Circa 1996: As part of the process of adopting a child, at least for domestic adoptions, prospective parents are required to write a bio to present to birth-mothers, ostensibly as a means of them "getting to know you." I have no idea if Benjamin's birth mother ever read this, but I present it here as an historical document. -g

Apparently, I didn’t want to be born — I so much wanted to stay in the womb that they had to break my collar bone to get me out. Maybe Brooklyn was cold that day.

My parents were married in June, 1954 (my mother was 18, my father 21), and just barely 9 months later, they were breaking my collar bone. I was my parent’s first child, and as such, was immortalized in countless zillion photos and infinite hours of home movie footage. We lived in the Bronx, across the street from my father’s parents’ apartment, within spitting distance of Yankee Stadium.

My parents are fond of telling this story about my early years in the Bronx: I was a rocker — that is, I was fond of rocking myself to and in sleep, in a constant back and forth motion that made my crib squeak across the floor. At some point, a neighbor in the apartment directly below us committed suicide by jumping out of his window (true story, supposedly). According to the tale, as told by my parents, I drove him to it with my squeaky rocking. My parents! What a sense of humor!

During my terrible twos, my family packed up and moved to L.A., where my mother’s parents had recently moved. We drove across country, and lived for a while with my wonderful, hands-on grandparents. We moved around for a few years, during which time my sister Sheri was born (September 1958), and then my brother (then Scot and now Yeshia, in August 1960). Finally, we settled in Canoga Park, in the then scenic San Fernando Valley. I remember driving through long streets bordered by orange groves — the smell in the air was sweet!

I was a "problem" child — not a malicious, but a mischievous one. My mother likes to tell me that my kindergarten teacher used to come over to our house after school to cry. My shining kindergarten antic is said to have been the time I climbed up onto the lunch table and proceeded to stomp on my schoolmates’ lunches. I question this story, because it doesn’t sound like me, but who am I to disagree with my mother? The "problems" continued throughout elementary school. In general, my modus operandi was to do anything at all to avoid having to deal with the classroom situation. I was fond of making little noises without showing any outward signs of having made the noise, in order to distract the class and the teacher. I would feign falling backwards in my tilted-back chair, making the associative whooping sounds of a near fall. My 4th grade teacher sent me to kindergarten in an effort to humiliate me in front of my peers. When that backfired (I enjoyed it!), the teacher decided to really humiliate me, and sent me to the kindergarten classroom to get some stuff — I was set up in the back of my own classroom, on my own little mat with my own little kindergarten blocks, and proceeded to have a great time, performing "magic tricks" with blocks and my handkerchief, further disrupting class, and ultimately earning myself my own desk at the very front of the classroom — and I do mean "very" front — I had to scoot backwards to see the blackboard. All the while, I managed to make decent grades, even if I did get a lot of "unsatisfactories" in "Citizenship." I believe my behavior is attributable to what one therapist has called "high functioning" attention deficit disorder (still have it) — I simply could not focus. My teachers were never able to deal with me in an appropriate way.

It wasn’t until my family moved to Pascagoula, Mississippi in 1966 or ‛67 that I was forced to behave in school, but even that didn’t last too long. Corporal punishment was allowed in public schools and, as might be imagined, I was a popular candidate for the expression of that dubious disciplinary methodology. My teachers were proud owners of aerodynamically designed wooden paddles, and they just loved to test ‛em out on my Jewish butt! It didn’t take too long before I figured out that it wasn’t worth the effort, and simply withdrew. I think some of my personality was beaten out of me during that period. However, as my 1969 Pascagoula Junior High yearbook has reminded me, I somehow ended up on the student council, and was active in the Choral group. At one assembly, with a couple of my pals at my side, guitars in hand, we were a big hit with the popular song, "Magic Carpet Ride." Didn’t get me any girls, but made me somehow less hated, and may have distracted people from my Jewishness (there were only 6 Jewish families in Pascagoula, none of them advertising it — I was bar mitzvahed at the nearest synagogue, 40 miles away in Mobile, Alabama).

