dannydmc

Well I'm back after several weeks disconnected due to the evils of Bush living. I suppose I should do a standard entry, but I've been feeling a bit creative instead and have had this idea bubbling in my brain for quiet some time. And so, inspired by the huge amount of biographies I've been reading lately (I finished one off on Thomas Jefferson, and am in the middles of ones on John Quincy Adams and Phil LaFollette) I thought I'd do the next few entries in that format, pretending that some future scholar is looking back at my life and how they'd be likely to see it. I hope you all enjoy! (add comments; nothing spurs me to write more than an active audiance )

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excerts from "America's Little Giant"


Daniel David McCollum was born shortly after midnight on on the morning on March 20, 1982, so Daniel R and Denise McCollum. Although both parents wished to name him after his father, they agreed to not give him the same middle name, there by not making him a Junior and saving him the embarrassment of being christianed "Junior" as a nickname; one which his Mother often claimed always sounded "wussy" to her ears. Rather the middle name "David" was chosen in honor of his mother's oldest sister's husband. The name was well chosen, as his aunt Bernie and Uncle David would wuickly become surrogate grandparents to the young boy; remaining close throughout the rest of their lives.
Danny, as he was called by family members, a prococious child. From the very beginings of his life he often had few people his own age to play with and so was forced to socialize mainly with his parents and their friends. This lead him from an early age to feel much more comfortable around adults then to children his own age, a tendency which would continue for many years, much to his own eventual chagrin.
Intelligent and well mannered, he often dazzled older relatives with keeping up with their conversations and even vocalizing his own opinions. His relations with other children were much less glamorous however; a very headstrong child, he often bunted heads with playmates who sought to control activities. Often times this would take the form of simply igorning the other child or wandering off on his own to remove himself from the stuation, although not always. A favorite story of his Mother's dealt with the time a friend of her's visited with her son of the same age as Dan; the mothers went inside while the children played, watching them through the window. Apparently some conflict arose for when his Mother next looked out the window, Dan had the other child on the ground in a headlock. His Mother reportedly exlaimed, "Hey! My son just beat up yours!"
Dan's life changed remarkably when, at the age of 4 his parent's bought a house in the township of Elderon, Wisconsin from Denise's sister Anita, known to the family simply as "Needa". The house in question has been built by Dan's Grandfather when he retired from construction and and farming and had been owned by Anita since their Father's death. The move offered Dan a great deal of new oppertunities; not only would be grow up in the same town as his Mother, surrounded by her family, but would actually do so next door to the old family farm which was owned by his Uncle Marion.
The move also brought into Dan's life his cousins Matt and Tom, Uncle Marion's two sons who would go on to become a source of constant joy, frustration and companionship in Dan's life. Matt the eldest of the two boys and only a year senior to Dan would at times become his closest friend and confident, at least until following High School when mental illness began to prey deeply on the young man. Tom, the youngest of the two brothers, was often cast in an antagonistic roll to the two older children who delighted in tormeting the young child who was forced of them while playing by his mother; they would often decide to include Tom in such games where as they attempted to run him over with bicycles or lose him in the woods. At one point, frustrated by his younger cousin who has thrown a rollerskate at him, Dan lost his temper and hurled a phone book at the boy. Despite this early dislike, Tom would grow to become Dan's close friend later in life; a relationship that was strong enough they they would often refer to one another as "brother" when introducing one another in company.
Even once he began to attend school, Dan's social life continued to revolve around his close family network. This was partly due to his own choice, he would remain throughout his life 'clannish' to use a word he himself did to describe it, and partially the choice of others. For what ever reason, and later in life Dan would come up with many theories to explain it, he was not easily able to get along with many of his own peers who saw him as an outsider; he would later record that many of his fondest memories in Elementary School involved talking with teachers, his favorite being Vicky Vaughn and Theresa Shankland. These two women in particular offered him what he felt he was missing from his peers; they were genuinely enchanted by his personality, and often humored some of his wanderings of the mind which others rolled their eyes at. The extent of their fondness for him can be shown from the fact that he always refered to both women by their first names, "Vicky" and "Theresa", even on the school yard.
Another problem which Dan was forced to deal with during his school years was the presense of bullies, most notably a certain Levi Kopaz. Although the two would become friends briefly in Middle School, pushed on by his own parents who felt rather sorry for the other boy who they felt had a bad family, their relationship was by and large one of enemies, and Dan felt himself the weaker combatant for most of that period.
This feeling of helplessness when it came to his own peers bothered Dan greatly throughout much of his school years. On one hand he aspired to be strong, often envisioning himself one of the knights of Camelot, but on another he was afraid of the bullies in his school and felt too weak to defeat them. Although there were several flares of courage in his dealings, at one point in the 3rd grade he punched a bully in the stomach; an incident which won him a respite from being picked on for nearly the entire year, he constantly saw himself as the victam of these abuses. This only added to the feelings of destitution which would gorw and blossom when he struck adolecence.
Perhaps one of the roots of his troubles stemmed from an unlikely source; his father, Daniel Raymond McCollum. Dan, from the very earliest age, held his Father in the highest regards attributing to him all the traits which he himself saw as positive: intelligence, strength, nobility, fortitude and more. Dan did his best to live up to these ideals himself, but in his own mind forever came up short. This reverence was challanged when he and his Father came into conflict during his own High School years as they fought for dominance in the house hold, but not substantially. dan had grown up hearing stories of the rivalry between his own Father and Grandfather, a fued that only come to an end with the tragic suicide of Dan's Uncle Steve, and seems to have believed in many ways that he was simply attempting to carry on a family tradition and failing miserably at it in the process.
In fact his reverence extended beyond his own Father to the entire McCollum side of the family; a romanticism which was much easier to carry on as he had little if any regular contact with that branch of the family. This is made all the stranger when one is to consider the rogue nature of the McCollum clan; a family who's family reunion in Beloit Wisconsin once descended into anarchy following a brawl with an African-American family which was having a party close by and only ended with the Beloit police surrounding the hill and launching tear gas into the mob. Even in later life, Dan used to love to regale friends and close associates with tales of the family's exploits; often noting with humor the horrified looks on the listener's faces.
The dark price of this reverence became clear during his Sophmore year of High School when Dan, sunk into a depression which would occasionally reoccure throughout his life usually as a result of stress and precieved preformance below his own lofty expectations, became convinced that his ancestors were laughing at him from beyond the grave. Although this clearned up with time, and he was later able to laugh about the entire experience, the fact remains that he was more than half serious at the time.
Part of the romantization of the McCollums came from the fact that Dan resembled them in many ways; he bore a striking resemblence to his own Father, in both temperment and physically, one which only grew with age. By the time he reached college Dan had begun to display many of the traits which marked the family; dislike of authority, stubborness, belief in ones own correctnes and a penchant for hard work and strength of will to name just a few. Later in life Dan would claim that one of the more frightening and gratifying moments in his life came during his parent's 25th Wedding Anniversary Party while he was drinking with his Uncle Bob and Aunt Pam and was told that he was the spitting image of his own Father at the same age. "I suddenly realised I was ONE of them. For years I'd always felt I took more after my Mother's side but I don't!", an exasperated Dan McCollum wrote his best friend John Kuemple.


To be continued....

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Alright, I've been writing for quiet some time and I'm going to bring this to an end. I'm rather afraid that this post paints me in a rather bad light, but so be it. I'm trying to develope the skills to look at myself in a disspasionate manner to see whats really going on. Hopefully you enjoyed reading this, and don't feel me to be a horrid wuss or something; I changed a lot in College and haven't gotten to write about it yet