Cory's Origin, Part 1: Abandoned in Ecuador

Originally posted on September 1, 2008.

My husband, Stephen, laughs when I refer to this as "Cory's Origin Story." Origin stories are what comic book characters have, but to be fair, Cory is as close to a comic book character as a human being can come.

This story was told on the Chicago El and not quietly. I've divided the story into two parts because of it's length. The portion posted below is the half Cory managed to tell before we reached the Belmont stop and transferred to the Brown Line.

I've heard this story many times, but it never gets any less interesting.

This is the story of how I was born. Well... not how I was born, cause nobody was there. Well... some people were there, obviously, but nobody I know... other than myself. It's the story of how I was adopted.

It all started when my wonderful dad and my crazy mother wanted to have children. Luckily for the world... That was mean; I'm not going to say it. I was going to say something impolite about my mother. Ok... backtracking. They were trying to adopt, and they got put on like a seven year waiting list. My parents were already thirty, so they were like, "Ah! No way! We're just going to go international."

So, one day, my hippy parents got a phone call from some place in Ecuador. They're like, "We have your baby! You have to come to Ecuador if you want it," and my parents were like, "Ok."

They're like, "You can only have a boy when you get here," so my parents... They're like, "Alright! We're going to name our baby Cory! C.O.R.Y. ...Cory."

So, they fly down to Ecuador, thinking they're going to be there for like a week or two... max. And they meet this guy named Pepe who helps them. They take me to... Or they take... Pepe takes my parents to this little orphanage, attached to a convent, run by nuns, in the mountains outside of Quito, Ecuador. They go there.

Some of the details of all these stories are a little fuzzy. I have to check with my mom and my dad about them. Obviously, I don't remember them, cause I was adopted when I was three months old. Also, my mother is a horrible drug addict and alcoholic who tells a lot of lies, so some of these stories might not be completely factual. A bunch of them are, cause I've checked them with my father, but father is also one of the most forgettable... Not forgettable; he's pretty memorable... forgetful people I know. For example, my Mother was like a hundred percent Ecuadorian, so I know I'm like fifty percent… (I interrupted: "Your birth mother?") Yeah, my birth mother was a hundred percent Ecuadorian, so I know I'm like, you know, at least fifty percent, you know, Native South American. My mom insists that my birth dad was Italian. My dad insists that my birth dad was Spanish, but my mom always makes stuff up, and my dad never remembers things correctly, so neither of them are reliable sources.

My mom said that my birth dad was like the Italian Ambassor*...that's not a word. You're not allowed to put that on the blog! You will. It's ok. Anywho, so some of these stories I need to check with my Dad, but most of them I've checked with him, and they're true.

(*Cory meant Ambassador.)

Anywho, my birth mom and my birth dad were not married; he was, but not to her, and he had kids, so it was a sorted affair. My birth mom had to give me up for adoption because she couldn't afford to raise a baby, so she shamed the family by giving me up. What I think is most funny, she was actually my birth dad's secretary; like some sort of frickin' "Days of Our Lives" soap opera drama thing. She was his secretary, and when I found... when I realized that, my friend in middle school, Christina, she was like, "Ha ha ha! You were made on a desk! Ha ha ha! You're a typing error! I'm going to call you White Out!" So my nickname, from sixth grade until we graduated high school, was White Out.

Anywho, I was originally abandoned in a cardboard box on the side of the road, and we have been told... my parents have been told that I was kept alive by like people on the street like eating food and regurgitating it into my mouth like keeping me alive until somebody got the nuns in the convent, and they rescued me and took me to the orphanage. Somehow, they traced back my birth mom, and so when my parents got down to Ecuador, they actually met my birth mom and my maternal grandmother. And I've been told that they actually had to like pay my birth mom some kind of like fee and a couch. So you know how they say children are priceless? I had a price. It was X amount of American dollars and a couch. I'm proud of that. It was kind of a dowry for living.

And so... but backtrack, my parents get to Ecuador, led by their good friend, Pepe, and they pick out this little boy from the orphanage, cause they, you know, were told they could only have a boy. They're like, "Oh, we love you, little boy! You're our baby!"

The nuns told them that they had to leave little baby there over night, and come back and get them in the morning, so they're like, "Ok, bye, little Cory! We'll come back and get you in the morning," but in the night, little Paco... or whatever his name is, died, which was awesome for me because... when they came back the next morning, they're like, "Sorry, that baby's dead now. You have to pick a new one, and this time it can only be a girl."

And so, they were like, "Ok. We'll name it Cory. C.O.R.Y. Cory." Which is why I have the boy's spelling of my name.

Anyways, they take me, and they ended up... I guess Quito was going through some civil rioting and stuff, so had a really hard time getting me out of the country. And my dad eventually had to leave after a week or so, cause he had a job back in Duluth. ...Need to have his job still. So, he left my mom, and she was like, "Ok. Hopefully, I'll see you in a few days." She ended up getting trapped in Ecuador for almost seven months.

A lot of crazy stuff happened. Well, first of all, my mom tells me how, when they first got me, they thought that I was black because I was so dirty. Then she gave me a bath, and she took me out of the water, and the water was just dark. And so, she was like, "I'm going to give the baby another bath." So, she washed, rinsed, and repeated, and it was like three baths later she got to my regular skin color.

I was also full of amoebas and parasites because I had, you know, been in a box in the streets for a while. So, they had to like take me to the doctor and like give me meds and flush me out, which is why Stephen Heintz refers to me as "a dirty baby."

Stephen, who until this point had not been paying attention, chimed in, "Do I?"

"You don't remember that?" I reply. "Oh yeah, you called her dirty baby for a long time."

For years, cause of my amoebas and parasites. And you were like, "Oh, dirty baby, don't touch me!"

Anyways, my mom got trapped down there. A lot of different things happened to her. She... several times they brought like tanks out and had to mace down the streets, cause of rioting, and she got caught in that once.

She also fell down a couple flights of stairs cause she had really bad food poisoning from bad vegetables, and I was like in my little baby basket, but I was totally unhurt. But like she cradled me just right; I didn't get hurt, but she got really hurt.

One time, she got mugged on the streets. This guy came up to her, and he was like, "Give me all your money!" and she didn't have any, because she wasn't even suppose to be in the country anymore.

At this point, we had to pause the recording briefly, as we transferred from the Red Line to the Brown Line. For that reason, I'm going to place the "To Be Continued" marker here. The full transcript of the story lasted six pages, single spaced.

Cory isn't one to talk quietly, so we were either a huge source of entertainment or annoyance for the other four-ish passengers on the EL that day.

Stay tuned for the second half of Cory's story, which I will post in three days; same Cory time, same Cory channel.