a follow up to "A Swim"
I was born into a family that didn’t want me, this can be said to a lot of babies but not all are constantly told this. Not only by the parents, married, I was their third, but also by the siblings; a girl and boy aged three and four years respectively when I was born, grandparents; two on one side and a Grandpa on the other – he actually provided proof I was genetically connected to this aloof intellectual people, we both have webbed feet. Various distant aunts and uncles took it upon themselves to tell me how unwanted I was and expected me to be grateful for their candid tale. Not only did they consider me an unfortunate accident but denied any family (the word that means alike) . Admittedly being blond and ball-like in a family of tall, dark, skinny, freaky people it would be difficult to say I took after them, the only one they have ever said I was alike, the dead grandmother who one of them thought was the inspiration for The Snow Queen. She was also well known for putting it about with American Air Officers during World War Two. This was retold to me by my father who on reaching puberty French kissed his sister and cut all her hair off so she’d go to the nuns and ran away.
Not a great start to life and even without the filling in the sandwich you can see why this particular eleven year old thought it best to be dead
