...when I liked the baby sitters, I'd take my clothes off and run around naked and ask them to play monkey with me and catch me.
ZANNE When and where were you born?
LEAP I was born Nov. ninth, 1964. When the wall came down, November ninth, that's the only thing that ever happened on my birthday. Any way I was born in Fullerton California, unfortunately, I'm a little embarrassed about that but I didn't have a choice. Then I lived in Orange till I was six, then we moved to Italy for three years. My Dad was doing one of his governmental projects in Europe, so we lived in Italy for three years then Belgium for three years. In between that time I got into a lot of trouble. I was in a gang in Italy.
Z Tell us about the gang.
LEAP It was called the Mafia.
M Oh my god!
LEAP Margaret was also in a gang called the Mafia.
M I was!
LEAP Mine was in Milan and Margaret's was in Philadelphia. I was seven years old; I was in the Mafia until I was nine.
Z What did the Mafia do?
LEAP Well the Mafia ruined the school and I was one of the heads of it, basically I told them what to do and they did it.
Z What did they do?
LEAP Threw chairs through the windows, paint on the walls, mud on the walls, ruin the school. My father had to pay for some of this. 
He says when we were in Spain that I asked him for this bucket, and I asked him for certain other things, and he said I wrecked the school with some of these things that he bought me in Spain, he said that I probably premeditated this, that I wanted the bucket so I could fill it up with mud and stuff, and that I already had the idea when I was in Spain to ruin the school! I don't recall this. I probably just utilized what was around me, I was industrious, so I utilized what I could for destruction. The older kids were smoking in the bathroom at the time, they were probably in junior high. We also had a rock war, we had world war three.
Z With rocks?
LEAP With rocks, yeah. BIG rocks. The bigger the rocks you found the better. And you threw them at everybody lined up and you had a rock war. The rock wars had to be broken up by the teachers and stuff. I think that they were pretty heavy, you pick up the biggest rock that you can and you heave it. I used to hide in the tower and throw rocks at people.
Z Who did you fight against?
LEAP Everyone. We started a huge war and I climbed up in a tower - I was a little bit like Napoleon. Maybe it was innate because my father, he does military strategic stuff so of course I must've picked this up from him.
Z That's his job?
LEAP Well he's a computer man but deals with the military, I consider it strategics. Wrecking the school. It's hard to explain this but I think my principal was afraid of me, was terrified, and considered me a terrorist, a young terrorist, and was frightened of kids who were like me. He did not kick me out because it was a private school and was paid for and he was afraid of me.
Z How many people were in the Mafia.
LEAP There were three or four boys in it. You could buy explosives in Italy pretty easily, my brother could, he was a few years older. You could also buy alcohol at a very young age, twelve, maybe.
Z What about your baby sitters?
LEAP It was pretty fun to have baby-sitters because we liked to torture them. One baby sitter was Italian and didn't speak much English and I tied her up and whipped her. My parents came home and she was still tied up and they asked "What is she doing tied up to that chair?" and I told them that she wouldn't speak English so I can't untie her.
M Was that acceptable to them?
LEAP You know, I really don't think it was. laughter] I don't know where I got the idea, M, what do you think?
M I think you were just trying to think fast on your feet.
LEAP I know I was, and I used to like to take my clothes off too when I liked the baby sitters, I'd take my clothes off and run around naked and ask them to play monkey with me and catch me. I'd dump my clothes, I'd run around and take my little suit off. Pretty much we were into tormenting all of the baby sitters. I can't believe that two of them came back. There was also this other baby sitter Olivia, and of course I had a big crush on her. She was my Dad's secretary, she got stuck baby-sitting us a lot. I wished my dad was with her because I had a crushes on her. She started my Troll collection. She got me my first Troll, a really great Belgian Troll. I started collecting Trolls and I ended up with forty Trolls. Trolls pop up during poverty and stuff. I guess they're a sign that anarchy's arising, when a Troll pops up. During the Depression.
Z Were there Trolls during the Depression?
LEAP I don't know but I found out they become popular during a recession. Then they disappear.
Z What was it about the Trolls that you liked so much?
LEAP I thought that I looked like a Troll. I was sure that I looked like a Troll. [laughs] Basically that's what I thought, I thought I WAS a Troll. If anything, I related more to a Troll than a human. When someone called me a girl I'd say I'm not a girl, don't call me a girl, I'm a Unisect. That's when I got into the Trolls. Not only am I a Unisect, I am not human. [laughs] I decided I was not human. I didn't want to BE human, either, and I did not want to claim any of the sexes. The term GIRL to me was like GRILLed cheese samwich. I used to consider the term girl a bad word, like you were calling me a grilled cheese samwich. That was my way of relating words, I don't want to be called a piece of cheese, you know, like a griller. [laughter]
They definitely thought something was wrong with me because I wouldn't cop to it. They also had to call me a different name than ********* because that name didn't fit me. I still don't think the name really fits. It does not really suit me. I did not feel that name was fit for me. They should've had another child and named it Soozie but no me! Basically I told them I wanted to be ORSON. And that was my pseudonym. Orson, after ORSON WELLS, because I wanted Orson Wells to be my mentor, I was really into Orson Wells. I was Orson Wagon, when I was a kid I changed my name to Orson Wagon. [laughter all around]
And then my other person that I wanted to be was - a really small childhood dream - I wanted to be Mark Spitz, and I also wanted to be Mario Andretti. Mario Andretti was really cool, he drove race cars, he probably got a lot of girls and I just didn't connect the whole thinking - he was just a race car driver, they'd be considered really suave, right? And Mark Spitz won the Olympic swimming, they had posters of him everywhere. But I still went by the name Orson for years. My whole family had to call me Orson, because I wouldn't answer them unless they did. And they couldn't call me a girl because I wouldn't come. You know, it's like a dog, if a dog doesn't like what it's - you know, if you call it a cat, and it doesn't want to be called that it's not gonna come. If you call Theo Sandy and he doesn't like that name he's not going to come.
I also did adopt different families that I liked better, that cooked better. My mother burnt everything. She made burnt Melba toast with cheese and tomato on it and they were black and she'd say, "Just scrape off, scrape it off!" They were black, charcoal black. "Crape the freezer burn off the spaghetti." I was not into eating there at all, the food was terrible. It was the worst food. She was the worst cook I have ever met in my life, the fucking worst. [laughing] And that's when I decided I just didn't want to eat at all. For a while I just hated food. I just got into this anti-food thing from her BAD FOOD.
Z But you liked candy.
LEAP Yeah, because her food was really bad, you know. It was probably really TOXIC from all the charcoal, the burnt melba toast.
I used to shoplift a lot, I started shoplifting in Italy. They never caught me, they caught a few others but they never caught me.To MORE stories -> Froggie goes to BELGIUM!
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