You know the day it dawns on you, the possibility that your parents existed before you were born? It's like you're sitting there and it hits you. Your mom or dad, possibly both, were once your age.

After you've warmed up to the idea, your mind starts to wander. Was he or she just killing time until your birth? Did they have any idea how lucky they would be when they had a kid like you?

It's almost like the stages of any emotion. First stage...denial. Second stage...wonder. Third stage...questioning.

Then there's the final stage. And that my friend, is the really important one.
It's the stage where you start to nose around in the past. Ask questions that can bring answers you may or may not be ready for.

That's where I am right now. My name is Rory French. My dad is Dean French and he's not like any other dad out there. I'd put money on that.

Sometimes he's a complete stranger, hiding secrets that he'd rather I not know. But family shouldn't keep secrets. I just can't convince my dad to open up. He's hiding something and I have made it my mission to find out what he's hiding and why.


Up until I was in the first grade, I bought the whole stork thing. My dad told me that he'd been sitting on the porch on a really hot night in July when the stork brought me.

He was a pretty convincing liar as I recall. He started building up the story with idle details.

"Where'd I come from? How come I don't got no mom?"

"You just don't," he'd said. He cast a look over at me, like he was wondering if he could tell me something top secret. "Okay, Rory, sit."

He patted the porch step beside him and pointed to the skyline just above the trees. There's a creek that runs behind our house and my dad spends a lot of time looking at it. Maybe it helps him think, I don't really know.

But back to my original story. He looked at the sky and nodded his head slightly.

"It was July 17th, hot as hell and I was sitting out here drinking some lemonade," he said. "I was about to go inside, it being close to my bedtime, but I can see something up in the sky. Didn't look like any bird I'd ever seen before. Well, I watched it get closer and that's when I saw it had something hanging from its beak."

Daddy looked down at me and paused, making sure I was keeping pace with his story.

"This bird is flying lower and lower. It just barely clears those trees across the creek."

"What'd you think it was, Daddy?" I asked.

Daddy rubbed the back of his neck and looked at me with those dark eyes of his. The scar on his face gave him a mysterious air.

"You know I don't believe in aliens from outer space, but God as my witness, my first thought was a UFO."

My green eyes were probably as big as silver dollars, hearing my dad admit to that.

"Anyway, this bird keeps flying and now it appears to be aiming for me. Kid you not, I'd move a step or two to the right, the bird would curve to the right. I'd move to the left and that bird would follow suit. It was just about over me when it lets out this squawk and the thing hanging from his beak comes out. Now, Rory, I had no idea what he was dropping, so count yourself lucky that I didn't dive for cover. I just threw out my arms and there you were."

And that was the story of my birth. I believed it right up until first grade when some fifth grader on the bus listened to my story. Without so much as blinking this wise ten year old said, "Your old man's full of shit. Babies come out of a girl's cootchie."

I had no idea what a cootchie was, but I made the decision to have a man to man talk with Dad when I got home from school.