I am convinced I became the person I am today because my bedroom window faced east.

Some people, hippie people, believe their children are born under a certain star and become senators, or the kid trips into a vat of radioactive violins and becomes musician, and that that is how destiny works. They’re valid interpretations, but my theory is grounded in reality.

It isn’t a superpower, but it is a mythology. My parents moved my family to Vermont when I was three and my bedroom windows faced east. Straight up our long driveway, toward the mountains, and toward the rising sun. As far as I’m concerned that was when I was born, so I’m theoretically twenty-seven, through revised mathematics.

My bedroom window faced east, and it sent morning light piercing over the mountains like a razorblade on an eyeball, while the rest of the family enjoyed the total darkness and silence Vermont affords. So that woke me up at the metaphorical ass-crack of dawn. I was a kid raised on London time by parents and siblings on eastern-standard.

Imagine the scenario. One kid, alone, in a house, and the youngest, so for fear of being beaten up by an older sibling shot down the idea of waking up somebody to play with, and nothing but time to BECOME. And that worked into my upbringing, too. Let people sleep, let them do their thing, it was all very libertarian for a five year-old.

Three exemplary things came of this scenario, growing up facing east.

First, I’m used to everything being on my own timetable. If somebody says, “hey, it’s lunchtime,” uh, no it isn’t, ya maroon. I ate already lunch at 9:30am, like a normal person, thank ya very much!

Like I mentioned, my brain was on Greenwich Mean Time because I was physically incapable of sleeping through the sun flicking rubber bands at me. As a result, my internal clock has trouble synchronizing with anyone, and I feel an inexplicable pull or resistance against doing something when somebody else tells me.

For example, imagine all those moments in your life when somebody backhand compliments you, “I don’t know how you have time do stuff like that?”

To read, to write, to memorize every episode of The Simpsons, up to season 10.

You can substitute your own “stuff” in that sentence, the inexplicable bits of your life.

“I have bizarre sleep patterns,” doesn’t fly in high school. It fucking makes you a weirdo.

When I encountered friends in the morning at school, namely middle school, when people start noticing other people, and that shit displaces, “N64 or PlayStation” as the main topic conversation, I was miles ahead, already on my 90th thought of the day. And I didn’t like staying up late.

For these reasons, I was described in college as an old soul, which, let’s be honest, is real-speak for “you remind me of my dad, and therefore, unfuckable.” I’d wake up on Sunday mornings, at, hey, 8:00am. What hungover twenty year-old wakes up before noon on a weekend? I did. The person with the sun cauterized onto his soul. I could do nothing for 2 hours, then complete my homework, and then get lunch, and still roll my roommates out of bed before the dining hall closed at 1pm, sometimes.

You may notice that loneliness is an overarching theme here.

The second remarkable thing that came out of my bedroom facing east, a little more lighthearted, I love Scooby-Doo. Every Saturday, a channel showed Scooby-Doo for two hours, 6am to 8am, and I watched it. Original series, naturally, but it sprouted a adoration for mystery and moronic slapstick comedy. In my loneliness, wrapped in a blanket like a Russian Baba Yaga, I repeated Scooby’s broken English back at the screen, time I could have spent learning Spanish, in retrospect.

I talked through the mysteries. I made myself laugh. Like a crazy person.

No joke, I think watching all that Scooby-Doo left weird seeds to germinate in my head. Love of mystery. Interest in supernatural. Distrust of authority.

Yes, I assume most people in the world are just guys in masks trying to scare me away from the amusement park because my childhood bedroom faced east.

That cheap animation and silliness echoed through my creative abilities though. It made me want to believe any lunacy had a decent explanation. Just because the haunted mine looks haunted, doesn’t technically mean it is, so let’s go explore it. I had a neighbor growing up with whom I’d adventure way too far into the forest with, searching for rotting trees and streams. Because I woke up early and watched Scooby-Doo, and wanted to go on adventures.

And if nothing else, this was the backbone of a tradition I’ve fostered with my dad where each Thanksgiving, we put on warm clothes, drive into town, and break into any building that’s under construction. Perhaps in search of ghostly construction workers or racist Hawaiian witchdoctor stereotypes.

I’m not going to tell you which buildings we broke into. You investigate it and try to figure it out!

Third and final thing to know: I love racing. I was up at these ungodly hours in the morning, and I watched live broadcasts of Formula 1 races from Germany or Bahrein, and it was enchanting. I’m not one for team sports, despite playing lacrosse for four years in high school. Again, remember, I have trouble synchronizing with people. I can talk a blue streak, but it’s always on my terms. Instead, I like competitions that are person versus environment. Driver versus course, golfer versus course, skier versus course.

Growing up in Vermont, I was skiing before I could run properly.

I have terrible vision, but I have a great memory, so I memorized every roll and lump in my home mountain, even when I couldn’t see what was coming.

It’s not Daredevil, but I guess that’s both a superpower and a mythology.

Speaking of superpowers, at such a young age, I’m positive all that outdoor sporting as a kiddo and screaming down a mountain, alone, in what’s called a GS suit -- if you’ve ever watched skiing during the Olympics and wondered what the deal is with those people in jumpsuits with thighs the size of four pitbulls taped together, it’s called a GS suit -- it all forced my circulatory system to develop in a certain way, because it was the 80’s, and warm clothes took a back seat to looking MINT, so my core learned that it needed to be the center of the universe in order to keep this whole operation running. To this day, my core is a perpetual heat machine and my hands and feet are permanently cold, so cold that I don’t even notice. Again, imagine the sideways comments from people, “how are you not cold, Alex? Why don’t your regular worries and anxieties coincide with the world that surrounds you, and the people dwelling therein?”

“Well, see, this room I grew up in, it faced east,” isn’t really an explanation. Unless you’ve got a few minutes.

Then it starts making a little more sense. Even if I don’t.

Thanks for listening.

-- @Alex Crumb