“Let’s begin at the beginning; write just a few words down. You’ll be writing a very short piece—a paragraph is fine—about yourself. Your assignment: write your Genesis myth. How did you come into this world? How were you created?”
Jennifer Traig Part II The Autobiographer's Handbook
My mother met my dad at Flint Michigan’s Baptist church youth group. I was conceived seven years after the preacher’s lectures about God, morals and life lessons. The set of laws they learned in those youth group sessions were the rules and regulations they lived by in trailer the park in Lansing, Michigan. I was born weeks after they moved out of their trailer and that is when all the rules changed.
I was almost named Joe Bell. In a small Western New York town called Bolivar, there was a powerful aphrodisiacal french malt beverage from Detroit. Its mysterious powers included swooning, inexplicable lust, making poor decisions (but thinking it was a good one at the time), and headaches the next morning if over-indulged. The potion, called Goebels, had an occasion to do its job in a hay loft with my mother and a male companion. Subsequently, I was not named Joe and Goebels disappeared from the market shortly thereafter. I hear it was its widely used street name that finally did it in, 'The Bastard's Brew.'
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