I am not sue why my memories are strong about my life at such a young age but after I turned seven my Dad disappearederstand and was never to return. Maybe my memories are few but vivid because I didn't have the luxury of being a normal kid. More like a Mini camera that observed and tried to make sense of what was going on around me. I just seemed soak up people and muse about it. I remember asking my mom why aren't they showing other people now? What do you mean she asked putting on lipstick in the bathroom mirror? You know take the camera off us and show different people in this movie? I was having a really hard time getting her to understand that I was on a stage and so was she and the rest of my family. It was like we are all actors and the camera now needed to pan away and show some other people's lives and stories and activities. Never mind I thought. My Dad had brothers and a sister. They were all fostered and or adopted out after his Dad left them high and dry and his mother got really I'll from diabetis. He was not because he was to old. He joined the Army when he was like sixteen and he stayed there his whole working life. When he told me that story I was grown and had not seen him for eleven years. I was about eighteen and my mother was institutionalized for the dozenth time. I asked him if he ever saw him again. No why would I want to see him, he left us and never helped us out. I just sat there thinking doesn't he hear himself. He was replaying his childhood with his own kids and he was so self absorbed that he didn't even for one moment hear himself. There was no correlation in his mind at all. Wow I said that must of been hard I said, yes it was he said looking out into the distance. The irony not lost on me. He too grew up very poor. We just turned out so different. He was bitter. I was hopeful and never the two meet. He locked himself down and never knew how to leave his self made prison. He was a good soldier. He too was institutionalized. He was frugal beyond measure. Afraid he would be broke. His clothes were army issued his haircut by an army barber, his food cooked in a mess hall and his bunk was made neatly with corners tucked in tight enough to bounce a quarter off of. A memory rolled across that ever rolling movie screen of me being five and him laying on the sofa in his Army issued t-shirt. How many pieces of gum do you have in your mouth he asked. I was tring to learn to blow a bubble. Every red blooded kid knows it takes several of those soft pink pillowy confections to practice this important skill. One I lied. Come here he said. I walked within a foot of him. Take that out of your mouth he said pointing at my face and jabbing his fingers at the air. Out I took the wad of pink saliva dripping blob. I placed it into the palm of my hand. That is not one p