Have a taco

On a brisk halloween eve circa 1989, the idea was first put into my mind by kindly aged neighbours that there was something un-ordinary about my life and experiences, and that I should put pen to paper and try to express what that was. I had gutted my inflatable T-Rex, which would no longer hold air, and wore him like a skin, concealing the places where my bare human flesh was still visible with a massive, green angora sweater. Around that point in my life, all my inflatable things failed me, including a raft, which was later involved in an incident where I almost drowned my sister, and was punished by having my Star Trek priviledges revoked for a month. All and all I think I was let off rather lightly, but I digress.

Well costumed and feeling the part, I stomped and roared and gnashed my way up the road, jaws hungering for man-candy. My neighbours were a retired couple from England, long the envy of North End road for being the only painted two story house on the block, and sporting a concrete cherub fountain in the front yard. I had a infantile hatred of the rich brewing since infancy, and their house seemed to confirm how righteous it was. I knew from my father and Charles Dickens that the rich were never generous, so I never trick or treated there, until that year.

I swaggered up to the door ahead of the my sister, rang the "door bell", and waiting. An old woman came to the door with a bowl of individually boxed raisins and said something on how terrifying and ferocious we looked. I had to take my plastic dino-head off to get a better look at the goods, when she exclaimed, "Oh my dear, what happened to your hair?".

I was terribly self-conscious about my hair, especially after I had cut my head attempting to shave and had the class bullies exclaim, upon knocking my hat off for the uppteenith time, "Hey you had a brain tumour, eewwwwww". It was just starting to come in again, a sparse downy fluff, that just barely covered my scalp. This was in the day when no one would have ever assumed that a pale, bald child had cancer, just that they didn't eat enough spinach and were terribly unpopular at school. So I was used to having to explain myself, and she seemed more kindly than not, so I told her all about my ordeal as articulately as my 9 year old vocabulary would allow. When I was finished she asked me if I would write my biography for her, because it would be "ever so interesting", and both she and her husband would really get a kick out of reading it. And I did.
About three months later, I brought her a 2 page manuscript, with complete illustrations, that said, and I quote:

"my name is XXXX 00000, and I was boorn in ledy Minto hosspitil. I have a mother, and a father, and a sistr, and a cat, and dog. I hat my dog, cause he is sooo stoopit. I got cancer, and I went to Vancouver for ceeemotherapy. It hurt, and my vains are bad. I had many operations, and no spleen. I stayed at Ronald Mccdonld house there, it was borning. I am better now, but I am bald. Thank you."

She looked quite surprised when I turned up, and reflecting back on this, I am sure she had forgotten entirely that she had made such a monumental request of the little cancer kid in the dragon suit. But I am glad she did, for though I may not fully understand the importance of this memory, it has been judiciously filed away, in the proper folder with tabs and bullets and eeeverything, so it is no doubt important.

After all, what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger,
except for all that other stuff that, you know, does kill us, only slower.
We'll just have to wait and see.