zero hour

on my own terms

the life & times & misadventures

of

The Incorrigible Mr. Zeppo

as narrated by his alter ego

Aldrich Z. Wordsworth III

Though I did not understand it at the time, I was raised in the privileged position of wealth.

Not the kind of money that dynasties are founded on, but wealth nonetheless. The kind of wealth that is often taken for granted by those who have attained it. To any outsider looking in on my early life, it would seem that I too was taking that wealth for granted. In my defense, for the majority of my youth, I was blissfully unawares. Ignorant. Blind.

I was outright lied to.

My "father" (and I write that with the proverbial "bunny ears" [and yes I actually make the hand gesture when talking about him] because he is not my biological father. The identities of my real biological parents would remain a mystery for most of my adolescent life... but I digress...) Explaining my family can get a little... confusing. Mostly because my birth parents gave me up for adoption the day I was born, and the man who adopted me did not raise me himself. In order to facilitate you, dear reader, in distinguishing between the three father figures in my life, I have labeled them as follows:

"Dad", the man that raised me.
"My Benefactor", the wealthy yet not entirely present adoptive father who took me in.
"Mr. Zeppo", the man I later discovered to be my biological father.

The three of them, it turns out, were quite strange and unusual men, each in his own preposterously odd way. I hope that this will help, you dear reader, tell them apart.

My benefactor, Aldrich Wordsworth II, had built an empire of mini-empires. Second rate corporations, selling second rate products to third rate nations. And yet, despite his wealth, I was raised in a humble fashion, in a humble home. Being a busy man, he delegated my upbringing to the people I am proud to call "Dad" and "Mom". They were a pair of eccentric and deeply closeted hippie mystics (and I mean deeply secretive, new-age, woo-woo nut-jobs. The kind of people who believed themselves capable of talking to the trees, predicting the future, and traveling through time and space in their sleep.) They kept their insanity under wraps ("low-pro" as the kids say), maintaining a cool, post-modern, consumerist facade out in public. They could fit in anywhere publicly, from fanciest of fine dining establishments to the most opulent of shopping malls. But privately they would, on occasion, let fly that heathen transcendentalist freak-flag and waved it brazenly and without shame at home, but only amongst the most carefully of hand selected house guests.

Oh, the stories I could share with you, dear reader.....

Mountains of mystic, occult, and quantum mechanical physics books that I was forced to read and write book reports about before the age of 11.

Late-night lectures about sacred geometry, fractal-ism, and the nature of the universe's manifest consciousness.

The vision-questing shroom incident of my 13th summer...
also known as:
How I lost my mind and learned to love the void behind illusion.
(Dr. Strangelove reference anyone?)

...and so many others...

But I digress, again...

They (Who were they? To be honest I never really caught their actual names. While that may sound odd, you must understand- they called each other by all kinds of ridiculous pet names, and occult names, and formal titles) whoever they were, they apparently worked for my adoptive father
(aka "my Benefactor") in some capacity or another. Despite this being something they did for money, they loved me and raised me as their own. For better or worse, I am their son as much as I am the son of the parents who gave me up for adoption.