“Billy, what do you think the answer is?” She smiled sweetly and I could almost feel the sick pleasure she got in torturing me. “Does anyone else want to answer?” Each word from her lips was like a bamboo shoot under my fingernails, another volt of electricity through my brain.

“Cindy, that’s right!” She exclaimed and heaped on the praise. I continued to imagine that she was hoping for me to explode. I didn’t understand why she just wouldn’t call on ME!

I finally broke down right there in class. It was too much. I started crying. At first it was merely a trickle but then as the full reality of what was happening to me I started to guffaw and gasp with spasmodic shudders.

My feelings were like a large balloon constantly filled to the breaking point. Each time Mrs. Tatangelo called on another student it was like she was jabbing a needle into that balloon. Every poke was taken personally. Every word was scrutinized, weighed, measured, judged and the final verdict was that everyone in the class was against me and this particular day it just happened to be my birthday.

That was second grade. I was only 6. I’d started school early, skipped kindergarden and was right there smack dab in the middle of kids a year and sometimes two years older than me. If I had a superpower back then it would have been the ability to “Feel” things on an extreme level. I was constantly aware of everyone and how they treated me. I was super sensitive. I took detailed mental lists of every betrayal, every slight and I remembered it whether I wanted to or not.

This has been my blessing and my curse my whole life. My inability to shut off my feelings or being overly sensitive to things. On some levels it helps me be the kind-hearted person I am, but on another level it leaves me blubbering over the slightest inconsideration or cruelty. When people don’t show up for my events, I take it personal. When people don’t like my ideas, I can get volatile.

I’m better now that I’m older and I understand myself more, but I’m still not 100% happy with how I respond to things and people who are out of my control. With every strength there seems to be a great weakness.

It’s been 27 years since my teacher didn’t call on me in second grade but I can still remember those feelings I had as if they were this morning. If I took my heart out of my chest and examined it I am sure it would mostly be a large pile of scar tissue, but I don’t mind so much, scars are what remain after a wound heals and those scars are what make me me stronger.

However, I have to remind myself constantly that my life isn’t always about me getting exactly what I want and doing everything that I want to do. Ugh, if only…  So I’m bowling along with my sisters and actually having a good time with only a mild amount of effort. My dad isn’t playing but watching and I go over to talk to him and he starts telling me how to bowl better. 

Firstly, I didn’t really care how well I did, I was just there for my family, but I listened to him because he was taking the time to share something with me. I was actually delighted that he was there watching me and even more delighted that he was telling me how to correct my throw. 

I’ve been reading these Wilbur Smith books and there are always these amazing Father/Son relationships where the dad takes time to teach his sons how to build or hunt or fight. I envy those people in the books because my dad and I didn’t have that kind of relationship when I was a kid. When he taught me how to do something it was usually how to mow or weed eat and I didn’t want to learn how to do either. 

But now I’m older and my dad and I have a much better relationship and so instead of telling him that I didn’t care about how well I did, I sat and listened with rapt attention. Afterwards I implemented some of his suggestions and it wasn’t long before I was bowling strikes and dad was giving me the thumbs up. 

I was proud of myself not for getting the strikes but for being mature and listening and realizing, finally, after 32 years that my dad’s way of showing his love is teaching and I allowed him to love me by listening. 

My dad is 73 years old and will be 74 in November. He won’t be around forever and so I’m not going to act like he is. I’ve spent a good portion of my life lamenting my past, but I won’t let it destroy my future…

Valerie’s white Chevy truck was parked in the middle of the gravel road and you could see the creek on both sides. My sisters and I watched in amazement, first the fight and then the adult/juvenile confrontation. We rarely heard cussing and this was the first time I had ever heard insults directed with such venom, creativity and alliteration. I was mesmerized mostly because Greg was only 1 year older than me and at 9 years of age I had never seen a child defy an adult both physcially and verbally.

Greg slapped at Valerie but she was a very large woman and his attempts to inflict pain were as futile as bee stinging a rock.  Eventually Greg calmed down once he realized that this wasn’t a battle he was going to win. He got on his bike and rode up the hill towards his own house and Bobby road off in the opposite direction to his house. Valerie got in her car following slowly behind Greg. The rest of us kids stood around talking wildly about the incident, gasping as we recalled the language and Greg’s passionate antics.

