(Some curse words used . . .)

I call myself Estie Morrow – for S.T. Morrow which, due to my parents’ warped sense of humour, is Seayah To . . .

I used to dream of getting it wiped off – like an eraser across a chalk board. Discovering just how much work and money was involved, I decided to hide it, not bury it completely. Anyways, I’ve long since divorced my family – and the cost of a new name feels strangely like I’d be paying alimony.

I grew up “off the grid;” besides being humorists, my parents were back to the landers and survivalists, before either movement was trendy outside of some very traditional circles. It was okay, I mean, it was communal without any culty stuff going on. I mean, the life style wouldn’t have made a decent unscripted television show. No so anticipated best seller tell all book that Netflix and Apple TV were trying to outbid each other the rights. Bullshit was the product of cows, not people.

It was chicken shit, cow manure, and horse dung. Literally. Everything was grass-fed, cage-free and free range, including us kids. Okay, so my parents saw the value in cash crops. Mostly legal cash crops. And mushrooms weren’t magic cuz fairies danced around them. But, understand, these were for the paying public, not our private consumption.

I figured every kid grew up knowing how to survive for a week in the wild with just a few items – like say a spoon, water bottle and piece of string. Could sex a chick or a marijuana plant. Practiced bomb shelter drills on every second Tuesday. Could field strip a rifle with their eyes closed. You know your basic childhood skill-set.

It wasn’t any sorta rural eden, paradise found. So don’t get the warm fuzzies. It was a farming community with underground bunkers. Just in case there was an apocalypse – and, no, the topic of zombies never came up around the dinner table.

We were home schooled but I doubt any school board ever set the curriculum. At least not a 20th century one. Some one room schoolhouse museum must be missing some of it’s artefacts, because I swear that’s where our musty textbooks, ink wells and dip pens must have come from.

We weren’t N. Night Shyamalan villagers or anything like that but none of this seemed weird to us then. But, you see, I got, well curious. Not sure why – just one day I decided to see where the dusty rutty road that ran by went. God only knows, my parents said I was wandering as soon as I could bump along the floor on my ass, legs stretched out, fists clenched, pushing down on the ground to propel me forward. No normal crawling for me.

Except for the shitty name thing, turned out all the stuff from my childhood that shoulda been a barrier to me becoming well-adjusted in the normalized/socialized world– well, I’d acquired talents that were greatly appreciated by certain subsets in outside society. Easy enough to get by, to prevail and prosper as those school books put it. And, well, in these crazy days, more than ever sought after talents. Anyways, at this rate,  and getting the going rate, I might just decide to pay that alimony after all.

The sorta bizarro stuff that gets written raw at 3 am on a sleep-depraved night . . . for mlmm taleweaver #304: barriers

image: Dusty Road by Letiel on DeviantArt