It all started when I was five.

I had just finished coloring in My Kindergarten Book. It was filled with Picasso-like drawings of my mom and dad, and Elmer's-glued, tissue papered collage, and the answers to questions (favorite color, pets, best friend, etc.) written down by our hundred-year-old teacher, Mrs. Rita.

My classmates and I were sitting in a semi-circle on the floor in the reading area. "Jounouchi, what do you want to be when you grow up?" Mrs. Rita asked after all the other questions had been asked.

"A fire fighter!" he shouted.

"Kisara?"

"Uh… a nurse," Kisara whispered meekly.

Mrs. Rita went through the rest of the class. Police officers. Astronauts. Football players. Finally it was my turn.

"Yugi, what do you want to be when you grow up?" Mrs. Rita asked, her green eyes staring through me.

I said nothing.

"An actor?"

I shook my head.

"A doctor?"

"Nuh, uh," I said.

"A flight attendant?"

"Yuck," I replied.

"Then what?" she asked, annoyed.

I thought for a moment. "I want to be…"

"Yes?"

"I want to be… a vampire!" I shouted, to the shock and amazement of Mrs. Rita and my classmates. For a moment I though she started to laugh; maybe she really did. The children sitting next to me inched away.

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I was conceived on my dad's water bed -- or on the rooftop of my mom's college dorm under twinkling stars -- depending on which one of my parents was telling the story. They were soul mates that couldn't part with the seventies: true love mixed with drugs, some raspberry incense, and the music of the Grateful Dead. A beaded-jeweled, halter-topped, cutoff blue-jean, bare-footed girl, intertwined with a long-haired, unshaven, Elton John-spectacled, suntanned, leather-vested, bell-bottomed-and-sandaled guy. I think they're lucky I wasn't more eccentric. I could have wanted to be a beaded-haired hippie werewolf! But somehow I became obsessed with vampires.

Ash and Yoshimaru Mutou became more responsible after my entrance to the world -- or I'll rephrase it and say my parents were "less glassy eyed." They sold the Volkswagen flower power van that they were living in and actually started renting property. Our hippie apartment was decorated with 3-D glow-in-the-dark flower posters and orange tubes with a Play-Doh substance that moved on its own -- lava lamps -- that you could stare at forever. It was the best time ever. The three of us laughed and played Chutes and Ladders and squeezed Twinkies between our teeth. We stayed up late, watching Dracula movies, Dark Shadows with the infamous Barnabas Collins, and Batman on a black-and-white TV we'd received when we opened a bank account. I felt secure under the blanket of midnight, rubbing Mom's growing belly, which made noises like the orange lava lamp. I figured she was going to give birth to more moving Play-Doh

Everything changed when she gave birth to the play dough -- only it wasn't Play-Doh. She gave birth to Nerd Girl! How could she? How could she destroy all the Twinkie nights? Now she went to bed early, and that creation the my parents called "Amaya" cried and fussed all night. I was suddenly alone. It was Dracula -- the Dracula on TV -- that kept me company while Mom slept, Nerd Girl wailed, and Dad changed smelly diapers in the darkness.

And if that wasn't bad enough, suddenly the sent me to a place that wasn't my apartment, they didn't have 3-D flower posters on the wall, but boring collages of kids' handprints. Who decorates here? I wondered. It was overcrowded with Sears catalog girls in frilly dresses and Sears catalog boys in tapered pants and perfectly combed hair. Mom and Dad called it "kindergarten."

"They'll be your friends." my mom reassured me, as I clung to her side for dear life. She waved good-bye and blew me kisses as I stood alone beside matronly Mrs. Rita, which is as alone as one can get. I watched my mom walk away with Nerd Girl on her hip as she took him back to the place filled with glow-in-the-dark posters, monster movies, and Twinkies.

Somehow I made it through the day. Cutting and gluing black paper on black paper, finger painting Barbie's lips black, and telling the assistant teacher ghost stories, while the Sears catalog kids ran around like they were all cousins at a and All-American picnic. I was even happy to see Nerd Girl when Mom finally came to pick me up.

That night she found me with my lips pressed against the TV screen, trying to kiss Christopher Lee in Horror of Dracula.

"Yugi! What are you doing up so late? You have school tomorrow!"

"What?" I said. The Hostess cherry pie that I had been eating fell to the floor, and my heart fell with it.

"But I though it was just a one time thing?" I said, panicked.

"Sweet, Yugi. You have to go everyday!"

Every day? The words echoed inside my head. It was a life sentence!

That night Nerd Girl couldn't hope to compete with my wailing and crying. As I'm alone in my bed , I prayed for eternal darkness and a sun that never rose.

Unfortunately the next day I awoke to a blinding light and a monster headache.

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I longed to be around at least one person that I could connect with. But I couldn't find any, at home or school. At home the lava lamps were replaced with Tiffany-style floor lamps, the glow-in-the-dark posters were covered with Laura Ashley wallpaper, and our grainy black-and-white TV was upgraded to a twenty-five-inch color model.

AT school instead of singing the songs of Mary Poppins, I whistled the theme to The Exorcist.

Halfway through kindergarten I tried to become a vampire. Seto Kaiba, a perfectly combed brunette with weak blue eyes, was my nemesis from the moment I stared him down when he tried to cut in front of me on the slide. He hated me because I was the only kid who wasn't afraid of him. The kids and teachers kissed up to him because his father owned most of the land their houses sat on. Seto was in a biting phase, not because he wanted to be a vampire like me, but just because he was just mean. He had taken pieces of flesh out of everyone but me. And I was starting to get ticked off!

We were on the playground, standing by the basketball hoops, when I pinched the skin of his puny little arm so hard I though blood would squirt out. His face turned beet red. I stood motionless and waited. Seto's body trembled with anger, and his eyes swelled with vengeance as I mischievously smiled back. Then he left his dental impressions in my expectant hand. Mrs. Rita was forced to sit him against the school wall, and I happily danced around the playground, waiting to be transformed into a vampire bat.

"That Yugi is and odd one," I overheard Mrs. Rita saying to another teacher as I skipped past the crying Seto, who was now throwing a fit against the hard blacktop. I blew him a grateful kiss with my bitted hand.

I wore my wound proudly as I got on the school swing, I could fly now, right? But I'd need something to take me into warp speed. The seat went as high as the top of the fence, but I was aiming for the puffy clouds. The rusty swing started to buckle when I jumped off. I planned to fly across the playground - all the way to a startled Seto. Instead I plummeted to the muddy earth, doing further damage to my tooth-marked hand. I cried more from the fact that I didn't possess supernatural powers like my heroes on TV than because of my throbbing flesh.

With my bite trapped under ice, Mrs. Rita sat me against the wall to rest while the spoiled snot-nosed Seto was now free to play. He blew me a teasing kiss and said, "Thank you." I stuck out my tongue and called him a name I had heard a mobster say in The Godfather, Mrs. Rita immediately took me inside. I was sent inside a lot during my childhood recesses. I was destined to take a recess from recess.