Corrida Lane was long gravel road that started at a bend in the road at the bottom of a hill. The decline continued toward the creek which is where we lived and eventually turned into a dead end near the Delgado’s, a Mexican family of 7 or 8.  Across the street from our house there was a small trailer and our friends Ricky and Kelly lived there. The land was cheap in this area, you could get two acres for a payment of only 90 dollars a month and there weren’t any restrictions as to how you lived on your piece of America - which was evident by the appearance of the homes and the junk that surrounded them.

The Delgado’s lived in a mobile home that eventually got reposessed and so they built a one bedroom shack that housed all 8 of them, but right across the street was Bobby’s house and it was a nice two story custom home that made all of the other homes on the street look like crack houses.

Life on Corrida was simple and ucomplicated. We made friends with everyone, event the foul-mouthed Greg. Eventually Greg and I became “best” friends which meant that during the summer we hung out with each other, but during the school year he tried to avoid me most of the time because I was a Christian.

This little fact has made my life miserable, but not as much as it has made it happy…

We became Christian’s at the age of 5, 6, and 7. My parents followed suit soon thereafter. We were one of those families that did everything the Bible said to do and my parents, whose lives before had been a series of mini-hell’s, suddenly found purpose and meaning in their chaotic lives. It was like a new drug, a delicious, sweet cure-all that they couldn’t get enough of.

Being a Christian wasn’t easy. It meant giving up almost all music, going to church every Sunday and at one point it meant giving up our Christmas tree and even our television. My parents listened to Talk Back with Bob Larson and our church, Word of Faith, had a pastor that believed in miracles and demons and the rapture.

This was my world. Jesus was the center of my universe and every single action that I did was checked with the thought, “Is this wrong?”

I had been led to believe at an early age that if you committed a sin and hadn’t repented before you died or Jesus returned then you would go to hell. God was looking for a church that was white as snow and spot and blemish free.

At night I would pray for forgiveness when I laid my head on my pillow. Every single lie or bad thought that I could remember I would confess and repent hoping that God would see my heart and my fear.

That is what early Christianity was for me, a series of rules and a boat load of fear. I’ve never heard Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinner’s in the hands of an angry God”, I didn’t need to, I understood full well his wrath and I knew that ever day I was teetering on the brink of hell and damnation.

Talk Back with Bob Larson was a radio program where Bob Larson would talk on the radio to people who were involved in Satanic cults. There were some people that would call in and claim to be demon possessed and sometimes crazy things would happen where their would be crazy voices or dead silence and we’d all be in the car listening and terrified.

One caller called in and said that there was a green eye on her bedroom wall and she felt like it was a demon watching her at night. Another woman called in and retold a story of hour her parents were devil worhsippers and how they killed people and ate their flesh raw. They would sacrifice people and then throw their bodies into a pit. If she didn’t do what she was supposed to she would be thrown into the pit with the dead and decaying bodies, sometimes for days at a time.

Others called in with various stories and soon I started to believe that there were demons in our house and eventually there were.

There is a song by Gavin DeGraw called “Belief” and in it there is a line that says, “Belief makes things real.” When I was younger I didn’t understand the power of belief, but I do now. I truly believe that there are powers of good and evil in this world and that if you toy with darkness, if you feed on supernatural things, then you open a door to them and allow them a modicum of control around you.

While living in The Colony, TX we were new Christians and we listened to Bob Larson and other preachers talk of demons and we allowed ourselves to be consumed with the possibility that there was a demon in our house and it wasn’t long before we started seeing manifestations of something. The occasional and unexplained slammed door, lights going off and on, dogs barking at imaginery things - it was very real at the time and very frightening.

Over the years that fear stayed with me. All of my life I have woke in the middle of the night sometimes sensing a presence and wondering if my room was filled with something demonic. I’ve rarely shared any of my fears because most people would think them absurd. They make fun of me when I tell them I don’t like scary movies and they say things like, “It isn’t real, it’s just a movie” but to me it is often very real. It is a horror that will live with me and visit at the most unsuspecting times, waking me at night and reminding me of the terror of my youth.

There is something about being alone in the dark in the middle of the night when you awake from a particularly vivid dream. The images will stay with you, your heart will race and you are afraid. The next morning when you awake the fear is gone as if the light of day has chased away the demons, but during the night it was so real, so thick you could feel it, you could touch it.

