My name is Christopher Billiam Doctavio but everyone just calls me Nevada for short. My family and me live in a small Ohio town were just about everyone knows everyone and the joke is that you have to watch out who you are datin’ cause it just might be your cousin. I live with my Ma and Pa who both work. Pa works for the farmers feed store just outside of town at night and works our farm most days along with my brothers. My Ma works inside our home takin’ care of me and my six brothers and sisters plus the one that’s still in the oven. I am right in the middle with one older brother and two older sisters above me and one younger sisters and two younger brothers below me in age.

My oldest brother, Alexander, is 21 and still lives at home but he pretty much runs our farm now along with my pa. Ma and pa don’t know this but Alexander has been kind of datin’ Meggin Griffith from church for about a year now. Long time ago, pa and Mr. Griffith used to be good friends but something happened and now they hate each other. So Alexander is afraid if they knew he was seein’ Meggin that pa would stop him. I am pretty sure I am the only one that knows about them datin’ but I promised Alexander that I would never tell. Plus, he said he would bury me head first in the manure pile behind the barn if I did.

My olderest sister, Karen is exactly two years and one day younger then my brother Alexander. She is more like a boy then a girl but don’t tell her I said that. I only once ever seen her wear a dress and that was when granny Doctavio said she wanted a picture of our whole family all dressed up. Karen hated it but she sure looked pretty. Pa gave up a long time ago tryin’ to get her to wear dresses to church. Sometimes I can hear some of the others at church whisperin’ about her wearin’ pants to church but they don’t dare say anything loud enough for her to hear.

My next older sister, Kathy, is closet to my age she turned and she is probably my bestest friend in the whole wide world except for maybe John-Jo but I only get to see John-Jo on Sundays at church cause his Pa makes him work on their farm whenever he is not at school. Catherine was born with bad lungs so she gets tired pretty darn fast. Whenever her and me are playin’ or doin’ stuff, I normally got her on my back so she don’t get all tuckered out. Yeah she is bigger then me but I am strong and I can carry her pretty far.

Then there is my younger sister Kristen who is ten and a half and if you are smart, you best not take your eyes off her or she will bite you for no reason whatsoever. One time Pa’s dog Whiskey had gone to sleep under the front porch and left her tail hangin’ out and Kristen snuck up behind her and chomped down on it. Boy, I never heard such a noise as I did that day when Whiskey started hollerin’ and yelpin’. Kristen done went and bit the tip of Whiskeys tail right off! You had better believe Pa was mad about that cause Whiskey, she is Pa’s huntin’ dog and Pa paid a whole heap of money for Whiskey!

After Kirsten came my little brother Kenny-Lee . He is also good at sports; he plays on the school wrestlin’ team and last year he won a big shiny trophy that Pa put on the mantel over the fireplace.

Last, at least until sometime next month, is my baby brother Kane who isn’t really a baby anymore but everyone still calls him ‘Baby Brother’ instead of Kane. He is goin’ to be eight-years-old soon and he has caused ma, pa, and everyone in my family a lot of worry. When he was younger and whenever he is outside, we had to keep him chained to a tree or the fence or something like that with a big long dog chain, otherwise he would just run off. He still sometimes got away; there was this one time he got out of the house, and no one noticed for a long time and it took us all day to find him. Grandpa was the one to find him and he was about eight miles down the road just walkin’ and pickin’ wildflowers. Kane also liked to eat stuff when he was small, heck he still does that and he is nearly eight-years-old. I bet he has swallowed pretty near a hundred dollars worth of pa’s change since he was born. One time he swallowed the key to the tractor when he was only three and we had to wait five whole days before it came out the other end.

Now, I said that in about a month Kane ain’t goin’ to be the baby of the family no more; well that is because ma is goin’ to have another baby soon. Pa says that he don’t know how it happened but I sure do. I see lots of baby cows and sheep born and I seen how they was made, so I know! Pa also says that he thought him and ma was done makin’ babies and was workin’ on gettin’ the ones they got now all grown up and out of the house.
Ma’s belly is about big enough that I think maybe she is not havin’ just one baby but maybe a whole bunch of babies like Whiskey did last year after old man Chester’s dog, Rufus snuck over and got hold of Whiskey one day. I just hope my new brother or sister comes out lookin’ prettier then them pups did! Whiskey, she is a pretty brown Labrador but Rufus he is probably every kind of dog in the world all mixed up and stuffed into one ugly dog! Pa tried to give them pups away for free and still no one wanted them. In the end, he had to bop them in the head with a shovel and buried them deep in the manure pile behind the barn.

