I Will Not Die

Welcome to I Will Not Die.

In short, this site is about human growth and potential. The title is what we’d expect to hear from someone who just won’t give up fighting for their dreams, even when the going gets tough.

As far as I go, personally, I have to admit that I’m probably a bit peculiar. I had an interesting childhood. Another thing that makes me a unique is that I have an IQ of over 170.

At some point I decided that I wanted to become a professor. That’s what I’m working toward right now, and at the same time I write articles for this blog. I hope you enjoy. If you have any questions, or even if you just want to talk, I encourage you to send me an e-mail using the contact page.

From here, you can go on below to read the autobiography, join the site’s rss feed so you can be notified of new material, browse for articles using the category links on the left, or join the forum, which is still growing. We’d love you to join us in some conversation. You can also “follow me” using the various social media platforms on the left.

My Autobiography

“Sometimes autobiographies turn out not to be what we first thought they might be. Sometimes they end up being a much cleaner window into a life than we first wanted. Sometimes we gasp.” — Anonymous

This is long. Most of you will not make it to the end.

However, the nature of this blog is somewhat complex. This blog is the product of the life I’ve lived so far. I started blogging as a result of my life experiences. I do not know how to abbreviate those experiences to make this shorter without losing the essential parts that produced the end result, which is this blog. If it’s too long to read all at once, just save it and come back to it later. It could take fifteen minutes, or even longer if you’re a slow reader like me.

Childhood

My mother was a diabetic. Not the adult-onset kind everyone’s getting these days, she had hers since she was five. Before a very short window elapsed where her doctors told her she could safely have kids, my sister was born, and I, three-hundred and sixty-three days later. Close call. We were both born prematurely, I more than she. I was delivered through C-section way too soon. I tried to warn them that I wasn’t done yet. They didn’t get the drift. It was somewhere only in the first week of the fifth month. I was born a whopping two-and-a-half pounds, but quickly dropped to just under one pound. At one point in the first few days, one of the doctors pulled my father aside and told him, “This isn’t going to happen.” He suggested that my dad try giving me a nickname, instead of a real name. The doctor thought that would be easier. So I was Rocky. The underdog, here to fight a fight.

Believe me, I wish I could conjure up a long album of various childhood memories that would warm all of our hearts, but I don’t have much. I do have a few good childhood memories though. For instance, I remember going to Metro beach with my mother and sister in Michigan somewhat frequently in the summer times. I remember (barely) camping in the Upper Peninsula when I was about five. I remember standing on some rocks at the very, very tip of the “thumb” of Michigan that juts out into Lake Huron and thinking it must feel like being by the ocean. I remember some joyful holidays, and lots of things I did with my sister. We fought sometimes like evil twins, but in reality, she was my only real friend growing up. Even now, she’s my instant-validator. If I have something going on in my life, she always wants to hear about it.

You might have noticed already though that my joys never involved school and never involved people outside of my immediate family. I had a few sparse friends from time to time, but I don’t recall any stellar moments I can truly call joyful. You might also notice that I haven’t yet mentioned my father. In all honesty, my father was angry all the time. I spent the vast majority of my life in fear of him. He wasn’t an alcoholic or anything, he was just always so damned mad. He yelled at me a lot. He sometimes hit me pretty hard too. Sometimes when he came home, when he would first walk in the door, I would jump. Most of what I did, he didn’t approve of. At the same time though, he never took any time to sit down and teach me anything. There were a couple of exceptions, but even those didn’t amount to the kind of truly constructive fathering I think he could have offered me. Some of my fonder memories of him include him teaching me how to play chess at a very early age. Though I hated it at the time, another thing I now like that he did was his forcing me to do every single math problem from the upcoming year’s textbook. Every story problem too, every single one. I became an overnight math whiz. That summer placed me several years ahead of my peers on the technical side of things.

But I had very few meaningful social skills, and I was always obviously poor. Like as in glaringly. Patches on your pants stop being cool after you’re about four. I had to go to school with them on. Kids know when you have the same shoes you had last year, and the year before. Stretching a pair of sneakers through sometimes two or three years marked by rapid bodily growth isn’t as hard as you might expect though. I swear shoes can stretch.

