Most important, I can remember how I thought and viewed the world when I was a . This keeps me sane, and dangerous. My mom says when I was a little I could get absorbed for hours in some little thing. Then I had to go to school, from which I am still recovering. The first book I read by myself was Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl, at age five. To this day, I have the value system of Mr. Fox. But I didn't like the movie. I consider myself at the core of Generation X: I was 2 when Sesame Street started, almost 10 when Star Wars came out, and 15 when MTV got big. Most of my ancestry is German and Irish/British, but a quarter is French Canadian, which includes some Algonquin and Viking. I could pass for a quarter American Indian, but it's more like a thirtieth. (It's too complicated to be 1/32nd.) Somehow those genes hid through my red-haired grandfather and popped up in me. I was born with a tan. I was baptized Catholic, and when the priest said "Let all evil spirits now leave him," I burped. I was born and grew up in Pullman Washington, except ages 4-7, when I was in Rockville Maryland.