I’m just a normal, everyday person from Bangor Maine, who lives in a doublewide trailer. Yeah that’s right, a doublewide trailer, and I’m a professional wrestler. You would think that because of my profession I would be living in some sort of large mansion, maybe a multi-sectional house, but that’s not my style. I don’t care for large houses, I don’t care for the large mansions. None of that matters to me.
I’m sorry I’m rambling. I do that from time to time. You won’t get to know me from my living arrangements. I should talk about myself, what makes me tick, all that good stuff. As I said earlier I’m a normal, everyday person, except for one small difference. I was born with Syndactly, a rare birth defect that fuses the bones of your toes and fingers. In most cases two or more bones in your hands and feet fuse together, and sometimes share one finger or toenail.
My case was different. My right hand and my feet were normal, but my left hand took the brunt of this defect. My thumb, index finger and pinky were fused into my hand, while my middle and ring finger were fused together, and share one fingernail. If you look at my freakish hand it looks like I have a spike. I can’t bend my “spike,” it doesn’t have joints or knuckles, it’s just one stiff spike.
You’re probably wondering how my parents took the news of my Syndactly. Well let’s go back to the day of my birth, shall we? It’s July the 7th; the year is 1977 (yes I know: 7-7-77. If you want to hear some more weird birthdates, my father was born 5-5-55 and my grandparents, was born 3-3-33. To conclude this hilarity I made my professional wrestling debut in 9-9-99. What reaps from 7777, 5555 and 3333 is the number 22). Sitting in the waiting room was my father, Rufus Osgood, twenty-two years of age and his wife, Helena Osgood, was doing her best giving birth to me, doing her best to get me into this world.
Helena awoke in the middle of the night, about two in the morning or so, and discovered that her water had broke. She felt this wetness around her legs, her vagina and whatnot, and she shook her husband awake to tell him that her water broke. Rufus being Rufus, his mind muddled with sleep, congratulated his wife for her water breaking. Then she slapped Rufus upside the head and told him she was having their baby.
In a matter of say, two minutes, they got dressed, got to the car, and zoomed to Augusta Memorial Hospital in about five minutes. From the stories my mother had told me, they zoomed by a couple of cop cars on the way to the hospital, and they didn’t stop them. The Augusta Police Department know that if you’re driving like a bat out of hell, one of two things is going down: your wife is having a kid, or someone in your family is either sick, injured, or dying.
With Helena in the hospital, all Rufus could do was wait. Helena didn’t want her husband in the room with her while she was giving birth to their only son. So Rufus sat in the waiting room, couldn’t sit still while his wife was giving life to me. His legs were jittery, piston up and down repeatedly and ran his fingers through his thick, jet black hair. Random nurses and doctors walk passed him, some smile down at him, while some didn’t acknowledge his presence.
He slouched in his chair, hoping that his wife was okay, hoping his child was okay. Everyone kept telling them that they were too young to have a child. Hell they were too young to get married. They’d known each other since they were in junior high school and they hadn’t separated from each other. They knew that Fate brought them together, and they would be destined to wed. They married when they were out of high school, became pregnant a few months after graduating from high school, but lost the baby due to a miscarriage.
Rufus remembered how much losing their baby devastated Helena. She went under a deep depression, lost interest in most of her daily activities and tried to commit suicide a couple of weeks after losing her first child. She drew a scolding hot bath, got in and slit her wrists. She was burning herself and bleeding to death. If it weren’t for Rufus stepping in and getting her out of that tub, and wrapped her wrists, she would’ve died, and you wouldn’t have the pleasure of seeing me step into a professional ring.
Helena kept blaming herself for the loss of their first child. Rufus knew that wasn’t true, but she kept on blaming herself. She needed help that much Helena knew, so she went to see a psychiatrist. She was skeptical at first, wondering if seeing a professional would help her cope if the loss of her unborn child. In fact, after four sessions her doctor, she was good as new. She accepted the fact that her body wasn’t ready for a child; human nature took its course.
