled over at our house, mom swiftly packed all of her belongings including "Nixon" the goldfish into the van and they headed west never to be seen or heard from again. Dad later told me; 'She took every goddamn thing worth taking; including 8 six-packs of Bud from the refrigerator and left all the crap that she didn't want including; you and all the family photos..." So I guess that she burned all her bridges.

A neighbour watched her move out, heard the me crying in my crib, ran over to where my dad was working, he rushed back to the house and I ended up living with grandma an hour later. Apparently dad was very annoyed that he was hampered by having to deliver me to grandma's house, otherwise he would've given chase to the treacherous elopers and made sure to recover his stolen beer. That was the second bad event he blamed me for, the first was the catastrophe of my being born.

The years of my living with grandma "Smokey" were undoubtedly my golden era. She stood a fraction over 5ft tall, but enjoyed the girth of a 200 year-old oak tree and sported an equally tough layer of bark. When "Smokey Sue" thundered her way along the sidewalks, people cut a wide swathe, lest they found themselves being brushed aside by one of her tree-trunk arms. I am not quite certain whether she'd gained

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