Today, I will look at my life in fourth grade and try to paint a picture of my world during that time. Just a few month after I was almost arrested at 7–11, I decided to start ditching school. I was getting in so much trouble in class, most of my fourth grade was spent outside the Principle’s office copying the dictionary. I even had my own desk outside his office in the hallway where the office receptionist would keep a constant eye on me. I didn’t mind too much, and honestly I preferred the work as a scribe reproducing the dictionary everyday, over the stuff my teacher taught in class. But after a while, with a couple friends, Marvin and Hector, we decided to start skipping school.

“Have you ever heard of Norco?” I looked at my dentist with a faked look of confusion, and replied back, “Ummm…not sure? I don’t think so?” “Well, they will help with the pain from the root canal, if you like I can write you a script? Any allergies to medicine you are aware of?” At that moment, I felt like the world stood still. I almost felt the sensation of the drug hitting my bloodstream and just forgetting everything for a while.

Much of my writing up to this point has been focused on the areas in my life where I have had victory and success. I have attempted to share what has worked for me to overcome struggles and demonstrate how I have found true happiness. There are multiple parts to every story however, and I feel I need to focus today on how I got so wild to begin with. How did I end up engaging in the level of criminal activity at only 13 years of age that would cost me my freedom? This does not happen over-night. I believe there is a progression that I can follow that will paint a picture for us. I want to start to answer the question: How did it all start?

After surviving a horrific automobile accident, I was taken in the back of a police car to the Hawthorne Police Department. This all happen so late into the night that by the time I got to the police station the sun was starting to rise. I was taken into a room where a cop asked me if I was okay and looked me up and down to check for injuries. They were not really mean to me, but they were not friendly and I assumed they were mad for how my mom shouted at them and fought with them. Other than being dirty from all the dust at the accident and a tear-stained face, I was fine.

“We’re here!” shouted the van driver from under the bill of his weathered U.S.M.C. baseball cap. “Say hello to your new home.” I quickly snapped my tear stained face up from a dead gaze to look out the window and discover what was to be at least for the next six months, my new home. As the driver slammed on the brakes, the van came skidding to a stop on the old washboard dirt road and it caused a dust cloud to accumulate that would last the next five minutes. This made it nearly impossible to make out the scene, until after the dust settled and I could make out my surroundings.

I run 1-2 half marathons🏃‍♂️just about every week, and I could never do this without healthy lungs. For several years, I smoked weed traditionally, with pipes, joints, and bongs, and I would cough up black tar almost every morning. I was coughing up literal chunks of black tar similar to the gross black resin that accumulated in my weed pipe! I had essentially become a human bong! 💀

Thank God this went away a few months after I stopped combusting! When I made the switch from combustion to vapor, I was no longer releasing toxic chemicals like Benzene and other carcinogens into my body, and soon my smoker's cough dissipated, and I was able to begin living an active healthy lifestyle! 🙏

As a young man in my 20s, I was searching for a way of life that would help me become a loving husband to my wife and a good father to my boys. Like most young families, we looked to the church to find the new life we heard about. The solution seemed clear. If we wanted a healthy family, all we had to do was join a healthy church.

This is what America believes. Right?

From as far back as I can remember I have not fit in. I have been a hoodlum, an outcast, and a rebel…anything but normal, anything but acceptable to the mainstream. I never learned to keep my mouth shut. Instead, I made the mistake of questioning authority, standing up for oppressed, and not being silent like I’m supposed to…eventually I became tabu.