1477 c/o Andrew Borgstrom

Transylvania, 1477

While mother generally said, "No children, stay inside, just for today, I need you near me," today she said, "Go, run, play, while I roast turkey for dinner." And then her stomach growled images of children gagging on their roasted mothers, and Turkish emissaries with turbans nailed to their heads. The children sang, "Vlad is dead," but mother still changed the menu: "Go, run, play, while I broil duck for dinner." Four days earlier, in France, wolves half-ate the Duke of Burgundy's body so that the only recognizable remains were the scars on his uneaten flesh blazing under the sun.

1456 c/o Jason Lee Norman

You can't have a child without a name just like you cannot start a story without a title. When I was born there was a hurricane. My mother told me about how the American Indians would go about naming their babies. There are several incarnations of the story and all of them have been proven wrong since I was a young boy.
       When an Indian woman has her baby they hand it to the father and he takes it out of the birthing tent to show the rest of the tribe. My mother told me that the first thing the father saw once he left the tent would be what he would name his child. That is why Indians have names like Sitting Bull and Running Coyote. Another version of this lie would have something to do with a dream or 'vision' that the father would have prior to the child being born. My poor father was in love with these legends and believed them until the end of his life.
       When I was born my father was literally at a loss for words. He was full of feelings but he had no words to express them. I was named after an emotion that could not and had not yet been put into words. I was named for the feeling of satisfaction my father felt after having eaten turkey. I was named after the feeling that you get when you rub your two hands together that have spent an enormous amount of time in the bath. I was named for the peculiar and inviting smell of a burning fork.
       When I was born there was this hurricane and the sound of flies.