If that wasn’t bad enough, here are two other weird ones. I was born with very poor vision but never received glasses until I was ten. Yes, you read that correctly. The fifth grade. How I passed school is anyone’s guess. I can’t read a chalkboard even if I’m close enough to lick it. The funny thing is that I actually got extremely good at making out the people around me using nothing more than their swagger and their hair color. It gets weirder. I also got extremely good at knowing exactly what was on the chalkboard just by using inference. I even took notes. When asked about something a teacher was presenting, I could actually get it right over ninety percent of the time. I’m pretty sure that most of them never even knew I was near-sighted. There were a few times when I walked into the wrong classrooms though, said “hi” to the wrong people and bumped into things. At the same time though, I swear to you I could navigate a busy street intersection with my eyes closed. I just needed to be able to hear them. I didn’t need the lights. I sometimes like to joke that I learned how to drive when I was about seven or eight because I had to pay so much attention to what cars routinely did at intersections. After a while, your brain kicks in and you get it. I didn’t have names for it all, but the cars I could barely see always did pretty much the same thing: left protected green…that one’s yielding…87 % chance that one’s going to make a right…I can hear that one speeding and changing lanes over there… Scary? Nah, I was just going to school.

The second thing that really made me stand out was that sometime in elementary school I contracted Tinea Versicolor, which is completely harmless, not contagious and fully treatable. In fact it often goes away the farther away one advances from puberty. I only got it properly diagnosed as an adult, on my own. A pill a day for two weeks kills it off for about a year. One pediatrician suspected that it was some kind of fungus, and my naive, optimistic, and overly-friendly-ass was stupid enough to one day answer honestly when a kid at school asked me what the mild white spots on the inside of my elbows were. I told him it was a fungus. I really wish I hadn’t done that. That was devastating. He looked horrified. He, of course, immediately told the kids nearby. Boy, I’ll tell ya, there’s nothing quite like being called “fungus” throughout the prime of your childhood. Then someone got really intelligent and upgraded that to “there’s a fungus amung-us.” In a tragic irony, that mean phrase defined the rest of my years in the state of Michigan. I was just some fungus among.

Soon after I finally got glasses in the fifth grade, I broke them. Oh great. Instead of the blind fungus walking around, I was the blind fungus walking around with white adhesive tape on my glasses. Jesus. Of course, I wore them that way for a couple of years. I also had a really awkward grill. I had eleven extra adult teeth growing in my gums, above adult teeth that had already emerged. However, one baby tooth (front and center) was pinned at its roots by all the commotion in there, so I had this terrific smile, let me tell ya. Eventually, I had surgery which basically pulled out everything above my tongue and put it all back where it should have gone, less all the bonus teeth. But I had to wear “head-gear” for ages to pull my molars back to their proper positions. It was something like a two-hour on again off again rotation. I remember trying it out for a few days, and really wanting to use it to correct my teeth, but being constantly subjected to the torture of kids getting their kicks from my plight taught me to dutifully put it on in the morning, kiss my mother on the way out, then take it off and hide it in my school bag once I was a block or two away from home. When I was finally done with the head-gear, I got braces. At least some other kids had braces too, so it wasn’t quite so funny.

I remember one time I was asked to turn in some papers in the middle of class. I dutifully stood up and walked up to the front of class, gave my papers to the teacher, and turned around to head back to my seat. Just then, among all the snickering classmates, one girl chimed up, “You think you’re something but you’re not.” Of course, the whole class erupted in laughter, while I was trapped at the front, fully vulnerable. I looked to my left, toward the teacher, my eyes begging for help. What I saw was my teacher laughing hysterically with them. I wish I could tell that girl, “No, trust me…I didn’t.” Then the teacher actually scolded me, repeatedly. In fact, I got a similar attitude from several teachers growing up. They had this “You don’t fit in, so you must be doing something wrong” perception. But that wasn’t true. Once I was labeled as such a loser, it stuck, and that label was what was wrong with me. Hell, I just had bad eyes. The poverty of my parents exacerbated all of this, of course. If they could have afforded glasses, sooner, different doctors, better clothing, I’d have been fine. But that’s not really my fault, and hell, my parents were doing the best they could.

