SeanPaulMurphyVille: My Life - My 4th Grade Autobiography

Monday, December 14, 2020

My Life - My 4th Grade Autobiography

Here’s the autobiographical sketch I wrote in either the fourth or fifth grade at the now defunct St. Dominic Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland. It was very hard, but I managed to maintain at least the spirit of the grammar, spelling and punctuation from the original. After all, if you’re going to take the trouble to call forth a witness from the past, you might as well let it speak in its own voice.
Plus, I did get an “A.”

Not that the bar was set all that high in the fourth grade…. The teacher was probably just happy I typed this absurdist stream of consciousness.

Sean Murphy Presents

My Life

I was born, I think. I must have been. Everybody else was. I could get a few good jokes out of that but I won’t because I’ve got a few facts to tell so shutta your face and read. Getting back to me getting born, wait, I just checked the records. I was born. I would pass out cigars but I don’t smoke. This is no joke. I was born on CENSORED, in a hospital. If anyone was to ask me why I was born in a hospital, I would say I just wanted to be close to my mother. Skip that last joke, it was a million years old, speaking of a million years, did you hear theone about the dead cow? Well,never mind neither did I. Well, to put it bluntly I was born in Baltimore, Maryland. If you don’t know where Maryland is you must not be a verygood American. Now there are a fewthings which should be written about Maryland in the history books. The first thing is that Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner during the War of 1812, and the second thingis that I was born in the state. In 1776 the country of the United States declared itself independent,that has nothing to do with my story but I thought you would like to know.

After I was born after a while I was brought home, I asked for a room with a southern view, butI just couldn’t get my message through since I could only say Goo Goo Daa Daa and it’s pretty hard to understand that language without an interpreter. Now I think I will begin to talk about my family. My mother’s name is Mom and my father’s name is Dad. Since you won’t find them in the phone booth under those names, I guess I’m forced to tell you their real names. My father’s name is Douglas, E. Murphy (pretty classy, eeh.) and my mother’s name is Clara Murphy (well, it’s alright.) At the time I only had one brother who was born somewhere around ten months before me. (Lucky bum.) His name is Douglas E. Murphy II (alias Dougie Woggie Dune Buggy), and that was my family at the time. But I also had two grandmothers and two grandfathers and countless uncles and aunts. I know there are terrible rumors about me being the second son of a second son, well it’s true. Doug came before me and my father is only second to my Uncle Paul, who works in the armed forces. He’s always at far away places likeThailand and Germany, so I guess I can call him a distant relative.

Well I guess Ishould tell you a little about my brother Dougie. Well he was born on CENSORED. I got a few jokes about him but you know how it is disgracing your own flesh and blood. Well to tell you the truth, I’m not in the mood to tell the entire world what kind of fool he is, and I won’t do that because not sure what kind of a fool he is. But alas his birth was not one of the state’s great landmarks. Well, we all can’t be great.

All was peaceful and content. (Probably because I couldn’t read the newspaper.) But then came the birth of my sister Laura, alias the Bake who was born on Sept 27,1962. She was the first girl in the children’s section of the family, but if she was a boy she would be named Elvis the Pretzel. There are a few disgracing things about my sister that I will not mention at the time like the times she got baths in the kitchen sink. So remember if you ever ask Laura what she is she won’t tell you and neither will I.

You may wonder why I’m writing garbage like this, if you are it’s none of your business so shut up and keep reading. Now I would like to describe our house. Our house has three floors, well that’s not the end of my description. No, I’m just joking. Our house has three floors not including the basement. Well let’s start at the bottom. The basement has two rooms one room is a bathroom and the other room is a large room. But our dog lives down there and makes it all bathroom. We call the basement “The Big Latrine” and all the blame belongs to my dog Zeus. On our first floor (the main floor) we have a kitchen, a living room, a dining room which shouldn’t be called a dining room since we never eat in it. It think it should be called the room room but I will refer to it as the dining room and there is also a room in which there is a frequently used stair case which leads to the second floor. The reason it is used often is because it is the only way to get upstairs, unless you want to climb up the side of the wall. Now we can go upstairs, if you don’t want to, stop reading, but keep reading if you’re no coward.

Now we walk upstairs as you turn down the hall you can see at the time five doors. Behind one of the doors is a frequently used bathroom, it is used so often because we don’t feel like going down the basement. The other three doors are bedrooms. The last door leads to the attic. The attic is where toys, books, etc., are placed after they were used, broken, smashed, etc. So that’s my house.

We were just getting adjusted to Laurie when you’ll never guess what happened my brother Mark was born. His full name was and still is Mark Brendan Murphy who was born on Feb. 20, 1964. When Mark was a baby he always used to sleep with a blue blanket which he kept for a very long time. He kind of reminds you of Linus in Peanuts. When he wasn’t sleeping he was climbing, he used to climb anything including chairs, the refrigerator etc. Everyone in our family has a nickname, Laura’s is Bake, mine was and still is Rubbernose, and his is Mark, Mark the Aardvark.

When I finished the last paragraph, I let my mother read it. She liked it all but one thing, and that thing is that I hardly mentioned her name. So this paragraph is all about her. Her birthdate is, wait, I don’t think I should say that. But I will give you a clue about her age. She’s not as old as my grandmother (her mother), but she is younger than my other grandmother too, but to tell you the truth she is older than me. Will I guess I could tell you her name because it’s only Clara Murphy and I think I can give you her birthdate but the year might have to be censored out. She was born on Oct. CENSORED in the year of 19CENSORED. Well I guess I couldn’t put her Birthday in a trashy book like this. Well since I can’t give her birthday at least I can describe her. She’s tall (if you’re very short,) and wears glasses, probably because she can’t see right, because if you could see right what good would it do wearing glasses (it’s only logical.) Well I think I should tell you at least one more thing about her and that is that she have a beard.

