👼MY GUARDIAN ANGEL👼

'In The Beginning'

My family and I just moved into a light blue house with white trim on the end of the block in Long Island New York. It was 1985, my name is Kami Lou Collins and I am currently 7 years old. My family acted like we were normal and everything was fine, but the truth of the matter was, my parents were on the fritz getting ready to go thru a major divorce, they didn't think I knew what was happening, but just because I was young didn't mean I couldn't see and understand. My dad apparently snuck around with another woman behind my mom's back and knocked her up, and now she was wanting my dad to take responsibility and be the father of her child.

My dad wanted to break the secret love affair off with her and stay with my mom and me, but as soon as my mom found out about the incident she filed for divorce, and the only reason my dad was still with us, was because the divorce didn't go thru yet, and my mom wanted to move back to her hometown of Long Island so we could be closer to grandma. Me I didn't really care if my dad stayed with us or not, because he was always mean to me and hit me all the time taking out his anger on me. Once my mom moved us in successfully, she was so worried about me that I wasn't allowed to play in the front yard, I was only allowed to play in the fenced in backyard. 

My parents were fighting as usual and I couldn't stand to be around it so I went outside and decided to play ball with myself by hitting it on the roof and waiting for it to come back down for me to hit again. After my third or fourth hitting the ball it didn't come back down, at first I thought the ball got stuck on the roof, but when I heard slight laughter in the bushes so naturally I inquisitively investigated. I snuck around the house and toward the bushes where I heard the laughter coming from and that's when I met Crisstopher for the first time. He jumped out of the bushes and handed me my ball as he introduced himself to me and pointed out that he lived across the street from me.

So Crisstopher stayed over with me and played ball with me for hours as we talked to each other about all sorts of fun things, but when he brought up the subject of wanting to meet my parents and to ask them if it was alright if he became friends with me and could come over and play often. But when he saw the bruises on my arm and cheek, then heard the fighting going on in my house he quickly added two and two together. He was such a sweet boy, giving me hugs and letting me know that he would be there for me, Crisstopher was 7 years older than me which made him 13 years old, but he said I was the only other kid on the block that was close to his age other than his buddy Stoney that was 15 years old then he added that he couldn't wait for me to meet him, because he was a really cool guy.

We were just sitting on the front porch sharing a soda that he brought over along with some flavorful candy called Razzles, they were a sour strawberry chewing gum and candy, and they even popped and crackled on our tongues. But it was getting late, and I heard his mom calling for him, I looked up to see her, but Crisstopher held out his hand for me as he said he wanted me to meet his family. I hesitated about leaving my yard without my mom's permission, but she was looking out the window and didn't stop me, so I followed Crisstopher while holding his hand. Right when he introduced me to his mom Dimitra I liked her she was very sweet and as she called out for her other boys and her husband to come out and meet Crisstopher's new friend.

His entire family liked me instantly, his two older brother's were awesome, Costa spared no time and gave me the nickname Sweet Pea because he said I reminded him of the cute baby on his favorite cartoon Popeye, I gave him the nickname JeepJeep after my favorite character on Popeye, because it happened to be one of my favorite cartoons too. JD was very quiet, but he didn't give any special nicknames out all he did from that moment on was call me lil sister. When I met their dad, that's when instant love hit me, he was like the father I never had, and he treated me like I was his daughter and part of their family.

It took my mom a couple weeks before she actually met Crisstopher's family, but she met Crisstopher the second day we moved there, because I was always having him over to play, then he would come over and get me, so he could take me back to his house to play with all of his critters he had, it was like the Wild Kingdom in his backyard, for all the pets he had. He had 13 cats, 4 dogs, 2 goats, 4 doves, 1 cockatoo and 1 macaw, a python, a mouse, and he even had a huge tarantula, I liked them all, but my favorite was the male cockatoo he had named Gizmo, he could speak over 100 different words and mimic sounds of almost anything.

His snake's name was Slim, his mouse's name was Zeke, his huge spider was Charlotte, his macaw was named Elmo, 2 doves were names Freakie 1 and 2, and the other two were named Frix & Frax, his goats were named Billy and Nannie. His dogs were pretty cool too, he had a Bull Terrier named Spike, a Rottie named Houdini, a Dalmatian named Sparky, and a Black shepard named Richiardi. He had so many cats but the only ones that named were JD's cat Garfield, Costa's cat Jynx, Mama D's cat Duchess, and Crisstopher's cat Manxster.