I guess that is everyone except for me; I done told you my name is Christopher Billiam Doctavio and that everyone just calls me Nevada for short. My middle name is Billiam because when I was born ma was super tired and when she wrote my name for the nurse to put down in the record her handwritin’ weren’t too good and the W ended up lookin’ like a B. Now them nurses they were on top of it cause when they seen that my ma had spelt Christian with a K they asked her about that cause it seemed pretty weird to them. But ma, she told them that she wanted my name to be spelt with a K and not a C. So them nurses just assumed then that my middle name was supposed to be spelt funny like my first name and didn’t ask ma about that. My Grandpapa, I mean my ma’s pa was named William and she had wanted me to have his name but it didn’t work out like that.
You might have also noticed that all us kids first names start with the letter-K. Well, that is because my ma wanted it that way. Some people say it is dumb but ma says that it takes brains to come up with so many different names that all start with the same letter. She still ain’t said what she is goin’ to name the new baby when it comes.

I am sure you are also wonderin’ why they call me Nevada instead of callin’ me Kris or Christopher or maybe even Bill from my middle name. You see every one of my brothers and sisters were born right here in this house, but I wasn’t. I was not born in this house or even in this town; heck, I was not even born in this state! When my ma was pregnant with me, my aunt Milly, that’s my pa’s sister, she was gettin’ married again for the fifth time. She has the worst luck with men she marries ‘cause they all end up dead after a year or two except for that one guy that she married first. He run off with some lady in a big fancy car and about a month later the police came and told Aunt Milly that her husband done shot himself in the foot and died. I always thought it kind of weird that someone could die from gettin’ shot in the foot, but I guess you can.

Then there was the other three men Aunt Milly married; they all died of what ma said was natural causes but I think Aunt Milly was gettin’ tired of them and killin’ them off so she could get a new one! But I ain’t supposed to say stuff like that ’cause it makes ma super mad but pa, he says it is probably more true then not.

Anyway, ma and pa packed everyone up into the truck and drove all the way to Nevada for Aunt Milly’s weddin’ with me still in my ma’s belly! You can guess what happened then. Right in the middle of the church, when the preacher was about to say, “Man and Wife” ma, she let out a scream and a couple minutes later, I popped right out on the church bench. Everyone says it was ridin’ in the truck for all those miles that done it and they figured I wanted out so bad after that and wasn’t goin’ to wait ’til ma got back home.

Pa was the one that started callin’ me Nevada and even though Ma kept tellin’ him to stop, he didn’t. It kind of stuck and everyone calls me Nevada now. Even my teachers at school, they only call me Nevada

I’m 12-years-old now . . . well I will be in five months, fifteen days, fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes. That there is Ohio time; I don’t know what it would be in Nevada time. Everybody in my family has black hair and brown eyes except for ma and me cause we both got reddish-brown hair and green eyes. Pa says I am a whoppin’ three-foot and nine inches and I weigh just a hairsbreadth shy of 68 pounds.

None of my brothers and sisters ever miss a chance to remind me that I am so short and skinny! They like to tease me and call me stuff like ‘Small Fry’, ‘Tiny-Tim’, ‘Short-Stuff’, ‘Half-Pint’ and a dozen other names like that but their all time favorite is ‘Little Pants’ ’cause I wear pants one size smaller than my youngest brother Kane. I don’t mind it too much ’cause I know that if anyone that is not family ever calls me a name or teases me that my brothers and sisters will pounded them into the ground like a fence pole and they have sure done it lots of times too.

I might be small but I am strong and I do everything on the farm accept stack the hay but I can sure toss it down from the hayloft and drag them over for the cows.

When I was a baby, the doctors in Nevada all thought I might have some problems since I was born two months early. Them doctors said that I would probably be a sickly boy and a burden to my family and maybe ma and pa should think about puttin’ me into a special hospital so they would not have to take care of me the rest of my life. But pa, he got fire mad at them Nevada doctors and he punched one of them right in the nose and pa got himself arrested for that but Aunt Milly’s new husband, he got pa out of jail and had a talk with them doctors so pa wouldn’t get into any trouble. But pa, he didn’t let no doctors tell him what to do with me and he didn’t believe them none either! When I was only nine-days-old he packed everyone up in the truck again and put ma and me in the back with a bunch of blankets and pillows and drove us all the way back home to Ohio. Of course, I was way too little to remember any of that stuff but I heard the story so many times it is like I sort of remember it happenin’.
I think I can remember back as far as when I was only four and Doc Wilson would come to the farm every week to check on me and make sure I was growin’ good. Ma and Pa say he did that every week since I was born and he never charged ma and pa a single penny either. But every year when pa has one of the cows slaughtered he gives half to Doc Wilson and his family for free.

