They say that there are three things that distinguish serial killers from other people, plus a fourth common attribute.
Bed wetting, pyromania, animal torture, and a strong sense of isolation.
I hit three of these four. Maybe three and a half.
First, the embarassing one. Yeah, I was a late bed-wetter, and I even had problems during the day because of my fear of the bathrooms at school.
I don't know when I stopped making puddles in my sleep, but it was damned late. We are talking third-grade late, maybe fourth.
When I slept, I slept as if I were dead. I was out. And, as such, muscular control was at a minimum. My parents, in desperation, got one of those rubber sheets with a water alarm in it. The theory was that I would wake up after I made things wet and eventually learn to wake up before the grand event.
Instead, I slept through the process of getting up, getting changed, having sheets reworked, etc. I did the actions and stuff, but I was asleep at the time -- sleep walking.
I remember once, I was going to a sleepover with a bunch of kids... I assume one or more of them were friends even. I was very concerned about the obvious detail of staying dry when sleeping. As it turned out I didn't sleep that deeply away from home and it was all good. A relief!
At school, for roughly the same period of time, I would refuse to go to the bathrooms. They were not safe -- bullies hung out there harassing people, stuffing them into trash cans, and generally making these rooms unacceptably scary for me at the time. So there was more than one time when I leaked in class. Not fun.
Second comes the fascination with fire. Yup, that's me. When I was in California before Washington (recall the sequence, CA for about 7-9 years, WA for about 4, Orange County CA for a brief stint {I started building my first robot then}, Long Beach for another about 4, I moved to Oregon when I was about 17 and moved to Texas in 1999)....
um, CA before WA I had a friend who goaded me into lighting a fire in a garbage can in a back alley. We were in it together up until the point I lit the fire, and then he was all "he did it!" It probably didn't help that the can was plastic. I got a nice tour of the fire station out of THAT one!
But I do love fire, even today. Given a choice of criminal activities, I would choose theft first and arson second. Actually, I would probably combine the two.
The nasty one, animal torture, escaped me entirely. I loved animals far more than people. I could have probably gone for people torture, but my strong sense of isolation (the fourth element) and fear of the world around me prevented this one.
So far as I know, I've only tried to kill three times.
First was in school, I don't know when or where. I was being tormented, as per usual, in some classroom. I'm surrounded by those crappy desk/chair combinations you see in grade school. I decide I've had enough and I launch myself across some desks with the full intention of killing my tormentor. I remember that. I also remember being prevented from doing so by those around me. But I was raving and screaming and kicking... I must have been a mess.
A later time, in Washington, occured on the playground. I was being difficult, I assume, and my friend at the time wrestled me to a standstill. I don't remember the particulars, however I was humiliated...I relented, said I was good, and he let me go. Whereupon I tried to slash his throat out with my fingernails. I figured a sideways slash would work best, using the edge of the fingernails. It almost worked. At least it left a mark.
The third time was when I was nineteen, give or take, in Oregon. I was living in a pleasant apartment, doing programming. I think this was after I quit college and was trying to go it on my own -- before I had to move home for a few months and retry this whole working for a living thing.
However, the angst and frustration and confusion I felt at the world was getting to be too much. I hated it. I didn't want to do it anymore. So I took my giant-ass knife, the one I got in the SCA (I still have it), and set the point between my ribs, pointed at my heart.
I wasn't going to drive it in and I knew I wasn't, but I wanted to see what it felt like, to think about it.
I decided then that I would pretend that I *had* killed myself. To take that moment to make a new start, to kill the concept of who I was and to try to make a better version.
It worked to some extent, but it was not the last time that I would come to hate who I was and try to shift it for the better. I still find myself frustrated with my role in life, and I still try to find ways to make things better.
So, fortunately, my love of animals has saved me from a life of running from the law.