Greg was one of my first “friends” that truly helped me to see how different I was from everyone else. As a Christian you really do stand apart. I faced many things in my childhood and no matter how difficult I was always reminded that there were some people who gave their lives for the sake of Christ. My persecution was nothing compared to what Christ suffered on the cross, what I didn’t know then was that most of the time I suffered needlessly and that my Faith was only one more item on a long list of reasons to torment me.

Looking back I can’t help but wish that my parents had used a little bit more discretion when it came to talk of demons and demon posession. I realize that they were just trying to make me aware of the harsh realities that exist in our world, but perhaps they should have waited until I was a little older than 5 years old.

When I look back on my childhood I can see a recurring theme that I have only now realized, that theme is Fear.

Author’s Note: I realize that this post is a bit incongruous, but I’ll fix that later and possibly break this up into two chapters. For now I am going to leave it as is.

There were very few businesses in the town, but when my sisters and I got older we seemed to work at all of them.  My oldest sister worked at Burrus when she turned 16. Our middle sister worked at a local daycare and cleaned the only newspaper office in town - the Sanger Courier.

Eventually my middle sister no longer wanted to clean the newspaper office and I took over for her with very little fanfare. It was like she just handed me the rag and the bottle of Old English furniture polish and I immediately went to work dusting  the layout tables and desks.

The Lemmons’ family was well-known around the town and in my eyes they were rich. They lived in a house that overlooked a huge field and all the windows in the house were huge picture windows that faced South. I did such a good job cleaning the newspaper offices that they wanted me to clean their house too.

“All of the cleaning supplies are under the bathroom cabinets, I like to take this Lysol and spray around the toilet for whenever Blake misses.”

Blake was their youngest and only son. He drive a white Camaro I-ROC Z that happened to be the best looking sports car in town. Blake could have easily been a Baldwin with his Ivy League good looks and his rakish smile.  I had to clean his bathroom, but I didn’t have to clean his bedroom.

I worked hard for the Lemmons’ and eventually I started labeling newspapers for them and doing other odd jobs around the house. I was a hard worker and Mr. Lemmons’ continued to give me work to do off and on for 6 years.

Everything I did for the Lemmon’s was pretty basic manual labor. Blake picked up on the fact that I was strong and that if he used phrases like, “Let’s see if you can carry that dresser onto the U-Haul by yourself” that I would actually try to do it just to impress him.

That is what I learned most working for the Lemmons’ - how to impress people with my strength and speed, but I also learned the true meaning of the word Envy.

Blake had everything, a nice house, a beautiful car, good looks, cool friends. When he moved in with 2 other guys they got a house close to the lake and drank beer and had a pool table. Neon Bud Light signs hung on the walls of their house and there was a large boat parked outside.

Blake was known to be an excellent skier and he dated pretty girls and I had to clean his bathroom. As hard as I tried not to let it bother me, it did. The Lemmons’ family was in a different class. They drove Mercedes and wore Polo. Their refrigerator was full of food and they had an entire walk-in cupboard full of food. Their house was fascinating, he living room filled with plants and expensive furniture and a cool mint green carpet that was thick and plush and clean. Compared to the two-bedroom trailer that I was living in it was a palace and it was then that seeds of materialism became planted deep within me.

I learned fast how to make money. By the time I was 24 I was making close to 55,000 dollars and I had nice Jeep Grand Cherokee and an expensive apartment. I made more money than all of my friends. I had a nicer car than my parents. Unfortunately, it took me many years to realize that no matter how much you gussy up the outside, it is the inside that matters.

When I look back on those crucial teen years I realize that what I envied most about Blake was his confidence and the fact that he seemed to be perfectly secure in himself. This is what I envied most… and there are times I still envy him that.

Our day finally ended and I remember my read dad pulling his belt off and whipping me for complaining so much. It was the first and only time that he ever spanked me. I couldn’t believe it. I was so upset, not because of the spanking, but because he never picked me up and carried me. My feet did hurt, but more than that I wanted his attention, the attention that he gave my middle sister doing very little to hide the fact that she was his favorite.

Over the years my real father continued to wound me with his lack of attention. He came in and out of our lives doing more harm than good, making promises that he rarely kept, inflicting wounds on me that he couldn’t possibly begin to fathom.

At 17 my real father wanted to take me to dinner for my birthday. He hadn’t called all year, hadn’t visited, but suddenly he must have wanted to play the father role and so he had given me a call. By this point I had built up some resentment towards him and I actually took a bit of pleasure in telling him that my step-dad was taking me to dinner that night and “could we do it another time?”  He responded somewhat tersely, “Well, call me when you have time.”