Now he don’t need to come see me no more. When I get sick or hurt or something we got to go into town to see him except for that one time when I was ten and was foolin’ around on the fence in the back pasture. I tried to jump over it and cut my leg open real bad. Catherine had been with me and Alexander had been close by so she yelled for him and he ran me all the way up to the house. Boy Doc Wilson got to our house so fast and he gave me twenty-seven stitches in my leg right on our kitchen table but first he gave me a shot in my backside which hurt almost as much as my leg. That is something I don’t like about Doc Wilson, he always give me shots in my backside!

I never been super sick like the doctors back in Nevada said I would be. Oh sure I been sick but only things like colds and I got the Chicken Pox when I was eight. Boy, I hated those; they itched so bad and I wasn’t allowed to scratch. Ma said that every time I was caught scratching my Pox it meant I would get a whack with the belt when I was better. I ended up gettin’ eight whacks a couple weeks later and all those I earned the first day. On the second day, Pa made me wear my winter snow gloves and tied them on so that I could not take them off just so that I could not scratch my Chicken Pox. I itched so bad that I thought I was goin’ to die.

Aside from the fact that I have always been smaller then the other kids in my classes at school, I do have one problem that Doc Wilson says is because I was born too soon. Sometimes when I got to go number one or number two, I can’t hold it and it comes out into my pants. If I am outside and I got to go number one I just run behind a tree or something. But if I can’t wait even that long I will just pull down my pants and go number one right where I am. It is not such a big deal ‘cause the only ones that ever see is my family and they all see me naked all the time so I don’t much care. Pa says that if goin’ outside is good enough for the cows then it is good enough for me too.

But if I am not outside, like if I am in the barn or the house or when I am at school and I got to go number one or worse still, if I got to go number two, then I got to run for the bathroom or I will have a big, big problem in my pants.

When I first when to school, I got teased and picked on a lot when I would have accidents but then I would just tell my older brother and sisters and they would beat them up. After a while, everyone learned not to pick on me unless they wanted a black eye or worse.

There was this one time when I was in third grade and Mrs. Pennyworth was sick one day and we had to have a substitute teach for that day. The substitute was a very mean man and he yelled at us all day long. Well after a while I felt like I needed to go and I got up to go like normal cause I always had permission to just get up and go whenever I needed to go. He seen me and was yellin’ even louder and even some of my friends tried to tell him that I had to go but he didn’t listen and I ended up messin’ in my undershorts. If that was not bad enough, he made me go back to my desk and sit for the rest of the day like that.

Now everyday after school, my sister Catherine would meet me by the flagpole and would walk me home; so on this day when school let out, I went straight to the flagpole and told her what happened and when we got home she told our pa about it.

I never seen pa so mad in all my life and I never want too again. He had ma take me into the house and get me cleaned up while he finished waterin’ the cows. I came back out of the house washed and in clean pants about the time pa was finishing. We got in the truck and drove all the way to the school. I guess pa had called the school while ma had been cleanin’ me up ‘cause when we got there the police was there and so was a bunch of other teachers and that substitute teacher guy was standin’ outside too. I don’t know if the school called the police to keep my pa from killin’ that man or if pa called them but when we got there pa jumped out of the truck and did not say anything. He just walked right up to the man and punched him three times so fast. The only thing I remember my pa sayin’ was, “If I ever see or hear of you near another child again, I am not goin’ to be responsible for what I do to you.” Then he got back in the truck with me and we went home. As far as I know, that was the last anyone ever seen of that substitute teacher.

I had other substitutes since that guy but I never had any of them every say anything if I got up to use the bathroom or to go to the nurses office to get a pair of dry pants even if it was in the middle of class. I think every one of them was told not to say nothing.

Everything was great until last school year when I had to start ridin’ the bus to a new school that none of my brothers or sisters had ever went to. I guess I have always been smart; pa even says that he never known someone as smart as me and that I will probably grow up to be the President of America. I always get super good grades and my last teacher at my old school; she made me stay in from recess one day and had me take this special test. I was powerful mad about that too cause none of the other kids had to take the test.

Well, then a few weeks later this funny lookin’ man who was dressed like he was goin’ to church, showed up at our house on a Wednesday and told ma and pa that I won some kind of contest or something like that. He said that I am so smart that I get to go to this big fancy school and it wont cost ma and pa nothing at all. That man even gave them a check to buy me some fancy clothes to wear to that school.