story of me. the beginning.

beginning of a few stories about how i became who i am. i was born in "milwaukee" in the year 1980. my parents had already had two children by this point, my brother josh and sister anna. obviously i don't know anything about what happened at this point of my life, thus, i'm referring to stories i've been told over the years. when i was about the age of 6 months (?) my family packed up and moved to colorado on a train, in hopes of a new job for my father that didn't end up the way it was supposed to, and we had ended up moving back not too long after that. we moved from place to place when i was younger, milwuakee area, oconto falls area, and wisconsin rapids. some of my earliest memories are when we lived in oconto falls. memories of myself following my father on fishing trips...that i wasn't supposed to go on! i remember waking up really early one day, getting our fishing gear ready in dad's "workshop" and remember bits and pieces about that day, from the white bucket we used to put the fish in, to having corn flakes to eat? the only other memory i can remember in oconto falls was when i was attacked by a swarm of ground bees. josh, anna and i were on our way back to our house...when i noticed they were pretty far in front of me. i remember running to catch up with them down a trail, running over a log (?) and then got attacked. i don't remember being attacked, or anything that happened until i got to the door of the house. i remember waiting to get in. i remember something about a bath tub...but i'm not 100 % on that.


then comes rapids. we moved to rapids when i was 4. i vaguely remember the trip to rapids in "pudge's" (?) van. he was my dads friend. i remember arriving while it was dark out..i believe this was at our apartment on 21st avenue...which also the place where i broke my arm. i remember being told to "hey matt, climb up in the tree and take down that "no tresspassing" sign!" and falling down. i don't remember the hospital, but do remember coming home in our red car...and losing the marker that i was supposed to have so people could sign my cast. we had also lived in an old wood house acrossed the street from the east side pool, that had wooden floors. i remember it being cold, and i also remember that josh had a dog. sometime after that is when we moved into a house on 22nd street, from "housing"...the place in rapids where low income people rented houses. this is about the time where i begin remember most things that happened in my life. i remember sam being a baby, i remember going fishing at "the pond" which was 2 blocks away from our house. i also remember going to kindergarten at children's choice. for some reason, i went to this school, while josh and anna went to washington? i think that i took the bus there? this is when i had my first crush, i have no idea what her name was, but do remember that her father was a cop, and i used to go to her house and play on the swings. i can remember the first day of kindergarten when mom dropped me off, and gave me a kiss, which embarassed the heck out of me! mrs. pape was the name of the teacher. i remember going on a field trip to a zoo, it was either the one in baraboo, or the one in madison...although the zoo in baraboo does look familiar, unlike the vilas zoo here in madison. when we were on that field trip, i remember getting my hand stuck in a little gum ball machine! i remember bus rides, and singing "it's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring" song! i remember the neighbors we had...one crabby old man, and a couple houses down, josh had a friend who lived in a brown house. after we lived there for a year, we moved into the house on 21st avenue on the other side of town. we moved there in the summer, and went swimming all summer long because we had pool pins that my parents got at a reduced rate, if not free, because we were poor. most of my childhood through adolesconce occured at this house. i could go on and on with memories from this house, but i'll only share a few with you today! i remember making my first friends shortly after we moved, when my dad said he saw some kids on the street behind us. he brought me over there, and there i was introduced to jason garski, and chris martin...who were neighbors. i remember my dad telling me to ask one of them (i think it was jason) for a piece of gum! we spent a lot of time playing football/baseball etc in both chris's backyard, and also in the street! we used to have "homerun derbies" in chris's backyard..where we would have to hit the ball over the "fence" of railroad ties! most of our football playing occured in the street. i used to have quite an arm for throwing footballs and baseballs...pretty accurate, and could throw further than any person i played games with! through chris, i met adam morris. he lived in the green house on the other side of our block, also in one of the low income houses. we saw plenty of families come and go in those two houses. we used to have sleepovers at adams house, chris would have to bring extra clothes and blankets because he used to wet his bed. :) a couple years after we moved in, adam and his family moved to a white house on grand avenue in rapids. it wasn't too far away, but for a 8 year old, it was! before he moved though, i do remember one of the most terrible things myself and my brothers have ever done! one day, we went to adams house to play. we opened the door, and no one was home! i'm not sure which brother was with me...(i think it was zach) but we had ended up stealing a whole bunch of their stuff!! i brought over my grey backpack, and filled it up with various things, including a bunch of change which they kept in an old "cheese balls" container! jason's mom had called when they were gone, seeing if it was okay for him to come over and play...why we answered the phone, i don't know...but if we didn't, the police would have been called to their house for a robbery!!! jason's mom had ended up catching us while we were there, and brought us home. my dad had brought all of the stuff we took back to them...and we got one of the worst "spankings" i remembered getting! (it didn't happen that often) man-o-man were we in trouble!!!

it's time to go pick up my girls, i'll post more another day!!!!