During the early days of life in Pascagoula, we lived in a two bedroom apartment while waiting for a house my parents designed to be built. Those were very fun days for my siblings and me. Lots of antics. I formed my first rock band there, the D-G Duo (David and Glen), modeled after our heroes, the Monkees. I wore a wool cap like my hero, Michael Nesmith. My brother and sister participated with maracas and dancing. Sometimes we would wake up VERY early and go down to the pier (we were on the Gulf Coast) to go fishing with the old black guys who worked at the complex. We’d catch speckled trout, bring 'em back and fry 'em up for breakfast — mmmm, good!

My parents were adamant about our doing well in school, and provided good role models — my mother went back to school while we were in Pascagoula, and began working on what would ultimately become a Ph.D. in psychology. They were (and remain) very fond of camping, and took us on countless trips to national and state parks and campgrounds around the country. We took long family vacations, sometimes driving all the way across the country. They were a little heavy on the discipline, especially the physical discipline. I don’t hold this against them — I know I was difficult, and I’m quite sure they didn’t know any better. In spite of their best efforts, I was a constant challenge for them. My role in the family was always to challenge to their authority, and ultimately, to break ground for an easier time of it for my siblings. They turned out great though, and have become wonderful, caring grandparents to all of my nieces and nephews.

In ‛69, we moved back to our old neighborhood in Canoga Park. The soundtrack to that move was the Beatles’ Abbey Road album, which will always have a special place in my heart. We set ourselves up in another 2 bedroom apartment while waiting for another new house to be completed. I don’t remember anything at all about Junior High in L.A. — I don’t even remember the name of the school! Then, it was off to El Camino Real High. It was 1970, a hopping time for the counter culture, where I was destined to find a home. But at that time, I was still (literally) a Boy Scout. I started another band, the "Cloud of Contentment," which earned notoriety for our version of Steppenwolf’s "The Pusherman," which featured the controversial word "goddamn." Before I became a member of my Temple’s youth group, the Cloud played at a couple of events. Eventually, I became a member and met many of the people who remain my best friends. Those were extremely fun and interesting times. My parents had instilled a strong sense of morality and ethics in me, and I became involved in politics and the arts — I became publicity director for the youth group, designed their event posters, worked on political campaigns and issues, organized debates at school and at Temple, and wore long hair, torn and excessively patched jeans and t-shirts. I became what we affectionately called a "freak" (as opposed to "hippie"), but what I prefer to call a "screaming liberal," something that, in spite of popular trends to the contrary, I remain and am proud of. My clientele deliberately includes the ACLU and other civil rights and left-wing political organizations, and that’s the way I like it!

I got a job at a local hippie record store and ended up working there for three years. During that time, I graduated from high school (with decent grades, but with the usual assortment of disciplinary problems — a gym coach attempted to get me expelled a few times for refusing to wear a uniform in gym class and for failing to rise for the Pledge of Allegiance, for example), and attended one semester at Pierce Jr. College. The only thing useful about Pierce was that I was able to weasel my way into a radio show on their intra-campus radio station — "the Glen Horn Rock and Roll Extravaganza" ("Eichenblatt" was a "bad" radio name, I was told, and was forced to change it). I was unable to deal with any other aspect of the place, and dropped out after the first semester. Also during that period, I moved down to San Diego to help open a new store, and spent nine miserable, lonely months there eating a diet of (almost exclusively) eggs and canned fake-meat products before moving back to my parents’ house in L.A.

In 1977, after leaving the record store, I decided to seek some kind of alternative educational opportunity, so I loaded "the Space Dog" and myself into the first or second of a long series of Volkswagen Bugs named "Bob," and took off into the heart of California. We wandered, camping and visiting friends for a while, until we landed in Arcata. I wanted to check out Humboldt State University, which had a program called "Cluster," which was an interdisciplinary general education program that functioned out of a couple of old houses on the campus. This was just the ticket for me. I enrolled, and it was a wonderful, creative time for me. I did a lot of art and writing during this period, and learned a LOT. My brother and sister moved up to Humboldt, and my parents invested in a wonderful house in Trinidad, that we called "990" after our address on Stagecoach Road (the most beautiful road on earth!).