I didn’t call for 10 years.

When I turned 27 I thought that I had forgiven my real father for his transgressions. I told myself that people make mistakes, they often don’t understand what they are doing to someone. I made excuses for him. When my sister called me and said that he wanted to get together for dinner I said “Sure.” “Really?!” She was surprised and delighted. Unlike me she had kept up with him all these years. They had dinner monthly and she bought him birthday presents.

We went to dinner and made small talk. There were no big speeches, we just acted like everything was fine. We didn’t mentiont the fact that he had missed out on my entire life. We ate and at the end of the meal I hugged him and said, “I love you” - but I wasn’t really sure if I did.

I’ve always been an extremely forgiving person. I can normally let things go, especially if someone apologizes. However, the wounds my real father has inflicted on me are wounds that I deal with every single day of my life. It’s like waking up with a gaping hole in your side and trying to forget that it isn’t there or who caused it. My wounds are a constant reminder of how desperate I was to be loved by him, desperate to understand why he wasn’t around and why he didn’t want to be a part of my life.

Now I’m desperate to forgive him so I can be rid of the pain, but the fact that he doesn’t call me still burns a little. The idea that my own father isn’t desperate to be with me stings because if I had a son there isn’t anything in this world that could stop me from being with him.

One day I ran out of the door, money in hand, and chased down the musical notes that rang through the apartment complex. “Where is it?” I thought. I ran as fast as my little 5 year old feet would carry me. Every time I came to an opening I could hear the ice cream truck, but I couldn’t see it. I ran and ran and ran - I never found it.

I finally went back home defeated.

Yesterday I was sitting in my living room and I heard those musical notes from my childhood. I had cash in my pocket and I was half tempted to run outside and get me a sugary sweet confection. The music got louder and louder and I got up and looked out the window. About that time an old white van came by with a myriad of stickers adhered to the sides of the vehicle. The stickers were worn and looked like they had been there since the 80’s. The white van appeared to be oxidized and there was no sheen to the paint. Instead of the fun box-shaped truck of my childhood, this van looked like someting that would be packed full of illegal immigrants instead of tasty treats.

Immediately my temptation fizzled. I probably wouldn’t have eaten an ice cream out of that truck if he had given it to me - unless he gave me a pink foot and it had a blue piece of bubble gum in the big toe - then I probably would have eaten it. Those things are just too irresistable!

In this Spartan space I think about what I am going to write next about my childhood. What can I write now without hurting someone? What must be saved for the book which will have to be published under a pseudonym? Will people believe the stories about the poltergeist or the fact that my sister’s leg was healed and grew out 5 inches in church one Sunday?

As I lay there I try to summon the exact adjective that will describe my life before I graduated high school. What was life like for me in those first 17 years?

Desperate to be loved, extremely sensitive, repeatedly rejected, picked on, made fun of - and all the while I still maintained a sense of who I was. I was positive, I believed in me. Those years made deep gouges in the flesh of what makes up Eddie Renz. I’ve become someone that went from being shy and reclusive to being the life of the party.  There was a time when I prayed for friends and now I have too many. But moving past the past wasn’t easy and there are times when the words from my youth still come back to haunt me…

“Michael Jackson, you talk like Michael Jackson!” The boys would yell in the halls while were taking a water break. I was only in the 6th grade and I hadn’t given much thought to how my voice sounded - it was just my voice. I didn’t try to make it high, it’s just the way it was.

“How many of you got to pick the color of your hair?” Mr. Thomas asked the class after recess one day. “How many of you got to choose your skin color?” No one knew where Mr. Thomas was going with this, not even me. He finally continued, “Just like none of you got to choose your hair or skin color, Eddie cannot change his voice and so I want everyone to stop picking on him.”

it had come to that level. Picked on so much that my teacher made an analogy in front of the whole class so that the kids would stop calling me Michael Jackson and Prince. Once one of my classmates, Jeff Rice, came back to the back of the class and started making fun of me. My eyes burned with tears and emotion and he laughed and zipped up my jacket which had a tall collar that covered have my face. He did it quickly. Zip! When he did it part of my cheek was caught in the zipper and it started bleeding.

I think this was actually what made Mr. Thomas say something. He finally realized that I wasn’t just being a baby, but that the students were actually being cruel to me.

Our school had an a large pool outside and our entire class was swimming. I loved to swim, but this same kid Jeff came over and pointed at my chest and said, “Oh, my word, you have boobs!”