Does anyone remember that game, Four-square? You take a kickball and play something like tennis without the net, hitting the ball with a closed fist into someone else’s square, then when it bounces up, they have to hit it into another. I used to play that by myself, during recess, hitting a ball against a wall. One time when I was playing this game, the bell rang and all the kids started lining up by the doors to go in for lunch. Right when this massive swarm of kids was surrounding me, one of them yanked down my shorts (briefs too) so hard that they came off. I had the pleasure of standing alone, pretty much naked in front of hundreds of kids chanting “fungus amungus.”

At one point I got a job delivering newspapers. The Detroit Tribune. Even though all of the money went to my parents, I was thrilled to be able to venture out on my own, to travel the surrounding neighborhoods, to be myself.

I do have a couple of highlights for you though. On the last day of school one year, after months and months of being picked on by this one particular kid a year older than me, my dad woke me up early to have a quick pep talk long before dawn. We sat there, father and son, alone. He told me that sometimes, even if it’s a little bad, it’s ok to take things into our own hands. He then asked me for my hand. I gave it to him and he slipped a roll of quarters into it. He told me to hold it tight. Very tight. Tighter than I’ve ever held anything before. He told me it would give me a strong hand. When I got to school, I sat there in class, hand in pocket, holding tight. At some point, when the teacher left the room briefly, that kid walked over and began harassing me. He stood there, making fun of me, I sat there, hand in pocket, holding tight. Just as the teacher was coming back into the room, as the kid turned to leave, I mumbled something to him. He turned back and said, “Whud you say?” I mumbled again, so he got a little closer. He asked me the same question again, “Whud you say?” I whispered, “I think you’re an asshole.” He got really mad, but couldn’t do anything because the teacher was back. However, I’m pretty sure the teacher heard me. A short while later, that kid left to go to the bathroom. Thirty seconds later I stood up and asked to go too. The teacher said, “Dereck…” his voice was filled with some concern.

As it should have been.

He thought for a long time, looking me right in the eyes. Finally, he finished, “…go ahead. Dereck.” I walked down the hallway, quickly, still holding tight. I slipped into the bathroom and crept up behind him, where he stood facing a urinal. I slipped my hand out of my pocket. When he finished, right as he was turning around I stepped back, drew back, and I leaned into him with everything my skinny ass had. I connected perfectly on the weak region of the jawbone sixty percent from ear to chin. His head sank wildly away from my Mike Tyson fist and I heard a grisly sound.

I fractured that fucker.

I left the room quickly. I’m not sure exactly how this is possible, but even with all the mass chaos that ensued, I never got into trouble. Not a word was ever spoken to me. Not from my dad, not from the teacher, not from that kid. No one ever said anything about it. But there was some serious commotion in the hallway, the teacher left for a long time, and everyone was whispering about it. I didn’t see the kid the rest of the day, and he was going off to Junior High School. It was the last day of the year, and I’ve never seen him since. But that teacher knew. I know that for sure. I owe him one. My dad knew too because he saw my knuckles. Never a peep about it.

Rocky indeed.

Teenage-years

When I was thirteen, my father’s floor maintenance business was crumbling and we moved to Indianapolis. I think I was pretty excited because I thought I could put some of my past behind me. I never had any friends, just a lot of shitty memories. My sister had a lot more friends, so was pretty upset about it. This time, when asked what the white spots on my arms were, I planned on nonchalantly saying, “oh it’s nothing.” Worked like a charm. At least for the Tinea Versicolor. I don’t know what the hell the problem was with keeping me stocked with decent glasses, but damn, something as stupid as glasses followed me around everywhere. When I entered football, my dad got me some expensive sports glasses. They were plastic and were held to the face with an elastic headband. I had another, regular pair. I broke them. I taped them. They got worse. They were disintegrating, and so, I’m assuming because they couldn’t afford yet another pair, my parents suggested I wear the sports goggles in class. In middle school. WTF? Good lord. Of course, I couldn’t do that. New city, new schools, not a fungus anymore. I held them up to my face a few times just so I could read the board, but the rest of the time I was blind again.

