When I was ten, we lived in Virginia. I don't think I've mentioned this, but my father built roller coasters while I was growing up. We started out in Ohio, but we moved around a lot. All of our assorted aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins still lived in Ohio.

My Dad's youngest brother (he had seven siblings) had a severe drug problem. I don't really know for sure what he was on, because I was pretty young, and I can only remember the adults whispering that Linc was "ON DRUGS". I did hear when I was grown that he had been shooting up speed, and I have it on good authority that that will make you crazy.

My Dad loved Linc. He wanted nothing more than to see him off drugs, so he invited him to live with us. He thought if he could get him away from his drug suppliers, he might have a chance of staying off them. Uncle Linc stayed with us for a few months. It was weird having him around. He had long hair and a beard and was generally a wild looking character. He read the Bible a lot and spent a lot of time explaining to my mom what it all meant. He's always been a very outgoing and likeable guy, even when he was a nut. Uncle Linc is the kind of guy that people want to follow. He was sort of a like a mini-Charles Manson, only nicer and without the murders. My dad was a different kind of man altogether. He was charming and extremely handsome, but basically a traditional kind of guy. He believed in (still believes in) hard work and being independent.

The few months Uncle Linc was around went smoothly. As far as I know -- and again, I was just a kid at the time -- he stayed off drugs for the duration. After he'd been with us for a while, though, we all traveled to Ohio for a visit with the rest of the family.

When we went to Ohio, my family would stay with my grandparents, and I'm not sure where Linc went. One night, we'd been visiting one of my Aunts until the wee hours of the morning, and were driving home from there. My grandparents had asked us to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home, so we stopped by King Kwik, which was a convenience store near my Aunt's house. Dad went into the store while the rest of us waited in the car. Mom was in the front seat, and I was in the back with my two sisters.

When Dad came out of the store, Mom gasped, and I looked up. His face was completely bloody. He was pulling his shirt off over his head as he walked towards the car. Mom jumped out of the car and said to me, "Charlotte, keep the kids in the car!" and ran towards Dad. Casey, my middle sister was out of the car before I could grab her, but I grabbed on to Gwen, my little sister, and kept her in the car. Casey ran to Dad and threw her arms around him as he staggered towards the car with Mom guiding him. Casey pulled her arms from around Dad and looked at her hand and screamed -- it was covered with blood.

By this time, Dad had his shirt off and had wadded it up and pressed it to his face to stop the bleeding. Casey was back in the car, and Mom was getting ready to pull out. I looked up and saw Uncle Linc come out of the store. He was wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and looked all wild-eyed. He was shaking his fist and shouting something that I couldn't understand.

Mom pulled away and started speeding towards the hospital. I had no idea really what had happened. I was terrified. I thought someone had shot my father in the face. I was praying that he wouldn't die. Mom was terrified too. She was driving like a maniac. Dad kept saying, "Iris, the kids...slow down," and then we'd come to a red light and he'd say, "run it!" It seemed like a very long drive, but it probably only took a few minutes before we got to the hospital.

Dad was admitted and spent several days in the hospital. It turned out that my uncle had broken a wine bottle across his face, which nearly cut his nose off and split his upper lip entirely apart, as well as smaller cuts all over his face. The blow must have been utterly unexpected because Dad never even raised a hand to block it. Then when he turned to run out, Linc stabbed him in the back with the neck of the broken bottle. Fortunately the glass went in beside his spine, below his lung, and above his kidney. It could have been much worse.

I don't think he's ever forgiven his brother for trying to kill him. I don't think he's forgiven him for maiming his face. My dad is still a handsome man, although he's getting older and starting to look his age, but his face was never perfect in its beauty again. His nose still has a deep line running diagonally across it, and he has to wear a moustache to hide the scar in his lip.

Uncle Linc says he's apologized every way he knows how, but Dad says he's never heard an apology. I don't know who to believe. I think maybe Dad just can't hear him. Linc's a preacher now. Still has lots of followers, but he did get completely off the drugs a couple of years after he tried to kill my dad. And we never really found out what happened, except that Linc was in the store when Dad went in to buy milk. I don't know what he said to Linc to provoke him, or if he said anything. We'll probably never know because neither of them likes to talk about it -- although I did hear Uncle Linc tell the story during a revival meeting once and he blamed it on the devil.

On an odd side note, Dad managed to bleed all over a candy rack inside the King Kwik, and they made him pay for the candy. We ate Dentyne out of bloody wrappers all the way back to Virginia.

Kids will try to kill you. You can die from sheer embarassment from just being around them sometimes because you just don't know what they are going to say or do.

Once I was babysitting my niece, Whiskey (not her name) when she and Nate were both about two and a half years old. I was living in my nice apartment in the project at the time and was busy working on a drawing at my drawing table in the living room.

Let me interject that it's a bad idea to ever leave two children under the age of three unattended for any length of time.

The apartment wasn't that big and the door to Nate's room was open, so I was pretty sure I would hear if anything untoward happened. The kids were being unusually quiet and well behaved that day, and as any parent knows, that's probably a bad sign. I mean, these kids were generally at one another's throats. I'd seen them come to blows over imaginary cookies. ("You ate my cookie! Waaah!!" -- only there were no cookies).

So basically, I was enjoying the peace and quiet and getting some good work done on my drawing. Then all of a sudden, I heard this horrible buzzing clattering coming from the hallway and at about the same time, both the kids started giggling wildly and shrieking with laughter. What the fu...? I jumped up from the table and rushed to the hallway. There stood both the kids pointing at a beige colored plastic thing that was jumping up and down in the linoleum floor. Buzzzzz, bang, clatter, buzzz. I realized with horror that it was my vibrator, which had evidently been purloined from beneath my bed. It only took me a couple of tries to catch it, because that little sucker was movin'...but I grabbed it as quickly as I could and switched it off. Trying to maintain as much dignity as possible under the circumstances, I looked sternly at both children. I was going to give them a lecture about being in my room, but when they started asking, "what is it? can we play with it?" and I realized I was standing there holding it still, I finally had to give up and just stomp out of the room.

But you know, it really did look pretty funny jumping up and down in the floor. I've gotta say, I totally understand why they were so amused.