Seven, going on eight years old and the world began to change. It is still early in my life, but I am living in a trailer park in Louisville, Kentucky. I have a few friends from here in the trailer park, and the days are getting different. My brother, Robert, visits with his girlfriend, a young lady with long blonde hair, adorned with flowers, and flipping peace signs at everyone. Both my father and Marge, hate her. The way she dresses, you can tell that she has hair under her arms and on her legs, and what I would come to know later is that the perfume that she wore was marijuana. She was a very interesting girl.

But this year, there were some interesting events. My stepmother and father we're very involved with one another, and I was left on my own quite a bit. The trailer park had no grass and was nothing more than a big Dust Bowl. But I would wander aimlessly. I had my first adventure that seemed to come out of what would come to be known as a Stephen King novel when I ventured under the train trestle next to the park and found what I thought was an alligator. I grabbed my three friends and we stood across from this alligator for hours making up stories about how it got there. It turns out that it was just a truck tire, but it led to something more horrific. On our way back from our adventure one day, the youngest of us, about three years old, slipped and fell into an old sewer. I had nothing to do with this, but I took the brunt of the following assault. The adults came and rescued the little girl, who was not really in any danger because the sewer was dry and she was just in a hole. But when my father showed up, I finally got to see the absolute rage of the man with the iron fist. Nobody saw me for at least two weeks because my supposed parents would not let me go in public because of the physical damage. Father dear went into a red eyed rage, and the reason was that he was embarrassed that I was there and people looked down on him because I, at 8 years old, did not have the physical attributes to avoid the scandal and pull her out of the sewer. I learned fear and it stuck with me for a very long time.

The light at the end of the tunnel here was that little K began her annual visits this year. But what I saw as a potential great experience, turned into every child's hell.