Ed was born a beautiful baby. He had all ten fingers and all ten toes. He had bright blue eyes and blond peach fuzz hair. People said he had the potential for great things, he being a tabula rosa and all. He was the blank slate that the world could project all their hopes and dreams on. But little did they know that the tabula was not so rosa after all. The slate was already teeming with many things. One of these things was a gene for alcoholism. There was one was for depression, too. And even one for violence.

The rest of Ed’s tabula would be quickly filled with all of the lessons he would learn early on. Like, how to break things like daddy, how to act funny and fall down and not wake up like mommy, and how to yell like both of them. These things scared him at first, but he thought, if mommy and daddy did them, than they had to be all right. And he should learn them, too.

Then daddy went away and Ed didn’t see him for a while. Ed learned from mommy that daddy didn’t love them anymore. But when Ed saw daddy again, he learned that mommy was a mean person and she had something called ‘crazy.’ Ed also learned that mommy wasn’t going to be there when he got home from school anymore because daddy didn’t care if they starved or not.

With mommy not home very much, Ed missed her. But he found that he could be reminded of mommy by acting like her. Ed started playing with mommy’s drinks and funny vitamins. It felt good to feel like mommy. But Ed missed daddy too. He started acting like daddy at school and eventually got kicked out just like daddy did. It felt good to feel like daddy.

The police even said that Ed reminded them of his mommy and daddy very much. That made Ed feel GREAT.

Ed grew up into a beautiful young man with his tabula spilling forth what he had learned all his life. When Ed was daddy’s age, he met a girl like mommy and they had a son like Ed used to be. Ed’s child had all the same potential as Ed but even more so because of new mommy’s added gifts of bipolar and sexual disorders.

But people said Ed, Jr. had the potential for great things, him being a tabula rosa and all…