So I got the terrific honor of being a loser all over again. Here, you’ll find this one to be funny: even in high school, when the band had their annual candy fundraiser, you know, when the band students walk around with grocery sacks full of candy bars? They sell them to students, turn in the cash, buy band uniforms. My dad made me carry a bag of candy around too. I wasn’t in the band. Of course, some kids figured it out. I give up. To make it even worse, once the fundraiser was over, my dad sent me off with candy anyway. Keep in mind here, he was mean. Temper is not a sufficient word. It’s not like I could say, “up yours dude.” He didn’t spank. He hit. And he knew that in a school with a thousand kids, it was impossible to come home empty handed. So I walked around high school selling candy from a plastic grocery bag. I was popular. Totally.

There was even a period when we lived in a motel. Days Inn. For a few months, actually. I was a Junior. At one point, later, I got a job as a waiter. I earned tons of tips, and used to stash all the money in a can hidden in my closet. Around Mother’s Day, I came home to find the can empty and a new dining room table and chairs in the living room. My father tried to explain to me that I should feel grateful to have been able to help out with it. It cost slightly less than what I had in the can. I guess I was fortunate to also have given a tip. I wished I had some quarters.

But this really doesn’t even crack the surface. The whole time all of this was going on, there was an entire second life. When I was in middle school, my dad’s floor cleaning business wasn’t doing so well. I must have looked cheap. At the ripe age of thirteen, I was conscripted into forced labor for his business. Do you know anything about floor maintenance? Let me tell you. You have to do it at night, because there can’t be shoppers present. There are two primary jobs you can do. You can do a regular cleaning, and you can do a strip & wax. For the cleaning, you sweep the whole store with a dust mop, then mop it. Then you use a buffer and buff all of the tile. Not too bad, but even a smallish retail store like a Jo-Ann Fabrics would take a couple of hours for a father, sister and brother. And that’s not including the drive. Some of these stores were hours away. We rarely did them on the weekends. A few hours after getting home from school, just when it was about to get dark, we would drive off to work. We’d get there, unload, clean, reload, and come home. Most of the time, we got home after midnight. On a school night.

And my teachers thought I was just lazy.

But that’s just a cleaning. The other one makes “cleaning” a breeze. For the strip & wax, you go into a business, move all the fixtures (clothing racks, etc.) to one side of the store, then dust mop the now “open” side. In my experience, that’s when you’re stomach gets a knot, just so you know. Then you take a bucket with a mixture of “stripper” and water and splash it all over the floor, using a mop to spread it evenly. This dissolves the wax. You must be careful not to let it dry, because then you have to start all over. Then you use a “scrubber,” a machine with a coarse, bristled, revolving pad and slowly work it across every square inch of floor. I’d say several seconds up to a whole minute for every square foot of tile. Then someone travels behind this person mopping up the red, pleasant smelling gunk. You usually have to do this several times. Then, once you have the perfectly clean, unwaxed tile ahead of you, you mop on new wax and wait until that coat dries, which could take a while depending on the temperature and humidity. Once dry, you do a second coat and sometimes a third. After all these hours, the knot comes back.

You still have the second half of the store to do.

Once mostly done with the second half, that’s when you can look outside and start to see the sun coming up. Keep in mind that all of this was unpaid. My dad would tell me that he was “accruing” it. Mm-hmm. Sometimes this happens on a Tuesday morning when you’re in Mishawaka, Indiana and your high school is west of Indianapolis. Short drive, I swear. Google it. These were the times that I’d get dropped off in front of my school. Then I’d go to school, go home, and have to do another cleaning, always praying that this one wasn’t so far away. My teachers all probably thought I was sleepy because I was doing drugs. Many of them didn’t like me much because I couldn’t keep my fucking eyes open. Go on, tell me it’s my fault.

The crazy part is that I still got mostly A’s. Some B’s. Don’t ask me how. I do remember doing homework while walking, learning to write with the sway of my steps so that it was still legible. I even participated in some Academic Super Bowls. We even were the state champions one year, though I don’t remember making any major contributions.

One good thing was that throughout high school, I played football. I wasn’t very good, but at least most of the players were tolerant of me because organized sports just do that. I also started weightlifting. A lot. I got big. Toward the end of high school, I could bench 300 pounds, which put me way up toward the top of the pack. Not bad for a premie-baby. It definitely earned me a lot of respect. Being obviously built is a great deterrent. If someone gave me shit, all I had to ask was, “What?” I met some of the only friends I ever really had then, a couple of whom I still know today.

