Iwas born in chicago, illinois, on march 22, 1974, at 3: 26 in the afternoon. it was one of those rare chicago spring days, warm and beautiful enough for people to sail their boats out on lake michigan. i know this because my mother loves to tell the story about how she watched the boats from a hospital window while she was in labor with me. in fact, she feels compelled to repeat this story every year on my birthday at exactly 3: 26 in the afternoon. it doesn’t matter where i am or what i’m doing; my mother always calls in her chipper voice to reminisce over what must have been one of the most painful experiences of her life—childbirth. i spent my earliest years in an apartment in evanston until my parents moved us to a house in oak park. i loved the new house because it had a big backyard, and it was within walking distance of my cousin’s house. my cousin jason and i were very close growing up. in fact, people often mistook us for twins. our mothers would dress us alike, in matching sweaters with our names sewn across the front. we would have to wear the sweaters when our mothers dragged us to the house of someone important—usually another greek woman. there we would be told to behave ourselves and sit still while the adults spoke greek to one another. of course, we felt silly in our matching sweaters, and we hated to sit still. it was boring. when we didn’t have to wear the matching sweaters, my cousin and i wore our outfit of choice: overalls with a t-shirt and zip shoes. i loved my zip shoes. they came in red, white, or blue and featured cartoon characters across the rims of the soles. we would run around outside in our zip shoes, pretending to be luke skywalker and han solo. on rainy days, we would go to the basement and turn the old furniture upside down to form the cockpits of various spaceships that we had seen in the movies. we would carry out mock fights against invisible enemies. in the 1970s, we didn’t have dvd or videocassette players. we didn’t even have cable, so there was never anything for us to watch on tv. we spent our days using our own imaginations to entertain ourselves. any piece of furniture at our disposal became a spaceship. any blanket in the house became the wall of a fort.

what tells you that this selection is an autobiography?

it is told from first-person point of view.

it includes important dates.

it offers details about the time in which the subject grew up.

it describes the subject’s feelings about her life.