I guess I will start at the beginning. I have an usual upbringing that many people probably don't know about. I was born in the wilds of Africa. My "mother" found me laying underneath a huge Blumbo tree. Now, I know what you are thinking, that parents tell their kids all the time that they were found here or there, but in my case it's really true. I had been left there by my natural mother, Simba, who was the Queen of the Shalamma people.

Here is the tree I was found under.

The Shalamma people are a tribe of non-native's who once lived in the lust forests, but because of years of destroying the earth, they now are a small group who roams the wilds of Africa with the mighty animals of the deserts.

Tree Monkey

I was wrapped in nothing more than a lions skin, where my mother had left me. It's not known if she left me there on purpose or if she was killed by a ravenous group of tree monkeys. I was a little more than one year old, or in Shalamma years, 10 days old.

I could not walk like a normal person. My people don't walk on just two legs, we use one hand on the ground to help with the large growth on our right sides. The growth doesn't really hurt; my people have become accustomed to the hindrance.

Here is a photo of one of my people - he's one of the Kings people. You can tell because his growth is on the front and he has clothes.

My new "mother" had mine removed because it was too hard to get a t-shirt over it (my people didn't wear clothes, so it wasn't a problem before). It was hard for me to lose my growth, it was like, as you American's say, a security blanket and I missed it very much. Giomie, the name I gave my growth, was my friend and it was sad to see him go.

The rest of my upbringing is pretty normal. I went to school like normal American kids. (The English language was somewhat hard to learn. I kept smacking my face, which meant I wanted a hug, but my "mother" had a hard time trying to figure this out and she would then smack me on the butt and tell me to stop, which in my language means she wanted a drink of water.) So after we fixed our language barrier, we lived a pretty happy life.

Lion

Every so often I try to remember my family and real mother. I long to be back in my mother's one free arm and have her throw a rock at me (which, in my language, means she loves me dearly). I hope to go back there one day and sit in that Blumbo tree and peer down on that dead lion below it and say, "I miss Giomie."