In my senior year in football, I was the only senior who wasn’t a starter. Obviously I thought this was unjust, because I was clearly smarter and stronger than a lot of the others. But I was still the odd-guy. My dad wasn’t exactly one of the “football dads.” Being the only senior who was second string was pretty embarrassing, so I decided to pull the Water Boy, Adam Sandler thing. I went rage. I started hitting everyone as hard as I could, whether it was legal or not. It was kind of fun actually. Best case scenario was that if my aggressiveness didn’t impress the coaches so that I’d get more play time, I might really hurt someone and they’d have to put me in. At the end of the season, one thing in particular really touched me. The last game had just ended, and all the guys were teary-eyed because football was over, for good for most of us. One player, Jon Davis, said something I’ll always remember him for. He told me, through his own tears, how he was proud of me for having stuck it out like I had. Here he was telling me I was a man. And he never knew anything you’ve just read above. Thanks Jon. I owe you one.

Also in my senior year, my friend’s family invited me to go to Florida with them on vacation. I was thrilled. My dad didn’t want me to go. I fought. My mother even, bless her powerless soul, fought with me. In the end, I was never fully given permission. It was simply “known” that I was going. I’m not sure why my dad didn’t want me to go. He was either jealous that he couldn’t provide a vacation, or more likely, he was afraid of what it might do to me. If so, it was justified.

I had the best time of my life. Me, and my two friends (they’re brothers) drove down to Orlando. Even the drive was terrific. I had an enormous weight removed from my shoulders. Once down there, we cut loose, chilled on the beach at night and smoked cigars. I could have been a billionaire traveling the Mediterranean in a yacht for all I knew. It really changed me. This is pretty crude but, I grew some balls. I want to personally thank the Doolin family for having given me my first breath of fresh air, ever. When I got back, I became an ass. Tell me it wasn’t justified. I grew a will. I resisted my dad. I argued with him. I disobeyed him. I wore black clothes. I got a wallet with a chain on it, just because I knew it would piss his conservative-ass off. I started smoking. Not just cigarettes, but pot a few dozen times too. Even in my bedroom.

Eventually, I left altogether and moved in with some friends from college. We were “brothers” in the same co-ed service fraternity. At one point I invited my dad out for a coffee so I could talk to him, man to man. Man was I cocky. It was great. As if I haven’t said enough already about my life, there’s another dark secret that I won’t actually share on the Internet, because of love for the living. But it’s as bad as you might speculate (don’t ask, the answer’s yes). I found out late. After I left home. I never knew. I informed him that I was aware of these things he had done, and I told him that I hated him, and that I was leaving. Forever.

College

College was a remarkable turning point for me. I actually took the first several classes while I was still in high school. I attended the first few semesters while I still lived at home. My dad made me fill out loan paperwork so he could bank my financial aid. Nice. After I left home though, life was something I never knew it could be. I had a job, money, some clothes, even got some contacts. Got about thirty dozen extra pairs just because. I grew up fast. In college, my weightlifting went crazy. I actually landed a job in a fitness center on campus and according to my understanding of my job duties, was paid six bucks an hour to lift weights. I’m not sure the agreement I signed when I got hired will back that up. I got really strong. I’m only five foot ten, but on that frame sat 200 pounds of steak. I could throw 230 pound bench presses (two plates) in numerous sets of eight. I went tanning. I had girlfriends. I got ok grades, but honestly, school was the last thing on my mind. Besides, school was pretty easy. I could do homework while I walked. What’d you expect? I was pretty immature. But I had this blossoming self-confidence and could back it up.

Eventually I got married to a woman who had a child from a previous relationship. I loved him. I worked, took classes, changed majors a million times, never really found anything I liked. I eventually started getting bad grades. I had no purpose. My marriage started failing. She was a spend-thrift. Hell, I was too. I even got asked to take a semester off from school. I started getting into some serious financial trouble. I was like this animal released from its cage. I didn’t have a clue. I even committed a crime. Completely stupid. Paid them back. Started waking up.