I had never considered my chest or my weight for that matter. I was just trying to swim and have a good time. It was at the young age of 10 that I realized I was fat. My inadequacies continued to pile up and there seemed to be no end to the jokes and name calling.

Over the years throughout my childhood and even beyoned I was plagued by my high voice, my weight and eventually my faith. I wasn’t crucified on a cross like Christ, but I was starting to understand what it meant to be persecuted.

During my 7th grade year my parents became youth pastors at a small Pentecostal Church in Sanger. We were an “on-fire” little group and I understood that being a Christian was about standing up for my faith. We wore Christian t-shirts to school and when I was at church I was actually pretty popular. At church I was accepted, but at school I continued to be an outcast.

I felt like my weekends were spent recuperating from being on the front lines. All week long I was called names like Queer and Fag because of my high voice. Back in the 80’s being called a fag or a queer was one of the biggest insults. I played football and despite the fact that I was good, I still didn’t get along with my teammates. It was us against them, the Christians against the non-Christians.

Finally, when it seemed that everyone in the world was against me, my mother finally decided to take us out of public school and put us in home school. Finally, a reprieve from Hell, but little did I know then that running away from a problem doesn’t correct it - sometimes it only makes it worse.

My parents found the classified ad in the Sanger Courier. I don’t remember the circumstances leading up to me getting a job at that age, I just remember that my parents took me to the small 114 acre ranch that was practically treeless and adjacent to I-35. There was a 4 stall stud barn that was connected to a small apartment and that is where Walter Barbie, the owner of the ranch, lived.

I knocked on the door and he came out smiling with his full moustache and thick gray hair. He wore blue ostrich skin Luchesse cowboy boots, wranger jeans and freshly starched shirts with fancy cuff links. He smoked a pipe that smelled like warm vanilla and I was immediately taken with him. He was like a character out of a western story, or like one of the Cartwrights from Bonanaza.

My parents pulled away and Mr. Barbie handed me a shovel and told me I could start by cleaning out the 4 horse stalls. He apologized for their filthiness and said that they hadn’t been cleaned in months. “Just push everything out the back door.”

I set to work without question. The stalls were a foot deep with packed down urine and manure. It came up in large clay-like sheets and there were green patches of mildew. I was no stranger to a shovel or manual labor and I worked like an illegal immigrant with a wife and three kids to feed. My motivation for hard work was not so that I could keep the job or because I had been taught to work hard, rather it was the desperate desire to wow and impress Mr. Barbie. I made it a mental game with myself so that when he came out of his little apartment looking dapper and cool, he would smile at me approvingly. I desprately desired his approval.

I worked hard all week and I could tell Mr. Barbie was pleased. The manure piled up 3-4 feet deep in the area behind the horse stalls and I had to wheel barrel it down the hill and dump it into a creek. The work was back breaking but I delighted in my accomplishment and Mr. Barbie was very kind to me.

After working for 40 hours that first week I finally worked up the courage to ask how much I was getting paid. “I was thinking about 2 dollars an hour.” In my mind I made a quick calculation - 80 bucks. I knew this wasn’t very much money, but I wanted so badly to please Mr. Barbie. I acquiesced to the meager amount and went home with my first paycheck.

During my time at the ranch I learned how to exercise horses in a round pen, how to brush and bathe them, how to grab a colts legs and help pluck it from it’s mother’s womb and how to whip an unruly stud into submission with a snaffle bit and the occasianal punch in the nose.

Mr. Barbie was an excellent teacher and he was fearless when it came to the horses. I admired and respected him immensely. He had a gray Cadillac Sedan De Ville that was one of the nicest cars I had ever ridden in and he would take me with him to Valley View to pick up feed. After a while, at 12 years old, he let me drive the 4 miles to Valley View and pick up the feed myself. I was mature for my age and already close to 5′ 7″ in height and so I could pass for 16.

My love and admiration grew for Mr. Barbie, but part of me sensed that there was something a little strange about him. He had a beautiful daughter who would come to visit on occasion as well as his ex-wife. She would stay with him for a few days and then leave. Then a week later there would be another woman at the house and she would stay for the weekend.

