LEFT: As many of you know, I am adopted. Looking at this picture I believe I might have discovered my birth father's identity. I believe him to be Martin Short's character: Ed Grimley.

RIGHT: That's my Mama pushing me in my little red fire engine. The doggie is Joe, our mixed Collie. I learned to walk holding onto Joe's thick red fur and spent many pleasurable minutes stuffing acorns into his mouth. He didn't mind. When he'd had enough, he simply walked off. The semi in the background was one of several my dad owned. I grew up in the cabs of those trucks, traveling all over the country with my parents.

LEFT: Mama was very proud of this picture because I won the Prettiest Baby contest with it.

RIGHT: I was a precocious little twerp. The apple of my parents' eye, I was spoiled rotten by them.

LEFT: This is Buddha Belly's favorite picture of me. It always makes him chuckle.

RIGHT: I was a pretty serious child back then. The doll I am holding was named Googie (as in boogie woogie). I slept with her until she disintegrated.

LEFT: I was sick on the day the first grade pictures were taken so this one was made downtown in Colquitt at one of those booths itinerant photographers sometimes brought to town. Notice the UglyAss shoes and crate upon which I am perched.

RIGHT: This is my favorite school picture. It seems to convey I know something the photographer didn't. Actually, I remember thinking he was so fat I wondered how he ever got behind the wheel of his car.

LEFT: If you look closely, you can see the ravages of the Bell's Facial Palsy I had contracted. My left eye does not close as completely as my right. For over a year, that eye did not close at all and my face was paralyzed on the left side. I spent long hours in bed being subjected to hot facials. Might be why now in middle age I refuse to endure them.

RIGHT: No, I was wrong. My birth father wasn't Ed Grimley. It's obvious he was Jerry Lewis.

LEFT: That isn't my hair hanging weirdly over my right shoulder. That was a gauzy silk scarf that we sixities fashion plates wore on our pony tails. Who the hell cut my bangs halfway up my forehead?!

RIGHT: Every time I look at this picture I get a stomach ache. Doesn't this look like a Wanda Fay to you? You know the girl I mean: she married Billy Ray Bob and they bought a trailor that they parked out behind his Daddy's barn. She had four children: Lillie May, Billy Ray Junior, Bobbie Kay and Earl.

LEFT: Believe It Or Not! This was the first picture Buddha Belly ever saw of me. My girlfriend, Marti, showed it to him as she and her boyfriend were bringing BB over to my house for a blind date. It's a wonder the poor boy didn't run screaming in the opposite direction!

RIGHT: Despite the late 60's lacqured, teased, and pouffed hairdo, I rather like my senior picture. I guess that's because there was no double chin, no sagging flesh, no wrinkles or lines, I still had an upper lip, and I had that Swan Neck thing going. Too bad we can't all stay slim and trim, huh?