My Story

Can't see.  Can't hear.  Varicose veins.  Walks with a limp.  High blood pressure.  High cholesterol.  Forgets things.  Has had 7 orthopedic surgeries.

Bikes 150 miles or so a week.  Does CrossFit.  Can dance all night.  Works 60 hours a week.  Has more energy than most 20-somethings.

What if I told you those two were the same person?  It's true.

This story is about me.  In avoidance of narcissism, you're gonna hear the good and the bad. 

My story really starts about the time I was 5, when my dad had his first heart attack.  Yes, you've heard that story here before, maybe too many times, but that's what old people do--they tell the same stories over and over again.

But that heart attack is so much a part of my life up until this point that my story has to start there. 

I don't remember much else about that far back.  I remember that my dad suddenly had to assume a sedentary lifestye immediately.  A short, wiry fellow with tons of energy, he was always doing something.  Always.  Then...nothing.

Heart care back then basically consisted of Coumadin and doing nothing.  And a low fat diet.  We would travel to a Kroger's in Knoxville for their corn oil margarine because that was the only kind that my dad liked.  No eggs.  No fried food.  Skim milk.  I never knew anything else. 

Later, another heart attack forced my dad to retire and my mom to go back to work.  Part of the heart care science back then was that you couldn't hold your arms over your head.  I remember building this 2 step contraption that allowed me to hang clothes on the clothesline to dry because my dad couldn't.

We raised bees but since my dad couldn't do any physical labor, taking care of them was my responsibility.  I "robbed" the hives of their honey, with my mom's help put it in jars, and sold it in front of our house on Highway 11, back then one of the main routes south and north through Tennessee.

Beekeeping was later my very first merit badge in Boy Scouts.  Scouting introduced me to some good men who filled a gap that my dad couldn't fill because of his physical limitations.  Scouting also provided me with some incredible leadership training that I would surely have never gotten otherwise. 

When I built my own treehouse in the backyard (out of rescued materials) at about age 12, my dad sat in a lawn chair at the bottom of the tree and talked me through it.  If I ever bent a nail, instead of beating it on in, my dad insisted that I pull it out, straighten it out, and do it again.  (Nails were not something you discarded.)

My dad always wanted me to be an athlete and football became my passion.  I quit growing in the 10th grade so I was never the star I had hoped to be but to this day, nobody ever took more away from the game.

My dad couldn't attend my games.  Too much excitement wasn't good for the heart you know.  My mom later told me that my dad would sit at home and listen to all my games on the radio, crying much of the time.  I can't even write that sentence without choking up a bit.

So I decided that I was not going to become a heart patient.  I would do everything I could to stay healthy.  Exercise?  Daily.  Eat right?  Perpetually.  Live a healthy lifestyle ?  Every moment I can.

All those things at the top of this column?  Yeah, that's me.  Too many candles on the birthday cake and not the best gene pool.  But one thing you can be sure about--those things aren't going to beat me.  The second paragraph is my testimony to that.  And to my dad.