Okay, so we're on to 1971, my official first year on planet Earth as a human baby, the same year A Clockwork Orange was released, American women were burning their bras, and Richard Nixon had U.S. citizens buggered over a barrel.

As for me? Still crapping myself.

Somewhere within this year, my mom's father, Antonio, died. She always tells me he hung on so that he could meet me and then went to that big, grandparent's left lane with turn signal blinking highway in the sky. From what I've heard also, he was a pretty incredible individdle: Moved here from Italy with a mere 3rd grade education and worked in the coal mines, organised the union for International Harvester, was fluent in his native Italian, English, and French, and had a booming baritone singing voice like Caruso. Nifty.

We were still hanging at the LaGrange apartments. My mom has a photo of her and me in a swimming pool there, and by the looks of it, it was the summer of '71 when I peed in that pool for the 1st time. My Pop was selling carpeting door-to-door to businesses, fullfilling his lifelong dream, and Mom had stopped teaching to rear me. Needless to say, broke, broke, broke, but I guess they managed to feed and clothe me, although I do have a penchant for wearing burlap bags and eating old coffee grounds for some, suspicious reason.

I walked for the first time in December of this year, I want to say on or just before Christmas day, realizing that my feet weren't just for sucking, and at my first birthday party, the hilariously and oft-repeated "Rusty stuck his finger in the birthday cake when no one was looking" tale (and yes, there is photographic evidence).

Oh yeah, and my family calls me "Rusty". Always have, and all of my friends up until I was 18 recognised me by that monicker. But now I'm jumping ahead to 1988, and we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, do we?