ON this day, Twenty years ago, it was January 22nd in the year of our lord, 1997. It would be later this year, on the evening of September 10th, that a *young man named Jeffrey Shea was born to his Mother, Carole Lesley Shea, and his Father, William Peter Shea Sr. He would be the youngest of Four sons, his brothers being William Peter Shea Jr., Jonathan Tucker Shea, and Robert Moore shea.
I can definitely look back on being born as a pretty big deal for me. I'm not being melodramatic when I say that everything about my life changed once I was born. I would rate the experience at 4/5 lullabies about stars.
Some time after I was born, and had lived for some time, My two parents came together and decided that it would be a good idea to get a divorce.
After much divorcing and time passed, I then lived in two different houses, one, My Dad's, and the other, My Mom's.
I believe it was because of this that I was raised a certain way. My two parents, suddenly forced to take control of their own lives and responsibilities instead of sharing them, became more like older siblings that I lived with than parents. It probably didn't make a huge difference, but I can't really be sure. I think it made them a bit more honest with me and my brothers, which is something I value. Ultimately, I ended up with two very loving parents who were preoccupied for most of the time, and three mischievous-as-hell older brothers who I spent most of my time around.
I think my parents' divorce effected my two oldest brothers far more than me or my third oldest brother. They were both older, and more mentally cognizant during "the thick of it". Truthfully, I prefer to avoid being melodramatic about it. If not only because it wasn't a huge deal emotionally for me, I don't like taking these ice-breaker activities to dump out my purse.
We were largely unsupervised, either being at home while our mom was at work, or out and around while our dad worked from home. We prowled around our neighborhoods like a miscreant pack of wolves. We watched TV that was rated above our age demographic, lit fireworks in our yard, and tainted the quaint neighborhood youths with our rich vocabulary of swear-words.
I will admit that as a child I was kind of a bastard. I had friends who's houses I would go to, but more often than not, just to eat their food. Looking back, I commend my resourcefulness, because I was hungry, but the slyness is not lost upon me.
Anyway, after much smoke-bombing trash cans and time passed, I began to develop an interest in the arts.
As a child, I loved storytelling. In pursuit of these interests, I owned and either broke or lost a number of Cameras, and drew on every sheet of many reams of 8.5x11 paper. I would either have been making a film with friends, or creating an entire comic book about my own cartoon characters. Many of the stories I told through these mediums were 100% mayhem. If it was something I filmed, It would just be a showcase of some practical or digitally composited film effect, like an explosion, or a rudimentary dummy flying off a house roof. If it were a comic, it was about a human/cat hybrid stopping a giant explosion or something.
After many cameras broken, household printers running empty, and time passed I ended up sort of making a career of my skills.
* I wasn't born a young man, i was born a little baby.
