My Childhood

To those who have been following this blog site, I say "Hello" to you all.

I've decided to change the nature of this blog site and it's content and present more information about me. I'll do this over the course of the next several updates, beginning with my youth and eventually leading to the events which brought me to prison, what my prison sentence has been like and my current preparations for my upcoming release this year.

I was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin in July of 1971 to Charles John Mondroski of Mercer, WI and Janice Lynn Olheiser of Shorewood, WI.

My earliest memories are of having to change schools often in my early years due to our family moving around alot during that time. I do remember the difficult time I had while going to a public school in the "inner city" of Milwaukee. I was an overweight white kid who stuttered in a predominantly black school. Over 30 years later I still remember what those rough times were like, so my concern really goes out to all the kids who are trapped in similar situations in today's inner-city schools. Thank God we eventually moved from that situation, lived in Huntville, Alabama for my 3rd grade school year, then came back to Wisconsin and settled in Glendale; a nice suburb of Milwaukee.

My sister and I went to Parkway Elementary then on to Glen Hills Middle Schools. What I remember about my 4th and 5th grade years at Parkway was I played alot and was very good at kickball. Because of my size, I was always picked first for kickball, but my size also led to being picked-on until I started fighting back.

It was at these schools where I was fortunate to have access to some good speech therapy for my stuttering, although the speech fluency I'm blessed to have now didn't come until many, many years later. I bring up my stuttering early on in this biography not for sympathy, but because as I've grown up, I see how very much it affected my growing up and how much it influenced who I am today. I wonder sometimes how different my school years would have been had I not been scared to death to stand up in class and talk. How different my interactions with my peers would have been if I could have strung more than 3 or 4 words in a row together before my speech broke up.

My not being able to speak fluently as a child (and being ridiculed because of it) greatly influenced me into being extremely quiet, shy and introverted which remains to this day. However, it also led to some beneficial character traits that I'm grateful for...which I will share next time.

--Chris