Once there was a huge rain storm and I got soaked while putting the studs up in the horse barn. My parents weren’t home and so they couldn’t come and pick me up, but I was done for the day.  Mr. Barbie wasn’t home, but i knew this woman was there, I had seen her. I knocked on the door and asked to use the phone to call my parents. She smiled at me sweetly and I thought she was very pretty. She told me to come inside and then found me a towel and told me to dry off. I called my parents and they weren’t home and so she told me I could wait inside. She had made chocolate chip cookies that morning and asked me if I wanted some. While eating cookies and milk Mr. Barbie came home and we all made small talk. He gave me a dry shirt to change into and I delighted in the simple coziness of it all - but that coziness would soon come to and end.

One of my duties at the ranch was to burn Mr. Barbie’s trash in a large barrel. He’d leave his trash on the front steps of his porch and I would take it and burn it. One day he left a stack of Playboy magazines on the steps and I remember how I felt when I saw them. My heart thudded in my chest as if Mr. Barbie had stacked a dozen cobra’s on his porch. I knew that this was forbidden fruit, but it was also my duty to throw away the trash. With mixed emotions I scooped up the magazines and took them to the trash barrel.

The trash barrel was hidden behind a large barn that was on the north side of the property. No one could see what I was doing back there, no one was around except for Mr. Barbie and he rarely came out of his apartment.

I started a small fire in the barrel and started to burn the magazines, but like a kid with a box of cookies I couldn’t help but take a few bites. Before burning each magazine I quickly flipped the pages and sampled the goods. This was something I hadn’t seen before, but I knew I shouldn’t be seeing now.  Page upon page of women in various poses, it was almost more than I could handle. I trembled with fear, disgust, excitement, wonder, awe… All twelve magazines were burning now and I watched as the nude bodies turned black and the pages curled. Part of me wanted to quickly stamp out the fire and hold on to this new found treasure but I knew that pornography was a sin, I had been taught of it’s dangers and I could see in just a few moments how quickly I could become ensnared.

As I was rifling through the magazines I hardly noticed that a smaller publication had fallen down on the ground next to the barrel. It was called “Temptations” or something else bawdy and alluring. I picked it up and turned through the pages. There were only a few pictures but they were much more graphic featuring men and women. While the other magazines continues to burn in the barrel, by body burned with lust. It was something I had never understood before, I was still pre-pubescent and I had no idea why my testicles became a cauldron of fire. This small magazine was filled with erotic stories and I quickly read a few lines. I couldn’t put it down, it was like a buffet of some mysteriously delicious meat and I wanted to devour it despite the fact that it made me sick to my stomach.

Finally I thrust the magazine into the fire and went back to doing my chores. Around lunch time my parents brought me a sandwich and I told them about the magazines. I was so torn with emotion. Mr. Barbie had been my hero and now he had tarnished my image of him by having these magazines.

After this incident, Mr. Barbie continued to grow stranger to me. There were times when he answered the door without any clothes on, sometimes he would be buck naked, other times he would use his cowboy hat to shield himself. It was all a lot to process at such a young age.

There were many things that happened at the Bar-B Ranch that should have been red flags that caused me to quit, but the final straw came when I was in a horse stall with a mare and I was trying to stuff worming medicine in her mouth with a caulking gun. The mare was only 2 years old with a gorgeous auburn coloring and a splash of white on her haunches as if she had been doused by a bucket of paint. She was muscularly built and she didn’t want to have any part of the worming medicine. Her head was in a bridle and she was tied with a a two foot rope  to a ring in the wall.

Every time I came near her with the caulking gun her eyes looked at me as if I held a rattle snake. Her head jerked whiled and she bucked. “Grab her head!” Mr. Barbie shouted. He stood safely outside the stall and yelled instructions. “That’s it, grab her.” I’d have her for one moment and then she’d wrench free nearly ripping my arm out of socket. “Whip her!” Mr. Barbie handed me a whip that was used for running horses in the round pen. It was a long stick with a braided rope attached to the end of it. With a precise flick of the wrist it would elicit a loud snap and that alone would spur the horses on.

I held the whip in one hand, the caulking gun in the other. I whipped Sally once on the bum and all hell broke loose. She snorted and her legs flailed wildly. Somehow she was able to contort her body in such a way that her powerful legs were directly squarely at me. She kicked once, twice, three times before I could even move and the last kick cause me squarely on the side of my thigh. Pain shot through my body as I hurled myself to the door.

Mr. Barbie inspected my leg and could see that it was quickly swelling into a horse shoe shaped bruise. He went inside and got me and ice pack and then took me home.

