XR's life

I was born in Urbana, IL (a city in east-central Illinois) on June 20, 1996, one day after Garfield the Cat turned 18. My parents were practically still kids and married just barely a year before. We lived in a tiny house in Rantoul, IL, where we had weird neighbors who peered in our windows and kept lawn mowers in their living rooms. Clearly, I only know all this stuff because my parents told me.

In 1997, my parents and I moved to Collinsville, IL. My dad commuted to St. Louis where we worked at Southtown Dodge (now called South County Dodge) as a car salesman. My mom's childhood dog, Buttons, also died that year.

In 1998, my parents got the dog that I pretty much grew up with, Becka. We moved to Edwardsville, IL and my brother was born later that year. Around now is where I first start remembering things that happened. I remember I flung my bedroom door open so hard that the doorknob broke through the drywall. I also remember having a purple booster seat in the car and always riding in my dad's demo cars from work. Around this time, I started becoming interested in cars. I knew the entire 1998 Dodge model lineup, as well as a number of my diecast cars. We have a family video of me at two years old playing with my cars and reciting the names of all of them.

In 1999, we moved back towards east-central Illinois and lived in Mansfield. My bedroom had a tiled black and white checkerboard pattern on the floor. I also remember sticking my finger in an electrical outlet and shocking myself.

In 2000, my parents started going back to school so we moved to Champaign, IL to be closer. I became terrified of smoke alarms, fire, and water heaters. I always thought that the smoke alarms would start beeping when I would go near them, and that water heaters would explode and start a fire. Scariest of all was the warning picture on the side of water heaters that showed a stick figure screaming in the middle of an inferno. I thought that was gonna be me. I also started to go to preschool where my young public school self started to show. I was the kid who spit on others and threw chairs across the room.

In 2001, my dad was hired by Sprint, and we moved to Rockford, MI, a small town near Grand Rapids. I went to two different schools. One kind of functioned like a daycare and I remember sobbing one day when my mom didn't show up so the teacher turned out all the lights and tried to make us take naps. My mom had been pulled over by a cop so she was late. In kindergarten, I went to an elementary school. My teacher was Mrs. Krusenga (not sure how it was spelled, pronounced KRU-sen-GUH), a young woman who didn't know how to deal with me. I went out of my way to disrupt other kids by taking their writing utensils and their work. I remember throwing a wooden block at a kid named Michael, where it hit him in the forehead (didn't intend on that result). Particularly disturbing to my teacher was my journal, where I only drew Chrysler Prowlers crashing into water heaters bursting into flames. I went to the principal's office for the first and only time when I was crawling under lunch tables in the cafeteria and started grabbing the principal's feet and legs as she ate. I still have some hilarious letters written by my teacher to my parents to this very day.

In 2002 (1st grade), my parents, by no surprise, decided to try homeschooling me. I guess they found it too expensive and time consuming at the time though, so I only did that for a year. We moved into my grandparents' house in Champaign, IL for a while.

In 2003, my oldest sister was born. I also started going back to public school in a gifted program as a 2nd grader. It was around now that I first began to become interested in meteorology. For independent reading, I read a college textbook about various weather occurrences and stories. I also read the Magic Tree House series. I remember a muslim girl named Pragnya in my class let me borrow her Dolphins at Daybreak Magic Tree House book, but I forgot to return it. I still have it to this day. I was at my very worst during this time. I never remembered my assignments at school and didn't care, so my mom had to call my teacher just about daily to get my assignments. She would try to get me to work on them, but I would either not understand or not care, so my mom wound up almost doing my entire assignments for me. I was also bullied heavily by the fraternal twins, Matthew and Heather Brooks, in my class. They chased me, dropped snowballs down my shirt, messed with my assignments, and knocked me down on the playground. An older boy named Trevor became my bodyguard. He was always at my aid and would fight Matthew down to the ground if he caught him messing with me. I remember getting in trouble by my teacher on a field trip one day when we went to a cultural arts center. I was sitting next to my friend, Austin Dyson (recently died in a fiery car wreck), and had a curious idea. My mom had always told me that it was wrong to stick my middle finger up, but I didn't know why. I turned to Austin and showed him my middle finger, saying, "Do you know what this means?" He jumped up and ran to the teacher and I got in tons of trouble. K then. Shortly after, I was pulled from the public school system indefinitely.

In 2004, we moved to a condo in Savoy, IL. I started homeschooling as a 3rd grader. I remember playing with Legos, various figurines, and my all time favorites, Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars. My brother and I would build extensive road systems and play with our cars on them. Pooled together, we had about 500 cars. I remember one time when my mom took me to get a flu shot at the hospital. I totally freaked out at this prospect. The doctor sat me down in a chair and pulled the cap off of the needle. I jumped out of the chair and took off running through the hospital. I went out the front doors and ran to our minivan in the parking lot where my dad grabbed me and my parents had to literally drag me inside. I found out that shots don't hurt so bad.

In 2005, we moved to a house where we would actually spend more than one year. We lived in Seymour, IL, a tiny town slowly degrading. In the 1950s, it had been an active farming town with a grocery store among other amenities. In the 2000s, it was just a road with old houses littered around the town in small blocks. There was a post office, a fire station, and a grain silo. Other than that, there was nothing but old houses. Our house had been built in the 1920s. We had bats and squirrels in the attic, and birds and gigantic insects in the basement. My mom let my brother and I walk freely around the town, where we antagonized people. We threw rocks at doors, teased a gang of teenagers, stared at girls playing volleyball in the street, and played on Main Street trying to get cars to run over bits of garbage. One time, an opossum got hit by a car near our house. My brother would go out to watch it decompose. Then we forgot about it. About six months later, we returned to the spot and started digging into the gravel on the side of the road and found its bones. We kicked its femur halfway across town. I think my mom found out that a sex offender lived near us though, so she didn't let us walk anymore. In December of that year, my second sister was born.

In 2006, my dad was hired by Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, so we moved again. We lived in this house until 2009. Not much happened that I remember. I know my third sister was born five days after my birthday in 2008. I briefly went to drama class and P.E. classes. In 2009, we moved into a friends house that they were trying to sell just while we tried to get another house.

In 2009, we did. I got my permit in 2012. My fourth sister was born in 2013. I just got my first job and first car this month, and just worked and got paid for the first time yesterday.