Three years later in late 1976, she became pregnant again and this time, this pregnancy was going to work. Now we’re back to the beginning of my life story. Helena was in labor for two hours and forty-six minutes, so around five in the morning, she gave birth to an eight-pound, four-ounce baby boy.
“Rufus Osgood?” A tall, lean doctor by the name of Bernard Woodcock was standing in the waiting room, looking for Rufus Osgood. He was in his forties, had a full head of chestnut brown hair, clear hazel eyes, and had the mustache of a porn star.
Rufus shot up to his feet. Rufus stood six feet, two inches tall, and he was looking up the doctor. “That’s me. Is my wife okay? Is my child okay?”
“Everything turned out fine, Mr. Osgood. Your wife gave birth to a healthy baby boy.”
“B-baby boy?” Tears were welling up in his eyes. Rufus always wanted to have a boy. He would be a model father to his son, teach him how to play catch, be a man and, of course, when he got old enough, how to charm the ladies. “Everything’s okay, right? I---We don’t have to worry about, right?”
“Well that’s that I wanted to discuss with you…” His voice seem to trail off when they entered Helena’s room. She was laying in her bed, glowing, smile on her face. She was so beautiful, holding their baby boy in her arms, wrapped in a white blanket, with a blue knitted cap topped on his head. After screaming his head off, he was now sleeping, a beautiful bundle of joy.
Rufus knelt beside his wife, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and looked down at his new son. “He’s beautiful.” Tears were rolling down his face. He then turned to his wife. “Have you named him yet?”
She nodded her head. “How does Upton Edward Osgood fancy for you?”
Rufus arched his eyebrows at his wife. Upton Edward Osgood? The last time he checked they lived in the twentieth century, not the nineteenth. “Helena, I don’t know how to put this gently, so here it goes: Upton’s a queer’s name.”
Helena gaped at her husband. “Upton isn’t a queer’s name! It just so happens that my great-grandfather was named Upton and he was a great and powerful man! If he were still alive, he’d jam his cane up your ass! And besides, little Upton here has your middle name.”
“Well…” The burrow in his brow receded, and he looked down at his son. “I guess Upton is a good name for him. To be honest, he kinda looks like an Upton. So Upton Edward Osgood is good enough for me.”
Helena was about to say something else, but doctor Woodcock stepped in. “There’s one piece of business I’d like to discuss with you. I know you, Helena, were asking about your son’s hand---”
“Upton’s hand?” He looked at his wife. “What’s wrong with Upton?”
Helena pulled out my little left hand, which looked like a little scorpion’s tail, and showed my dad. My father was speechless, couldn’t figure out what to say, so he turned to doctor Woodcock, with eyes of concern about my weird, misshapen hand.
“Your son has what is called Syndactly, a birth defect that fuses together the bones in your fingers and toes. If you ever seen someone with webbed toes that’s a form of Syndactly. Your son’s case however, is the rarest form I’ve ever seen. His right hand and both feet are normal, but his hand, as you can see, has been heavily stricken by the defect. I ran an X-ray of your son’s hand and saw that his index finger, his thumb and his pinky are fused into his hand, making it larger than his right. And for his middle and ring finger, they fused together into this spike he has.”
“Can it be fixed with surgery, doctor?”
“In most Syndactly cases, surgery helps by separating the fused bones, so patients can have ten working fingers and toes. In your son’s case, however, he won’t have the use of his other fingers, and surgery to separate the two finger he has now would be a waste.”
“Will he have any health risks in the future?”
“None at all. Your son is going to have a full, healthy life…with one weird hand.” He chuckled, so did my mom, but my dad wasn’t chuckling. He knew how this was going to look around his friends and co-workers: Lookit Rufus and his freak son! Hey, Rufie, something wrong with the ol’ sperm bank to produce such and ugly baby?
“I congratulate you both on your new baby. Helena, you’ll have to stay for a couple of days before I can let you and your little bundle of joy can go home. Standard procedure, you know.”
