I am a product of both my genes and my environment. The eldest of three sons, born to a stubborn Englishman, who immigrated to the US after serving in the British Royal Navy during WWII, and an equally willful mother who was born and raised to be a proper Southern woman...Oh man, watch those sparks fly.
We were raised in California, a small Connecticut town and in Southern Maryland, close to the border of Washington DC.
Much to my parents’ dismay, I performed poorly as a student. Not because I lacked basic intellect, but because the standard materials failed to ignite my sense of wonder and imagination.
My initial venture into college ended dismally in an “incomplete” for most classes, as the lure of the local pub proved much stronger than the mediocre world of academia provided by Price Georges Community College.
Lacking any direction, means of viable support or any marketable skills for that matter, I joined the Army. In the Army I became a Military Policeman, and over time, advanced in rank and skills until I was inducted onto a Drug Suppression Team, an event that has both defined me and set me on a course so firmly, that despite failed marriages, multiple changing careers, the whirlwind of a successful marriage (finally got that one right) and the wonder of children, I can still look back and see the wake left behind me leading straight to the days of that team. The misadventures, friendships and scrapes we got into then, tempered the rawness of the boy I was, into a man.
A flawed man, left unfinished and rough around the edges. A man generally not fit to live and play with others. My wife seems to be able to see through that and has continued with my children to try to finish the job. Seeing to it that I refrain from being too offensive and brutish, unless I am solely in the company of my equally offensive and brutish friends. Some things resist change better than others.