I always knew I was adopted. First of all, I look nothing like my parents. Mom’s all blonde and gorgeous and sort of round everywhere. In a nice way, of course. But, I’m dark and kind of sleek. Dad used to tease her that maybe I came from the milkman. God knows, I do love milk. But she’d laugh and they’d glance at me and look kind of mysterious and so I began to suspect.
Also I noticed early on that neither seemed to have much grace, and yet I enjoyed walking the top of very narrow walls from early on. Mom said maybe I’d grow up to be a cat burglar. (laughs) When I was five I used to climb up to the wall at the edge of our property. Not to go over it, mind you, but just to walk along the edge and look down. I’d be able to see for miles and watch birds flying over, which was kind of cool. I like birds. I suspect they taste like chicken.
I’ve always liked high places. Like, at home, I hate hanging out on the living room rug when I’m watching TV with the siblings. I prefer sitting up on the kitchen counter and watching from there. It gives me a good angle too, because our dog walks by and then I can surprise him. Just a quick swat across his butt. Not too hard. It doesn’t hurt him, just surprises him so he jumps, and it makes me laugh my ass off.
See, even my sense of humor is different than my parents. They’d yell at me for stuff like that. They didn’t think it was funny when a neighbor stopped by to say hello and I threw up at her feet. It wasn’t my fault that she was sitting near me. I got a real kick out of the look on her face. Although I suppose it was my fault that I had pigged out on tuna earlier that day. But dear God, I love tuna. And salmon. And once I had this dish that was, like, a mixture of tuna and salmon and some sort of white fish and I freaking thought I had died and gone to heaven. And my breath smelled like fish for days and I was just fine with that. My friends kept sniffing near me and saying, What is that smell? (laughs)
And there was this time that we were visiting some friends of my parents and I guess she must have left some knitting on the table. Well, look, I was really young, I think. But I remember being compelled, compelled, to unravel it. They weren’t too happy about it. Someone took a picture of me, though, sitting there with yarn all around me and a guilty look on my face.
Squirrels in My Bra 