My mom nodded when the doctor left. She was the happiest person alive back then, but my dad wasn’t. My dad wasn’t happy at the fact that he created such a freak. No one in his family had this freakish…disease. It must’ve come from Helena’s side of the family. How could someone like Helena Marcum, whom has model good looks, have such an inferior gene pool?
And that, my friends, was how I came into existence. Over the years, my mother and father had a tumultuous relationship, resulting in my mother’s death, but I’ll get to that later on. And my relationship with my father didn’t fare well neither, and that’ll be discussed at a later time as well.
Growing up in Augusta wasn’t the greatest of times. It was downright torture. By the time I was six years old, I had been having a bit of a weight problem, because I had been a loyal advocate of the see-food diet: I see food, I eat, and I’m still a loyal advocate to this day…I just don’t eat as much as I used to. My being overweight would get me called “Two-Ton,” and, because of my Syndactly, “Finger Freak.” Oh yeah, those were some great times.
Eventually I’d be called “Upchuck,” a hateful derivative of my name. Hey everyone, it’s good ol’ Upchuck, the fuckin Finger Freak! How the hell are ya, Chucky? I remember one day when I was sixteen years old I had enough of the name calling from my tormentors. I had grown to my full height of six feet, three inches by the time I was eighteen, but I was one of the tallest kids at my high school.
Ethan Deveraux and Tommy Snyder were my tormentors at high school. They would call me the same names when I was in grade school, but they would be more vicious about it. I don’t need to go into great details; you were all teenagers or are teenagers when you read my life story. I’m sure all of you have gone through being teased by a bully at some point of your life.
Anyway, I had enough of this bullshit. I was walking to my English Lit class, completely minding my own business until Deveraux and Snyder ambushed me, wanting to verbally berate me. “Hey, Upchuck, where do you think you’re goin, you fuckin’ freak?” Deveraux growled at me.
Now mind you, I’ve been a big kid. When I was sixteen, I was six feet tall and weighed about two hundred and forty pounds. Always had a weight problem. These two were taller and bigger than me. Deveraux was three inches taller, Snyder about five inches taller. Deveraux was probably my weight (but a buff two-forty rather than a flabby two-forty with sagging man-boobs), and Snyder was about two hundred and sixty, maybe two hundred and seventy pounds. He was built like a goddamn tank and you could feel the pain after he ran you over in football.
“I’m just going to my English Lit class, guys. Please let me pass.”
“Please let me pass,” Snyder mocked at me. He was towering over me, his ice cold eyes giving me chills down my spine.
“You ain’t goin nowhere, Upchuck. You’re gonna miss your class because we’ve penciled you in for a one-fifteen beating, and there’s not a fuckin thing you can do about it, Finger Freak.”
They were both laughing at me now, and I could feel my blood boiling in my veins. My right hand was clenched in a fist. I knew if I gotten into a fight with these two kids I’d get my ass kicked. I guess I’ll be missing my English Lit class after all, whether I like it or not.
“You know what this Finger Freak can to you guys?”
“Ooh I’m scared, Tommy! I think he’s gonna hurt us!”
“I’d like to see him t---”
Tommy Snyder couldn’t finish his sentence if he was choking, now could he? I jammed my spiked finger into Snyder’s Adam’s apple, and that dropped him to his knees, coughing and sputtering. With Snyder incapacitated I went for Deveraux’s Adam’s apple, but I managed to catch the girl’s bathroom door, and almost broke my finger. His right hand slammed into my cheek, taking me down onto the floor, and he had mounted me, throwing punch after punch, until one of the school’s orderlies broke up the brawl.
We were taken to the principal’s office, had the book thrown at us and we were suspended for school for a week. You can imagine my old man was thrilled to hear that his son was suspended from school for fighting. He gave me an ass-kicking. I didn’t fight back; you don’t fight back against your father. Even if I did I my punishment would have been worse.
After taking two beatings I had won the moral victory. I no longer took anyone’s crap anymore. Sure it got me suspended, but it’ll the rest of the student at my school not to mess with me anymore.