After that I was more timid around the horses. I had already been bitten multiple times, thrown off of a horse’s back, once a horse reared up and pawed me in the back - I had just about had enough.  Towards the end Mr. Barbie became more reclusive too. When he’d answer the door he’d barely open it and give me instructions. Sometimes he’d still not be wearing clothes, other times he seemed dazed and confused.

During my year at the Bar-B Ranch I learned too much too soon. At the time I didn’t realize that seeds were being planted and that one day they would take root and grow into something that would become out of my control.

The Bar-B Ranch is a chapter in my life filled with a lot of good memories, but some bad memories are burned into my head and I cannot forget, no matter how hard I try, I cannot forget. The filth that has accumulated in my head over the years has piled up like the manure in those stalls and I cannot rid it with a shovel. The Bar - B Ranch was the beginning of some terribe things for me and I still don’t know when those things will end.

Authors Note:  If you have a child that you have caught looking at inappropriate pictures on the internet, do something immediately. Make them aware of the consequences, if not, it is something that they will regret for the rest of their lives.

“Stop that! Break it up!” A teacher shouted and the fight was over before it began.

I didn’t understand what had happened. School hadn’t started yet and it was so cold outside they kept the students who arrived before class in the cafeteria. Everyone was talking and eating cinnamon toast that was sold for only 10 cents a slice. Billy came up to our table and started talking about his new skateboard. I said, “Man, that’s cool!” and he told me to shut up. I responded quickly, “Don’t tell me to shut up.” I had no idea why I was being single out, what made him want to pick on me?

Billy was older than most of us since he had failed 8th grade twice. He was bigger than me and wore a leather jacket and had longish dirty blond hair. He had a hot girlfriend who I was friends with and maybe this was why he didn’t like me. He wasn’t popular because of the well-known fact that he had failed, but he was regarded with respect since he was bigger and older than most of us 7th graders.

In 7th grade I was 10. Since I started 1st grade at 4 years old I was always younger than most of my classmates. However, I was always big for my age and intelligent enough to keep up in school, but I think being younger left me at a disadvantage when it came to emotional sitautions.

After the fight was over Billy and I went to the office and Mr. Crustinger gave us both 3 days in AEP - Alternative Education Program. I was livid. I didn’t do anything except barely defend myself with a slight shove, plus, I had a black-eye, wasn’t that punishment enough?

I tried to remain calm, but I couldn’t believe the injustice of it all. AEP was held in an old bus barn. The walls were metal, the floors concrete, and the heaters were large space heaters that glowed red and hung vertically on the wall.

The desks were made out of plywood and had large sides that kept you from seeing other students. I had to endure those three days with Billy.

My mom came up to the school while I was still in Principal Crutsinger’s office. She had on this gorgeous brown fur coat, her hair had just been done, her make-up - perfect. Sanger Middle School was a bland sulforous pit in hell and here was my mother, an angel from heaven coming to rescue me. Wrong.

Mr. Crutsinger told my mom that since we would be out of school for Thanksgiving on Thursday and Friday that I should go ahead and get my punishment over with starting immediately so after the holiday I could start fresh. Surprisingly my mom agreed.

I cried so hard I guffawed sitting in the office. Billy just sat there with a smug look on his face completely content and quite familiar with this scenario. I felt like a pathetic blubbering mess, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t believe how cruel the world was and how often I got picked on for no apparent reason.

At my grandparents on Thanksgiving everyone asked about the black-eye and I had to retell the story. I left out the pathetic details and tried to place myself in the best possible light. I tried not to tell them how disappointed I was in my mom for not shielding me from the horrors that I had to endure. I didn’t tell them how I planned to hate Mr. Crutsinger for the rest of my life and that from that point forward we were sworn mortal enemies.

When I look back on this event in my life I am still unsatisfied with it’s outcome. I endured a lot of pain and suffering and the only thing I learned was that the world is unfair and that people will let you down.

I realize that my mom was only showing me tough love, but I wanted her to press harder to defend me to the principal since I didn’t feel like Billy and I deserved equal punishment.

What is the saddest part of this whole experience is that I don’t remember my dad being in the picture at all. I don’t remember him consoling me, or even talking to me about how to fight, or when not to fight, or how to defend myself in a situation and that is the greatest injustice of all.

Authors Note:

When I put all of these stories together that I am writing about my life, I hope that it is an uplifting and inspiring tale - not one that sends people into depression.

