As a toddler, I spent a lot of time on my Fisher-Price telephone, which is odd considering I now avoid the phone at all costs.

It used to freak the Hell out of my parents. It shouldn't have. It was a toy telephone. It was designed for pretending to talk to someone. One of the things that freaked them out was that I was 3 or 4 and instead of the typical "Hi. Hi. Hello. Bye. Hi..." gibberish that kiddies say into the plastic, I was having regular conversations. I wasn't very vocal, normally. I started talking late, and as a shy girl, tried to keep to myself as much as possible. Not so when on the fake phone.

"Hi Michael. Yes,...Mommy and Daddy are fine, Michael. Yes,...I'm being a good girl, Michael. Yes, I'll watch them for you, Michael." and more of the same and similar.

The other thing that freaked them out, especially my father, was my obsessive use of the name, "Michael" during my one-sided, yet coherent conversations. See, I guess a that age, I didn't know anybody by that name. They reasoned that I could've picked it up from the tee vee, but when asked why I chose the name Michael, my response was "because I'm talking to Michael."

My father had a brother. I never got to meet my Uncle Michael, for he died at the age of 15, before my parents even started dating. The story goes, so I've been told, that Michael was on the football team and popular with everyone (both high schools in the area closed so more than 300 people could go to his funeral), while my father was a shy, cranky, jean-jacket wearing druggie. Michael looked up to his older brother, while my dad loved, but was jealous of, his younger brother. On the night of his death, Michael stole some drugs from my dad. I know Daddy liked acid, but I was told it was hash that had been stolen. The end of the evening found Michael, on foot, playing chicken with a car that happened to have a drunk driver. Michael didn't jump, the drunk ran him over.

I didn't even know he existed until I was 10, when my dad finally put his photo on a shelf.

"Who's that? Is that Daddy?"

"No, Crystal, that's Daddy's brother, Michael."

"Oh, he's cute. I didn't know Daddy had a brother.'

"He died a long time ago, sweetie. Before you were born."

"Oh, that's sad."

Another interesting thing on a similar topic:

My mother was pregnant many times, but I'm an only child. She had a tilted uterus and most of the pregnancies miscarried in between the third and fourth months. During that time in her pregnancy with me (which never would have happened if the pregnancy before me had gone full-term), she had a dream*. In that dream, Michael handed her a little baby, wrapped in a pink blanket.

*I've started a dream journal. It's here. There's not much of interest there yet. I don't know if there ever will be.