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Change can often be very subtle and not affect most people. Except for the one person who this change effects and it will make the biggest difference for.

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Even though William was beginning to understand who his father was, he still didn't know at all who his father was.

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"I wish I knew him better, how I wish we'd had a life together,wishing my father wasn't a complete and utter goddamn mystery to me."

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"Changes," by David Bowie

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" 'You are hereby and forever after my father, Edward Bloom a Very Great Man.' "(22)

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picture of dad hugging son - Google Search

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Edward Bloom was a terrible father. He was never there for his son or his family. All of a sudden his son begins to understand who he is and realizes he is not that bad of a father after all.

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"The day he was born someone spotted a cloud over that away, with something of a darkness to it."(6)
This baby was born on a special day. There was a terrible drought in Alabama and all of a sudden there was a cloud. The author does this to foreshadow Edward Bloom's special connection with water and how things were starting to change.

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When Edward Bloom was born and a cloud appeared in Alabama for the first time in years.

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Daniel Wallace’s message about change is everyone can change much like Edward who went from a complete mystery to an open book.

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When Eric Ducharme slips into his handmade fin to explore the crystal clear waters of Florida's natural springs as a merman, he says he's mentally transported as well.

So is the unique, eye-catching life of this Florida man who says he eats, sleeps and breathes mermaids while physically looking and acting like one as often as time allows.

'It's a lifestyle. It's a path in life that I have chosen,' says the 22-year-old from Crystal River who's one of the latest characters to appear on TLC's My Crazy Obsession.

Three times a week Ducharme drives more than an hour and a half to swim in one of his shimmering handmade suits at a natural spring.

'I came out here looking for some alligators and saw a tail that I've never seen before in a river,' a confused man sitting on the banks confesses on camera.

Passing before him, the ends of Ducharme's long orange tail flicker above the water's surface like a giant gold fish. It's a sight that keeps him and a few other men fixated.

'When I put on a tail I feel transformed,' Ducharme says while resting on the water's edge. 'I feel like I'm starting to enter into a different world when I hit the water.'

He calls it 'mermaiding,' his own style of costumed free-diving that he says allows him to escape the world up above.

'Being under water I feel, I'm just totally away from the world,' he explains while able to hold his breath for up to four minutes at a time.

Though as bizarre of a 'lifestyle' activity as it is, it's one his family and even boyfriend have accepted - it not without initial astonishment.

'When I first met Eric, I was introduced to the subject of mermaids, on our first date,' Ducharme's boyfriend Matthew Quijano opens up on camera. 'Your jaw just kind of drops and you're just like, "wow."

'When we go swimming I don't even see him because he swims off to his own little corner, it's all about getting away from the rest of the world,' he says.

'Eric is obsessed with mermaids,' his mother Candy Ducharme shares on the program. 'We have our own passions. That's Eric's life.'

Since Ducharme was a child he says he's been fascinated with mermaids.

At the age of 16 he put on his first show while swimming as the mermaid prince in Weeki Wachee Springs Little Mermaid show in 2006.

But even before that he says he was hand making his own tails from everything from garbage bags to fabrics before eventually becoming good enough to sell and donate them to the park at the age of 13.

'It's taking me a really long time to kind of understand my place in life,' Ducharme says of his self-admitted obsession.

Today he has transformed his beloved hobby into a business, using silicone, urethanes, and latex rubbers to create shimmering wet suits featuring life-like colors and textures of scales and flowing fins.

'I have tails that are as real as fish you just caught on your boat, which are available to every aspiring mermaid and merman who dreams of life in the sea,' Ducharme's website, The Mertailor, reads.

No matter how you see it, he describes the tails as 'a fun and exciting physical activity.'

'Sometimes we have to ask people what's with the scolding looks because they're just like, why is there a guy in a tail? It's supposed to be a girl,' Quijano says before a shrug. 'Haters gonna hate.'

Ducharme appears in season two of My Crazy Obsession but not without some rivaling competition of self-admitted obsessions.

Others on the program with him include a woman who's so obsessed with rats she treats them like children.

'When you find your purpose in life you know it and that was what happened to me when I saw that first rat,' says Chantal Banks on the show.

She says she suffers from G.G.M.R. which stands for: 'Gotta Get More Rats.'

Another woman, known as 'Raggedy Robyn,' is so obsessed with the Raggedy Ann doll that she insists upon dressing like the yarn-headed doll that features a red nose and bonnet.

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Meet the man who lives his life as a MERMAN in Florida's springs despite fishermen's wide-eyed stares

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When Eric Ducharme slips into his handmade fin to explore the crystal clear waters of Florida's natural springs as a merman, he says he's mentally transported as well. So is the unique, eye-catching life of this Florida man who says he eats, sleeps and breathes mermaids while physically looking and acting like one as often as time allows.

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Prompt: What is Daniel Wallace’s message about change?

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Prompt: What is Daniel Wallace’s message about change?

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Book: Big Fish