After a while though, as I started to mature, a few things started dawning on me. I tried going to a different school. This one involved IT which I thought would be hard enough to challenge me. When I went into the admissions office, the guy handed me a test. It was my first true IQ test. Timed and monitored. I didn’t know it was. He didn’t tell me that that was what it was. He pulled out a timer, and told me to answer the questions at my leisure, but quickly if I could, and that I could skip answers if I needed to. He told me it was unlikely I could finish the test in the time he could give me, but that it was ok. I played it like it was a game. Seemed a little like an SAT test. Hell, I thought, I did pretty well on that one. For the SAT, my dad dropped me off at school on the morning of the SAT after a night of floor cleaning. My eyes burned. My arms were shaking because I hadn’t slept. My dad handed me a coffee and told me to chug it. I almost got it perfect.

In this test, when I got to question 98 of 100, the man told me I could stop. I tried to answer the last two but he snatched it away. The first thing he remarked when he saw how far I had gotten was, “looks like you had to skip some.” I hadn’t. He told me I could go get a drink and he’d be just a few. I got some water and came back and sat in his office while he graded it. His eyebrows were raised and he kept looking up at me. I was feeling cocky. I had chugged a coffee. When he finished, he stopped and asked me, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Of course I had no idea what he was talking about. He said he didn’t have a scale for it. A few days later he got one. I clocked in at 174.

Good thing the test wasn’t on a chalkboard.

The current episode

I knew it was high, but didn’t know what it meant. I got a divorce, and moved into an apartment by myself. I loved it. It was quiet. I was running low on financial aid, but went back to my original school. I started taking classes looking for something more interesting. I took an intro-level philosophy class taught by a full time professor. Initially, I liked it a lot, but after we started reading Renee Descartes’ Discourse on the Method, it clicked. I caught the lie of the opening words. Renee wasn’t being sincere. Moments later, the professor introduced us to the plausibility, that…well, Renee may not have been sincere. I think I licked my lips. I was home.

I spent the next weeks talking to the professor and soaking up everything I could. I was still a child though. I even asked him if he liked being an instructor, as a career. I didn’t know he was a world-renowned scholar in the history of philosophy. Shucks. He smiled and told me that, really, he was a writer. That made sense. I wrote things for him. He liked them. He said I might have what it takes to be an academic. I kept taking his classes, and learning more. Whatever I could. I delved into Plato. Nietzsche, and others. Loved Nietzsche. Strauss and Benardete clinched it. I spent every waking hour thinking about what I was studying. The concepts were so difficult that I actually had to sweat. I fell in love. I became completely obsessed with the idea of becoming a professor. Like I said before, I was home.

My father and I were talking occasionally. We saw each other from time to time. I had to see him when I wanted to visit my mother. They were both in school too. He was working towards a graduate degree, she was about to enter graduate school. I loved mom. He got this bizarre form of rapid emphysema. He was more or less healthy, then he had to go on oxygen for about ten months.

Then he died. Not sure how I feel about it. He was a bastard, no question. But he was still my dad. I miss the chess and the Shirley Temples. I miss it when he played with me when I was young. I miss looking out of our basement window as a child, watching him mow the grass, and worshipping him. He was my hero. For a minute. I miss his intellect, though we never agreed on much as adults, because he’s too conservative. Sorry, was. I was rapidly becoming an atheist. He had a lot of fight, I’ll give him that. Right at about the time when he was starting to see me as a mental peer, that’s when he went. My mother had recently gotten into a car wreck, and had brain surgery to relieve the swelling. She had no hair on the side of her head. In high school, she was a cheerleader. She was amazing. Ready for his last words? He told her, “You’re so pretty.” Then, “I’m so sorry.” He fell down dead. By the time I got there, he was still warm. The paramedics who had tried to revive him had removed his shirt. He actually had very handsome eyes. They were open.

I cried like hell.

I still want to sometimes. I still do sometimes, privately. I touched his face, something he would never have let me do alive. Over my dead body sounds funny now. I focused through the tears and etched every facial feature, every line, into my brain. For some reason I told him I was doing it. I just checked, it’s still there now.

