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>>Narrator: I was born with water on the brain. Okay so that's not exactly true, I was actually
born with too much cerebral spinal-fluid inside my skull. But cerebral-spinal fluid is just
a doctor's fancy way of saying brain grease and brain grease works inside the lobes as
car grease works inside the engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast.
I draw all the time; I draw cartoons of my mother and father, sister and grandmother,
my best friend rowdy and everyone else on the res. I draw because words are too unpredictable;
I draw because words are too limited. I think the world is a series of broken dams
and floods and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats. I wish I were magical but I really
am just a poor *** reservation kid living with his poor *** family on the poor *** Spokane
Indian reservation. My parents came from poor people who came
from poor people who came from poor people. All the way back to the very first poor people.
Geeze I have been to so many funerals in my short life, I am 14 years old and I have been
to 42 funerals, that's really the biggest difference between Indians and white people.
When it comes to death we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing and
so laughing and crying we said goodbye to my grandmother and when we said goodbye to
one grandmother we said goodbye to all of them. Each funeral was a funeral for all of
us, we lived and died together. I realized that sure, I was a Spokane Indian,
I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants, and to
the tribe of basketball players and the tribe of bookworms and the tribe of cartoonists
and the tribe of chronic masturbators and the tribe of teenage boys and the tribe of
small town kids and the tribe of pacific north-westerners, and the tribe of tortilla chips and salsa
lovers and the tribe of poverty and the tribe of funeral goers and the tribe of beloved
sons and the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends. It was a huge realization
and that's when I knew that I was going to be okay.