My life has been crazy, but everyone has their story, some are just more dramatic than others.

What I do want to emphasize is that so far I have written snippets of my life and although there have been times my parents have made mistakes, they are two of the most awesome, giving, selfless people on the planet. Each of them could write a story about their childhood and it would make my life seem like a trip to Disney Land with endless amounts of money and a bottomless ice cream cone.

In life we all face challenges, what matters is how we face them. I hope to never sound like I am trashing my parents, friends, or family, but instead, showing you that sometimes the hard times are what shape us the most and I happen to really like who I’ve become and so there are very few things that I would change about the last 32 years.

“I can’t” My voice was weak and faltering “find it.” I finally blurted out.

“Did you look on the table next to the bag?” My dad would respond barely concealing his annoyance.

“Yes, I looked everywhere.”

A sigh of annoyance followed by a grunt of exertion could be heard as dad pulled himself from beneath the old Ford Pickup. As he plodded toward the garage he grumbled, “if you kids would stay out of my tools…”

I knew this was coming. The blame. It was always my fault when a tool went missing. It wasn’t that he often left his tools lying in the yard where he was last using them, or that he used an old green leather gym bag to store his tools which made it nearly impossible to find anything - no, it was me, I used it, or my sisters used it and we lost it.

Many of my Saturdays were spent doing car repair or other outdoor chores with my dad and I loathed it. My sisters would get to stay inside and clean house with my mom. This was the cruelest part, I envied my sisters this reprieve from spending time with my dad. He was never happy when he was working on a car and I rarely remember him being happy when he worked outside period.

He was always so serious. We didn’t have father and son chats about how I was doing in school or what my teachers were like. He didn’t teach me step-by-step how to install a carburetor or wax on whimsically about his childhood. No, he worked in silence and I was merely there standing by like a gopher or a trained tool monkey expected to fetch on command.

My mother would poke her head out of the house on occasion and sometimes try to rescue me. Seeing her face was like seeing sunshine after being locked in a windowless prison for days. Her voice, her smile, everything about Mom exuded love and warmth, the exact opposite of dad.

Mom was Jesus  and I was Lazarus and while she was outside I came back to life. When she back into the house and closed the door it was if she rolled the stone back over the door of my tomb. No more rays of sunshine, just minutes ticking by in quiet desperation wishing that I could be anywhere but here.

Working with dad outside became something I hated more than anything. I memorized his work schedule and delighted when I realized that he would be working on Saturday. During the week I would get off the school bus at my friends house and avoid going home until I knew my dad would already be asleep. Then the worst thing happened - dad got fired from his job.  Now I was forced to spend every waking hour doing projects outside with dad and there was no limit to what he could dream up…

The railroad track that ran near our house decided to replace all of the cross ties that were underneath the tracks. My dad made a deal with someone on the construction site to buy all the old cross ties and soon I found myself spending long Saturdays loading up trailer loads of cross ties and then unloading them on our property. There were over 200 cross ties and it took us a few days to retrieve them and pile them up at the edge of our property - but this was the easy part. The hard part came when dad decided to build a large retaining wall around our house and fill it with sand. The sun beat down on us while I loaded the wheel barrow by myself with two cross ties and wheeled them over to my dad.  He would then lay them in place and then nail them together using nails that he had made from rebar. We worked and slaved over this project like the Hebrew slaves building pyramids in Egypt. My dad didn’t crack a whip, but he didn’t need to. Years of working with him taught me not to complain and to always have a sense of urgency. We worked hard and as I got older I at least could take pride in the fact that I was getting better at helping him. I don’t remember him praising me much, compliments were sparse, but when they did come it was like salve on a wound or cool water after being stranded in the dessert.

During this time Dad seemed to be less stressed and less severe. Losing his job was probably the best thing that had ever happened to him.  Being forced to spend time together actually started bringing us together, but it was the work that we had in common, the sense of accomplishment that bonded us, not the fact that we were father and son. It was more like the admiration of an employer who had a great employee.

It was during these times in my life that I vowed to one day grow up and make enough money that I would never have to work on my own car or mow my own lawn. I didn’t want a job where I had to get my hands dirty or sweat and slave over cars that broke down.

What my mom said was true. I grew up and started working with computers and found that I was really good at it. Computers came easy to me and I understood their interworkings much more than I understood the complexity of a lawn mower or a car engine. Mom was right, I was much more Office Depot than Home Depot and I plan to keep it that way.