Then things got really bad. My mom was a wreck. She was really a simple person. She was sick her whole life. Diabetes, then heart disease (she wasn’t overweight, she was skinny), then the brain surgery. The summer before my dad died, when she had the car wreck, she started having seizures. I was there once when she was. Every couple of minutes, she’d have them. She couldn’t walk. Earlier that summer, we had bought her one of those swinging patio swings, the ones that are wide like a couch, with a canopy. She had an American Cocker Spaniel named Pooky. She loved the swing. I was building them a stone patio in their backyard, and she really wanted to sit on the swing. Like I said, she loved it. I had to carry her out there so she could enjoy it. She stuttered to me through seizing that she wanted an apple. I cut one up into pieces. Jesus, the poor thing. She couldn’t sit upright, so she half lay on the thing crying, and seizing. She took little bites from the apple slices. I moved stone under the sun, leveled sand and cried softly to myself because she kept trying to say thank you. But couldn’t.

You’re welcome mom.

They had a crazy land lease. My dad was making some great money through an internship for his graduate degree, and was killing scholarships left and right. All personal things aside, he was brilliant. He went, so did the money. I tried unsuccessfully to renegotiate the contract, but the guy had us dead to rights. He was a great leading Christian at the local church. People loved him, I hear. He knew he had 30,000 in equity stashed up, and could go and sell the house, get it twice. Nice guy. I lost. I had to move my mom. I finally found a really cute apartment a block away from mine. She loved it. I told her I would take care of everything. I told her I wanted her to get her doctorate. I joked with her that she should “retire.” She was so happy, she actually cried.

I dropped out of school pretty much. I had some jobs on campus and went to those, but stopped the class work. I picked up more hours. I met my current wife at one of them. I got all the paperwork signed and the keys for mom’s new apartment. That was a Wednesday, and we were ready to move on Monday. Couldn’t get a hold of her all day Thursday. She was studying for a major exam. I stayed at work and my sister went down to check in.

She was dead too. She was actually studying in bed, her face resting on an open art book. I remember her telling me she had to memorize various paintings, who painted them and when. That was her last act. I like to think that she drifted off into a world of painting, that which she loved so much. Maybe she joined Rembrandt, who, upon seeing her, gladly handed her a brush. Maybe they painted together, and laughed in some distant field in front of a canvas. This is getting hard, I should stop. I have more, but can’t right now. Maybe I can add something later.

Her dog Pooky was sitting on the floor next to her bed. My sister still has that dog. My wife and I became pregnant, so I started looking for more full-time work. It was hard. Actually, impossible. We planned to get married. I got evicted from my apartment. I started working in a Wal-Mart and sleeping on my friend’s couch. Same one I went to Florida with. It was actually a “snack bar.” You know, popcorn, hot dogs, you name it. 174 IQ. Brilliant, but I was desperate. I wasn’t exactly making a tidy salary so I got a second job. Both were full time. The second was a third shift job at a fast food restaurant. I was solo. I had to clean everything, and cook because the place was twenty-four hours. It was dirty, hot, the people oh so friendly. Philosophy professor, right. You don’t really know pain until you’ve done this. Brought back memories involving mops. I would work at Wal-Mart from 1pm until 10pm, then drive a mile, doze off in my truck for 45 minutes, then work at the restaurant from 11pm until 7am. I actually had a wind up alarm in my truck. Sorta funny. I’d go crash on my friend’s couch from 8am until noon, then get up, shower and go. It was harder than the floor cleaning, but at least I was getting paid this time.

I bought the coolest engagement ring ever, and we had the best wedding you could imagine. We rented this old farm house in the woods amidst these beautiful houses. Our neighbors actually volunteered us the use of their unbelievable backyard for the wedding. The day was sunny, my wife amazing. Completely unforgettable. I eventually landed a management job at the restaurant which paid more than both jobs combined. Very helpful. I did that for over a year but wasn’t very happy with it, wasn’t making a great income, and was making no progress back to school. Most of you know the rest. I left the management job, worked solo for a few months and finally got on at my current job through a head-hunter.

So now then. I just want to finish what I fell in love with. I hope to return to school and become that academic that my professor said I could be. That challenge, in the face of what you’ve just read, my soul spilled out to you, is what this site is about. When I say, I Will Not Die, can you imagine what it is I mean? This site is for everyone, not just me, who wants to practice their passion. It’s not always an easy thing to do. There are opportunities to give up and become hopeless at every turn. But that giving up, from my view of things, is a submission much like dying. If you think I’ll let that happen, you’re wrong.

I Will Not Die.

Dereck :: Mar.16.2008 :: Uncategorized ::

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