I am born. Then I was born just to prove that I was a double threat. I was the middle-class Caucasian spawn of a predominantly sober Scotsman and an unconvicted Italiana.
The day I came into this world my parents joined a group made up of other new parents, extended family, nurses, doctors, candy stripers, janitors, security guards, malpractice attorneys and one British explorer who had recently emerged from Golden Gate Park asking for directions to El Dorado, that had gathered in front of a large window that peered into the hospital's nursery. They were fawning over a fragile newborn whose beauty, they all agreed, had never been equaled. All took turns gleefully examining and then gushing about the child as each curtsied and did their best to not faint for the baby's divinity. The name of this transcendent infant is, to this day, unknown but a few important facts about its celestial beginnings are still spoken of. She was a beautiful Chinese baby girl with long jet-black hair and porcelain-like skin and was flanked on her right by another baby, which by its own parent's words resembled something that had been run over by a dump truck. This proved to be the first in a long string of disappointments I would bring to my family.
