Chapter 1: Fractured family, friends and caretakers

At birth I was turned over to my grandparents as joint guardians with control over every aspect of my life. I did not know who my parents were. My grandparents were never married despite numerous proposals by my grandfather but maintained a continuing exclusive relationship with benefits but with adjacent separate households. I resided with my grandmother but with frequent visits by my grandfather.

My grandmother was a glamorous exchange student from Russia attending the University of Texas when she was courted and seduced by my wealthy grandfather who was totally smitten with her beauty and grace. That relationship produced a daughter, my mother. She rebuffed his pleas for marriage but accepted his offers of financial security for all expenses to obtain her doctorate, a palatal home and car. He further assured her that through political contributions and contacts she could enjoy a position as a tenured professor immediately upon earning her doctorate. With her Ph.D. in hand she insisted on being referred to as Doctor by everyone.

Grandfather, a graduate of the university in petroleum engineering, through innate intelligence and hard work created a wholly owned highly respected drilling and heavy construction firm. During the Gulf Wars, he was called to active duty in the Marine Corps to deal with the numerous oil well fires. His highly successful actions in this role resulted in promotion to General before release from active duty. Subsequently he was generally referred to by all as General.

Frequently an uncle appeared on the scene and was referred to as Captain since he wholly owned a major oil field related boat construction and leasing along with helicopter leasing firm. He at one time expressed the opinion that he and the General needed to consolidate their holdings to make it easier for me to control in the future. I gave this little thought at the time.

The Doctor's home was staffed by exchange students that chose to stay in the US upon completion of their studies. These included a Chinese housekeeper and a Latin American cook.

An executive in the General's company accumulated serial trophy wives. Unfortunately one became pregnant, produced a daughter, decided that motherhood was not her style and departed to further her career. Again, the good Doctor accepted the child into her home. She was born only one month after I was. She was named Shandal and became my shadow from crawler stage on. This earned her the nick name Sha. Fortunately she was extremely intelligent and was able to develop as rapidly as I. She quickly became my playmate, friend, companion and confidant.

The Doctor insisted that we be homeschooled by university students majoring in the subjects to be covered at the graduate or post graduate level. This excluded elementary majors which she held in contempt. Our rate of achievement was astounding according to all reports. At the earliest possible level we started accumulating advance placement status in each of the courses of study.