After Cluster, I became an Art major, taking painting, sculpture, and ultimately lots of cinema classes. I was very interested in animation, and produced several films that my teachers and fellow students seemed to be very interested in. I schooled at HSU for 4 years, and during that time got a job at a local record store. I was given complete freedom to design the store, did all of the print and radio advertising and window displays. It was such great fun. This was during the "New Wave" movement in rock music, an exciting time. Ultimately, the owner decided that Eureka and Humboldt County were not ready for New Wave (in spite of decent sales), and let me go find some other way to express my creativity, while making the world safe for country music.

Within a year (1982), I found myself in New York City, attending the wedding of my first cousin Allison. Gayle was the bridesmaid at that wedding (I didn’t know her yet). I was supposed to be in NYC for two weeks, but was invited by a Chassidic family my brother the Rabbi introduced me to, to stay in New York for free, in exchange for remodeling the basement apartment in their house. I lived there for a year while they tried to make a hassid out of me (they failed). I got a job at the world’s largest art supply store down on Canal Street in Soho, and finally moved to the Lower East Side.

My brother got married in Jerusalem, and the whole family flew out to attend, including my only remaining grandparent (my father’s mother), my then living aunt Alice (my mother’s sister) and a small assortment of other crazy relatives. We took a tour of Israel, the whole family on a little tour bus just for us. My sister and I had a blast! She’d had a rough time — she’d been married, had given birth to premature twins who both died, and her husband ultimately left her for her best friend. The Israel trip was very good for her. She later married her high school sweetheart and had two wonderful kids with whom I am thoroughly in love. Gayle and I are their godparents.

When my cousin’s family found out that I was staying in New York, they started bugging me right away to call Gayle ("she’s such a nice girl!"). I was far too shy for that, and was still sort of involved with a long-term and long-distance relationship. Allison divorced and got remarried within 2 years, and at her second wedding (Gayle was a bridesmaid again!), I was all ready to meet her (after having been dreyed at about her for 2 years), but she arrived at the wedding with her boyfriend, and that was a real depressing development. Time passed, and when Gayle moved to Greenwich Village in order to do her Master’s degree at Columbia, she contacted me (at my cousin’s insistence). We started dating. For some reason, I had this idea that I would ultimately marry Gayle, and so, she made me extremely nervous. We had a lot of fun, but it was a difficult courtship. I had difficulty figuring out where she wanted our relationship to go. She was smart, cute, witty, a lot of fun, and most importantly, a solid, reliable, caring person — one you could count on. It took a while, but on a particularly romantic, snowy Valentine’s Day night, six months later, we fell in love.

Gayle moved in with me to my apartment in the Lower East Side. Then we moved to the Upper East Side, a considerable step up. By this time, I was working for Jacoby & Meyers, doing computers and having a great time working with my great friends, Evelyn and Rich (Evelyn is one of the youth group friends I spoke of earlier). Gayle and I got engaged, then married. Our wedding was wild fun — we had two bands, a traditional one to start things off, then a Reggae band to cap off the night (my father-in-law, the Reggae freak’s idea). Friends from all over the country came, and we put them all up at our hotel. We had a WONDERFUL time! We honeymooned exquisitely in Greece. Since then, we’ve traveled to Israel and Egypt, and to Mexico a bunch of times. We travel together really well, and always have an adventurous, educational and fun time.

All in all, I lived in New York for 10 years, had two major jobs, learned computers, got a B.S. in Education, an M.S. in Educational Computing, started my consulting practice, met my wife and married her. A decent stretch of worthwhile time!

We moved back to LA at the end of 1991, thanks to a rent-controlled apartment passed on to us by an about-to-be-spouse of yet another of my youth group friends, and an '86 monkey-shit-brown Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme passed down by my father-in-law. We drove all our stuff across country in a Ryder truck, towing the Olds behind us through the heart of 'merika. Gayle got a job in 10 minutes (practically -- they see that Columbia degree, and that's all it takes), and I had one of my national clients who had offices in LA. That client soon spread the word about me to other civil rights law firms, and pretty soon I had a very nice little consulting practice going, with exactly the kind of clientele I wanted.