My late sister told me our mother knew she was pregnant at Xmess, 1962, but was embarrassed to say anything. She prayed the whole time I would be born before she turned 41, (didn't happen) and that I would not be "Mongoloid" i.e, have Downs Syndrome. (I don't). She was sick as a dog for months and could only eat watermelon. There are no pictures of her pregnant with any of her children.
This sister, the younger of the two, turned 15 that summer. There was no air conditioning. As teenagers and parents typically do, they argued alot. Sister left to go to a swimming competition in West Virginia and told her bitterly "I hope you have that baby before I get back".
Friday night, 2 August 1963, my father gets home and it is time to go to the hospital. I often say my father was drunk when I was born. I say this because my father was always drunk, except for the summer of 1983, and it was Friday night. When my elder sister, then age 20, got in that evening from her summer job, they were leaving for the hospital.
My mother has only said she was in a great deal of pain with my birth, which occured the next morning at 6:55 AM. Having had two daughters she had picked out girls names, in the mistaken belief she could only have girls. She proposed naming me Joseph. My father, in strongest evident to me of his intoxication, named me for the former U.S. President, Harry S. Truman.
My father returned home that morning, my elder sister already up. He told her she had a brother, and according to her, her responce was: "You want me to fix you an egg?"
The two sisters later beseeched our mother to please not let me go thru life with the name of a U.S. President. She said she would take care of it and secretly had the first name changed to that of my father's, an idoitic name of an even earier president that he never like himself. He did not discover this until I was in the 1st grade and eagerly showed him my report card. I still remember that argument. "What the hell do they have__________ on here for?"
There was still a great admiration for Harry S. Truman as I was growing up. People often made the prediction I would one day be President (If elected, I would run and hide). You should listen to people who have a consensous.
I despized my name for the first 30 or so years. I was the only person with such. I have only met one other person in 43 years now with the same name. My father died in 1985, my sister in 1998. Prior to her death, I think it was about 1995, I decided I would "Fix It", I had stood it long enough. For $26 I legally changed my first name to President. People thought I was insane. "I am just fulfilling prophecy" I told them.
But today, I am going off into the woods, comune with Ow-ee's cousins, write, pray for the world, and best of all, turn off my f**kin' cell phone.