Well it’s hard to remember but at one time I was a little kid (I still am small but I was younger), so at different times Dougie, Laura, Mark and I did all sorts of strange things. Like one time when Dougie and I were real young, we had a tall cabinet in our room. Well you see one day Dougie pulled out the drawers and started climbing up the side of the cabinet with me on the ground telling, “Go, Dougie, Go.” But as Dougie reached the top of the cabinet it started to fall, and it did fall. That is one of the incidents that happened when there were only four children in the Murphy house. Another one was one day my sister Laura was punished in her room. Let me explain, the back porch has a roof over it and window from her room faces it. Getting back to the story, Laura wanted to get out so she opened the window and crawled out the window. Meanwhile down the street lived one of my mother’s friends, and see saw her and started yelling, “Don’t jump, baby, don’t jump, baby,” but unfortunately Laura went back in the window. Well I guess I’ll end this chapter here so bye.

Now that I have already wrote a paragraph about my mother I guess you’re beginning to wonder about my father. My father’s name is Douglas Murphy and he was born on Oct. 2, 19CENSORED in Scranton Pa. How do you like that I had to censor out the year of my father’s birth too. Well I guess I have to give you a clue to his age, and that is that he’s older than me. He doesn’t wear a beard but does wear pieces of toilet paper when he cuts himself shaving. Also he is taller than my mother (give or take a few feet taller than my mother) and he plays a lot of sports. He’s what you call the breadwinner of the family, he works in a bakery and brings bread home every day. No, he really doesn’t work in a bakery actually he works in computers. Now I guess end my description of him, if you wonder why it’s because he’s at work so much I hardly see him.

So now since I got something else to write I think I’ll tell you about President Kennedy, he was born on May 29, 1917.1917 was a good year for Charlie Chaplin comedy. Because 1916-1917 were his peak years. Well getting back to Kennedy in 1963, he was shot in Dallas Texas. His act shocked the world. Speaking of another shock, on June 25, 1965, my sister Jeanne Murphy was born, but the shock was not worldwide. With the birth of Jeanne completed a saying which still exists today. “The Bees and a Bake make a rattlesnake,” another one of her nicknames is Jeanne Beanie Cathaleenie. You know I feel like disgracing her since she’s always disgracing me so I’ll just write a little about her. She cried a lot when she was a baby, and she liked playing with a peg board which she got over my grandmother’s one Christmas. The grandmother she got it from was my mother’s mother and we call her Little Grandmom (or Pocket-size Grandmom) and she liked to jump in a chair which was almost the same as a Jolly Jumper. Well I guess I’ll end this paragraph here so bye.

Hi again. It’s me. And I will talk about my, as I put it earlier, countless Uncles and Aunts. Now remember all of my distant uncles and aunts will not be mentioned. Some of Uncles and Aunts on my father’s side of the family are Uncle Paul, Uncle Richard, Uncle Brian and my Uncle Kevin (who we all call Wedgy) and some of my Aunts are Aunt Carol and Aunt Sharon. Some of the Uncles on my Mother’s side are Uncle Duke, Uncle Buzzie and Uncle Butchie and one aunt is Aunt Curl (Uncle Dukies’ wife). Well that puts an end to that paragraph. Short wasn’t it? I should say so.

Since I haven’t anything else to right about, I think I’ll write about our early times with each other. Boy it must have been weird back then imagine Dougie and I with crew cuts. Now I got a few stories to tell so shutta your face and read. Now this first incident is the best in the paragraph. I remember one time my sister Jean got a new swing set, and my sister Laura was so anxious to see it that she ran outside completely naked to see it. I wish I had a picture to show you. Wow. And I can also remember a red striped kid who used to live next door, now you maybe wondering about the red striped kid, well let me tell you the reason he was striped was because I whipped him across the face with a jump rope. No it wasn’t that bad and the scar of war faded away but you can’t win them all. And also about the same time a new skill was developed within the Murphy house, and that skill was being able to unlock the basement door with a coat hanger. Don’t knock it, it’s one of the seven lively arts. I don’t think I should end this paragraph here, but I will anyways.

At the time I wrote that essay, my family was living at 5507 Hamlet Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland. Here are some home movies from that period:

Here's a little video depiction of my siblings and myself and our ancestors.

More personal musings:

Me, Post Death

My Premature Memorial Video

Meeting The Love of My Life

My Wedding 09.30.2000

Personal Letter, or, Love in the Time of Texts

Death of an Amway God

Religion & Politics: An Uneasy Mix

The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime

God Told Me to Write It

Prince and the Nexus of Music and Memory

Surviving The Year of Death

The Ultimate Wedding Extravaganza

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter, Pt. 2

Other early writings:

Short Story: Christmas

Short Story: The Intruders

Short Story: To Die A Hero
Short Film: The Lunch
The Three Stooges: An Analysis
Recent Horror Films: An Analysis

My Life - My 4th Grade Autobiography

My Poetry, or, The Sorrow and The Self-Pity

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter, Pt. 2

If you want to see a slightly more mature autobiography, check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined.

Here are some sample chapters of The Promise:

Chapter 1 - A Photograph

Chapter 2 - My Death

Chapter 3 - Childhood

Chapter 4 - Saved!

Chapter 5 - The Promise

Chapter 6 - The Mission

Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished
Chapter 15 - Quarter To Midnight

Also be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.

You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer: