I’ve been delinquent. Delinquency’s my bag. Ask anyone. I’ve got the Welcome Back Kotter theme running through my head. Speaking of heads, my mother cracked mine open when I was sixteen months old. Twenty four stitches. You can still see the scar. She was running down the hallway of our old house trying to answer the phone. She had me in her arms. My head slumped back and hit the brick corner of the kitchen wall. Part of my brain fell out and the dog ate it. And that, my friends, is how I got my superpowers.

Now, don’t get me wrong, having superpowers at such a young age can be just as much a nightmare as a blessing. The first drawback I discovered was the dog. The dog and I were “linked,� you might say, because it had eaten part of my brain. Therefore, I would have to keep track of it. On the other hand, for fun I would make the dog fly around the room, or instantaneously teleport it onto the roof so my parents would freak out. Not unlike The Beastmaster, I could also see through the dog’s eyes. This also bothered people that came over to our house. Our dog would sit there intently staring at them for hours, never moving. I, on the other hand, would just sit in my room and watch them watching the dog. The other downside of these powers was the intense headaches I would get after using them. But, then again, who’s really going to tell their neurologist that the reason blood is coming out of your six-year-old’s ears and nose is because he has some superpower connection with the family dog. It’s safe to say that on several occasions my mother barely escaped being sent to an asylum.

As the years passed my connection with the dog grew stronger. I began to resent the dog a little. I felt cheated somehow because she was a terrier and not something menacing like a German shepherd or a Doberman. There’s nothing more terrifying than seeing a twelve-pound ball of scraggly white and brown fur flying at you from out of nowhere, despite what Monty Python might lead you to believe. Even worse, I think it scared the dog more than any of my victims. By this time it wasn’t much fun teleporting the dog onto the roof or making it fly around the room. Her eyes were also starting to cloud over, because of cataracts. But, as I was to discover, not all my powers had revealed themselves to me. On my twelfth birthday I discovered that I could hear using the dog’s ears. Quite satisfied that I would never have to attend school again for the rest of my life, I began to grow my hair out and decided to live in the forest.

It’s safe to say that I got into a lot of trouble during those years. There wasn’t anything said about me that I didn’t know. With my secret weapon, I became a shadowy figure sought after like some ancient oracle by the kids of my neighbourhood. Some people even doubted my existence, claiming that it was all a hoax. But that didn’t stop the never-ending numbers of pilgrims that sought me out in my forest sanctuary. They would comb the woods during the summer months, bringing me gifts of Kool-Aid and grape Hubba Bubba. Life was indeed all that I had dared to dream it would be.

I spent the better part of a decade living deep within the confines of the woods. I created an elaborate series of treetop dwellings modelled after the Swiss Family Robinson tree at Disneyland. Complex water pumps, folding staircases, and bamboo heating ducts were among many of my great accomplishments. The animals of the forest also came to know me and eventually proclaimed me the supreme emperor of their woodland domain. But, by the age of nineteen, I knew that my time in the forest was coming to an end. One stormy night, following one of the most violent thunder and lighting events in B.C. history, my faithful super companion fell off a high rope bridge connecting two of my various huts and plummeted to her death. After spending her whole life flying around I’m sure she felt quite surprised by the fact that she couldn’t actually do it herself. That’s gotta be a bitch.

After finding the dog, I buried her remains and spent the better part of a week rigging my forest palace to self-destruct. And then, bidding farewell to my animal subjects, I left the woods never to return. After that I pretty much just started a band and, well, you know the rest.