T John Nelson was born at a young age.His parents were predominantly mammalian bipedal hominids who inhabited the third planet out from a dwarf star (Spectral Type 'G', Luminosity Class 'V' Main-Sequence Star) near the edge of one of a galaxy, locally known as the Via Lactea by his Roman ancestors and translated literally to the 'Milky Way' by those who apparently had no desire to continue speaking Roman.His family lived in a region of that planet which was not quite completely covered in water called Oregon, a name meaning "Origin of the next mosquito apocalypse". In keeping with the traditions of his hominid progenitors, John eventually learned to walk upright.  Following that achievement, he maintained a level and course of activities that, to the casual observer, may have been misinterpreted as intended for his early expiration, as many of the more exciting of these activities ended with open wounds or broken bones.  However, John blamed most of these on the vagaries of the local gravitation or his own assumed immortality and the rest on his ignorance of the Laws of Physics. In due course, John learned that he cannot fly, that brakes are more than just a good idea on a down-hill race on a second-hand bicycle, that electric fences are appropriately named and that one shouldn't tease large animals; be they feline, canine, bovine, equine or human.Becoming bored with his attempts at self-annihilation, John’s parents decided to send him to school on the pretense that he might eventually learn something useful; or at least give his parents a much-needed break.In school, John discovered several things in short order. The first was that he liked to learn.  Second, was that he loved to read and write, and third was that he was quickly labeled 'hard-headed'.  This last point was first illustrated when his third-grade teacher stood in front of the class and recited "I" before "E" (for the record John was fine with this rule up to this point), but then his teacher continued, except after "C" and sometimes... (And suddenly he was not!). John raised his hand and asked why they were given a rule and then a list of exceptions longer than the rule itself?  The teacher looked John sternly in the eye and told him that it was really more of a helpful guide than a rule and furthermore, if he didn't like it, his only option would be to memorize the spelling of every word in the dictionary (a hefty tome, which she held aloft for emphasis.)  And nobody, she said, looking down at young John in his little wooden desk, could do that. John refused to go outside for recesses that day and every day for the next twenty-five school days. Instead, he spent that time memorizing all of the words that began with "A" that first day, and "B" the next, until he had memorized the entire dictionary.  On the final day, he closed the book, confidently raised his hand and said "Quiz me."   Perhaps not surprisingly, it wasn't the last time John was sent home with an exasperated note to his parents.Despite all of his efforts against what turned out to be a biological inevitability, John grew up. By then his hair was long and so were his telomeres. And he found, much to his surprise, that his love of reading stories had spilled over into a love of telling stories. In fact, some of his best stories in those early years were those made up on-the-spot; a feat witnessed by a state trooper who had pulled John over late one starry night:"Great, Officer! I'm glad you're here! Get in! I am a freelance photographer who was trying to catch up with a UFO until you stopped me! If we hurry, we can still catch up to them!" Weirdly, this resulted in both a speeding ticket and a field sobriety test.After many adventures, which included knocking out a charging bull, surviving a high-speed car wreck, swimming with sharks in the East China sea, marrying his high school sweetheart and seeing his amazing children grow up, John has somehow managed to persist in a semblance of mammalian adulthood – meaning of course that he grew older, but has yet to master either wisdom or maturity. And then, as an apparently Cosmic sense of humor would have it, just as John became comfortable as a land mammal on a planet filled with water, his joints began to ache and his hair and telomeres both got shorter.Undaunted, John maintains his predominantly mammalian bipedal lifestyle. And, when he is not distracting himself with riding an electric unicycle, hypothesizing about the origins of human consciousness, trying to 3D-print a dinosaur skeleton or lighting a candle for each time he has ridden the third planet out around its central dwarf star, John still enjoys the quiet times to read and write.Read more about this authorRead less about this author