2nd Verse............................

I was born in a small town in Ohio called Defiance. Needless to say that city name fits me like a glove........let's break it down. My parents married right after high school and my mother got pregnant on the honeymoon with my older sister, we will refer to her as Mean (I secretely adore her, but it's more fun to call her mean). I was hatched two years later (I still think my twin was kidnapped from the hospital.....if you're out there somewhere, call me). So, my parents were 21, 22 with two kids..........babies raising babies. My parents divorced when I was two amongst a scandle of debauchery and adultry.

After the big D, my mother ran away with a much older man and we moved to Orlando, Florida. He had two daughters just about the same age as my mother......they married and thus stepfather number 1. He had already raised his two kids, so he wasn't really interested in raising two more. They were married three years and then he left my mother to go back to his first dying wife. I think it was an easy out.

So, we moved again.......to an apartment where she met stepfather number 2. This begins my elementary school tally as well (7 elementary schools from K to 6). We moved a couple times with him before the next big D. The picture I'm trying to paint is that we moved a lot. This was responsible for the meeting of my best friend, TV (not transvestite, the television). It was also responsible for my immense imagination. I took the best of TV and made a new life in my own mind. I had the parents from Brady Bunch, the grandparents from the Waltons, and the superpowers of the Six Million Dollar Man (we had the same name so that was super cool). I unfortunately didn't have his powers which resulted in a few embarassing "acts of strength" at a local park. It turns out, concrete benches are a little heavier than I had originally thought.

In the third grade a friend of my mother told her I was going to become gay if I didn't get a stable father figure fast, so she sent me to live with my father in Indiana. He was a workaholic, had remarried when I was five, and I think I saw him twice the whole time I lived there. Being the new kid AGAIN, TV was my friend. I went to shool with the Sweathogs, worked in a brewery with Laverne & Shirley, and became suprisingly attracted to the Bionic Woman............who knew? I had her poster which also doubled as a calendar. I only lived there one year because my grandmother (my mom's mom) died, and my mother moved back to Ohio. She brought stepfather number 3 with her.

The next couple of years played out like a bad Lifetime movie. This husband was abusive and put my mother in the hospital a couple of times. She would get out, they would go see a priest, and then get back together (I know you've seen this movie). The police were at our house more often then anywhere else which I think caused a small rise in crime in our fair town. We were very lucky though it only took three times of getting back together for my mother to take the good ole' Louisville Slugger (it's a bat for you non-sports people) after him. It was one of the only times I was proud of my mother. The neighbors were standing outside as she chased him out of the house. They were all clapping and cheering as she bashed in his truck. She hit a homerun that day.

In the beginning...................

I call my blog, "Things I know". This refers to a vast experience of life in general. As Madonna once said, I don't condone a lifestyle, I simply show one. However, I'm not an artist and not a big fan of Madonna, so whatever.

I was born Stephen Carl Brinkman on March 22nd 1967. Let's break that down........My mom wanted to name me Kile (her maiden name), however my dad wanted to name me Steve. A fought ensued, and my mother only agreed if she could spell it Stephen. That's better than what it could have been, Ralph William Brinkman III (dad's name but with Jr. at the end). Stephen means "Crowned One", which in my case, means I hit my head a lot. On the day I was born Bobby Hull scored is 52nd goal of that season. For you hockey fans I think that means something special, for the rest of us that's the most exciting thing that happened that day. I share my birthday with the following famous people, William Shatner, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Matthew Modine, Bob Costas, and Reese Witherspoon. This means nothing to me but usually people get very excited about it. I do secretly like that I share a birthday with William Shatner, I mean he's the captain of the Enterprise.