Born 1990, Tampa Florida

I grew up in a small lancashire town, started writing when I was 7 - first story was about a rocket ship to Mars. I would be 21 before another novelist introduced me to Ray Bradbury's work. I am from suburbia and all that that gory little backwater entails. Now a writer and Univeristy lecturer. Born 1975 and supposedly control my own destiny due to the date I was born on. I was 27 before I learnt to drive...

Where in Lancashire? My wife's Mancunian (from Stretford). I was 29 before I got my driver's license and the wife is still talking about learning to drive someday. As for my origins, they're posted somewhere in the archives, I think; or one could read "Marionettes, Inc."

Gee, I thought people not learning to drive happened only in cities where it's impossible to keep a car. Like most kids from rural America, I got my license the instant I turned 16.

Re: driving, my case was unusual; but in the north of England, many people grow up in the same town as their great-grandparents (hence the strong regional accents), don't travel very far, and when they do travel it's often on foot, bicycle, trams, or buses. This has changed in recent years, of course, but in my wife's generation it was still very much the case. In California, it's common to have to go many miles to work, school, church, shopping, etc; where similar distances in Europe would take you through very different regions and even countries! Judging by the, uh, 'style' of California driving, I assumed one was granted a driver's licence at birth!

In NY at birth you are issued an identification number by the state DMV. Another way of keeping tabs (even if you never actually get license.) Is this the case where y'all from?

("Knock, knock")
Got to go! Someone is at the door...

Huh, in my day you didn't even get a Social Security Number till high school. Nowadays it's practically at conception.

Born 1968 in Illinois, but consider myself from Michigan where I currently live in Royal Oak. And I too, didn't get my Social Secuirty Number until I got my first job at the age of thirteen (small movie theatre in northern Minnesota). It's kind of scary, dandelion, my sons who are now six and four HAD to get a SSN, like, instantly.

But an id from the DMV in New York? That's wrong.

I walked a couple miles through the woods along the Santiam river to the post office which was an extension of the house of an elderly lady (whose name escapes me) to get my social security card. Things have certainly changed.
Heck, in those days we had steam-powered television!

BrII, was that long-ago walk to the PO and gentlewoman's house up hill both ways?

(Do you remember what the weather was like that day?)

"Of course", to both questions!

I was born in a little Cape Cod cottage of my own construction in a small town in Connecticut.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Chapter 31,

Neat trick, building a house before birth!

Yes, no doubt prefabricated.

OK, BII. Your don't get off that easy. Back to the day of the long walk:

"It was a day like no other day. The sky was the bluest blue that ever filled the heavens. A cloud or two floated by casually. The sun shone down warming my face. Bird darted here and there, then flying off to disappear beyond the horizon

or

"It was a dark and stormy night."

Alas, my memory is not that good! I know it was in the summer of 1970 and I was probably barefoot, and needed the SSN so as to apply for government assistance as I was out of work. I walked everywhere in those days, so the walk to the P.O. was pretty much a daily routine.