Who Is Lucas Ryker O'Riley?

2. HISTORY

My unusual tale begins, well, where ultimately all tales begin, at the very beginning, when I was born.

I came into this world on May 19th, 15 years ago, born Lucas Ryker O'Riley as my parents', Lars and Amelia's, second child.

When I was born, they already had a 15-month-old boy, Dave. I was to be their second and ultimately final child.

Upon my arrival, the doctors proclaimed me to be perfectly healthy, except for one minor issue; apparently I had a bit of both male and female sex characteristics, which they quickly deduced upon observing my ambiguous genitalia.

I had what they characterized at the time as a semi-normal penis, whatever that meant, yet I had no scrotum. That skin had split and formed labia, just as it does for females. I also had a vaginal canal, which they didn't call normal, not knowing yet how developed or deep it was inside me, nor knowing if there was ovarian tissue or not.

In the following weeks, months, and first couple years of frequent doctor's visits, they determined that, until I matured and started going through puberty, most tests for now would only prove inconclusive ascertaining which direction my gender would take.

Although this left my parents a little frustrated and confused, they were happy that I was healthy in every other way and loved me all the same.

At first, my parents were reluctant to push me into a specific gender role one way or another, but the limited budget of a young married couple quickly aided their decision to go with a practical solution for how they would raise me. Since my brother was just a little over a year older than me, they simply began dressing me in his old clothes and that was that.

Well, that was the practical economic solution but my mother also thought that growing up as a boy, I would be mentally tougher and better able to handle difficult situations as I grew up with my unique uncertain condition.

Ultimately, in many ways, I think she was probably right.

Over the next several years, I found myself idolizing and emulating my big brother. When my brother went to preschool, even though I was a year younger than him, I had to know everything that he was doing in school and made him show me what he did each day. In essence, I made him teach me what he was doing and what he learned.

By the time we were both in grade school, I was far enough ahead that I was able to skip 2nd grade and joined my brother and his class for 3rd grade at Pacific Palms Elementary School. And so it went, I was going to school with my big brother in his class.

If anyone had known about my unique situation, one might have wondered if using the boy's bathroom would be a problem. Well, no one knew that anything was different about me.

I didn't use the urinals like all the other boys because I couldn't without peeing on myself, but I was able to stand at a toilet as long as I was as close as possible to it. Because I could stand to pee it allayed any doubts anyone might have had about my gender.

Although back then my brother wasn't exactly sure how or why I was 'different', he still made sure to watch out for me since I was the youngest in the class.

Despite always being the youngest every year in every subsequent class, I was never the runt of the class. Even though I looked like a beanpole, I was always taller than at least two or three other kids in our class every year. However, my brother would be the tallest or second tallest.

Our parents presumed we would be pretty tall, considering how both our mother and father were well above average.

Before our parents had us, mom was a 5'7.5" local beauty queen and standout high school track sprinter. She used both of her strengths parlaying them into a modest career modeling for various department store chain catalogs, which we were told was how she caught Dad's attention.

Dad's 6'5" height helped him become the local basketball star in high school which also helped him earn a college scholarship.

So it seemed that my brother and I weren't going to be short-changed in the height or the looks department, for that matter.

Dave got our Dad's Scandinavian and German genes; stereotypical blond hair, blue eyes, and a strong jaw line, while I took after our Mom's side of the family, her Irish and Greek genes expressed themselves physically, giving me my wavy auburn hair, blue/green eyes, and olive complexion.

My Mom loved the way my hair looked, going home from the hospital, my head was already covered with thick wavy hair.

Over the years she tried to delay my visits to the barber shop until my hair was at least down to my collar. I never minded it, but my dad always ended up taking me to get it cut.

On a few occasions when my hair did grow below my collar, people who didn't know me or our family would mistake me for a little girl wearing boy's clothes.

Outside of school, there weren't too many kids for my brother and me to hang out and play with in our neighborhood. We lived in a suburban community in the sprawling greater metropolitan area of Southern California, called Pacific Oaks Glen, which was one of the older communities in our particular area of the city.

Since the properties in our neighborhood were fairly old and typically much larger than average, there were fewer homes and most seemed to be a little more expensive than the homes just a mile or two away that were newer and built on regular size lots. Translated, that generally meant that there were fewer younger families with kids our age in the neighborhood.

Until the 3rd grade, there were only two other families with kids on our block. Then that summer between 2nd and 3rd grade, a new family moved into the house behind our home on the next street over.

Our properties shared the back wall, so as I peered down from my upstairs bedroom window, I could see that the family had kids, or at least one kid, as I watched the father unload the moving van, storing some kid-sized bikes in their backyard shed next to their garage.

That evening over the dinner table, I could hardly contain my excitement about our neighbors moving in and the possibility of making friends with their kids. Seeing my enthusiasm, my parents said they'd go over and welcome our new neighbors and introduce themselves rather than me going up to complete strangers on my own.