Calm. Creative. Committed. Determined to make a difference.

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Perhaps some of you are wondering who I am, especially if you are on Minds, where I've been for quite a while now. Allow me to introduce myself, if you would.

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My interests include the God debate, awesome music, photography, poetry, pithy sayings and puns, and public policy, so far as politics is concerned. My past includes quite a bit of pain as well as accomplishment.

My Traumatic Childhood

Traumatic best describes a lot of my childhood experiences. From my arm being twisted when I was about four-years-old in daycare to being thrown up against the metal fence only a year later by bullies on the playground, my early years seemed to be a rough ride.

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Speaking of rides, one morning when I was only five or six-years-old, my mother was driving me somewhere in her old red Toyota, perhaps to daycare or kindergarten. My mother put the car in reverse, backed out of the driveway, readjusted the angle of the tires, and had just put the stick into first gear.

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Then, one of my neighbors at the time ran the stop sign at the T-intersection nearby. She made a wide turn, crashing into my mother's door nearly head-on. The door was totaled—twisted metal. My head knocked into the passenger car window.

Everyone survived. They say that many car accidents happen close to home. Never did I think that it would happen literally right in front of my house, but it did. Should you feel safe outside?

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But that wasn't all the trauma I experienced before the first grade. Let's go back to that playground. One day, the children were running, chasing each other around by the fence, the jungle gym, and the swings. I was watching some of them running on the other side of that section of the playground.

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Next thing I know, my friend Andrew comes up to me and kicks me in between the legs—-hard. I fell down, writhing in pain immediately. He told us that he did that in order to protect me. After all, the bullies might have come after me. Later, when I got home and my underwear was removed, I saw a blood stain on it.

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When I was in elementary school, my mother and dad were not getting along very well. My dad was an alcoholic back then (he still drinks from time to time even twenty years later), and my mother had her own anger issues, perhaps brought on in part by her manic side. So I witnessed all the stress that came with a couple on the verge of divorce. The typical arguing and what not.

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They eventually went to counseling, and I made my case for them to stay together. They ended up staying together at that point: the last paper in the divorce process remained unsigned. (My mother remained disgruntled over my dad's drinking though, and they eventually divorced anyway many years later, allegedly because my mother just couldn't conceive of the two getting back together.)

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I also recall in elementary school, during one bus ride, my friend Nick told me that I was going to Hell. Maybe he was right; but then again, maybe I was already there.

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Fast-forward a bit. Now, 2005 was also a traumatic year, one that disturbed my relationship with my mother. My mother had been in a dispute with the Cotherines, the family of her dad's second wife. (My grandpa's first wife had died before I was born. To say nothing of his first daughter's suicide before I was born.)

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In that dispute, my mother's mania came to the fore. Paranoia ensued, as she would point to tiny little issues or quirks as possibly the result of an act of sorcery or vindictiveness by the Cotherines. At one point in time, she even set fire to the roof of a wooden swing-set that she had bought years earlier, all while one of my uncles had been visiting the house and was surprised that the swing was set on fire. Fortunately, the fire went out quickly. I don't recall the fire department putting it out. I think maybe my dad put it out. But it seemed like my mother would do anything to cast even more blame on the in-laws.

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Two other things that my mother tried to do during this manic phase irritated me. First, she tried to control where I would go and how I would act, just as though I were a young child. Closing the home's front door was enough to get her to want my principal to spank me. Fortunately for me, my principal understood from my description of what happened that my mother had a "chemical imbalance." It was also around this time that my mother called the police on me while we were in our own home, so that I would comply or be kicked out.

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Second, my mother tried to buy another house to get her and I away from others. She promised a couple trying to sell their home that if the financials went through, she'd buy their house. Needless to say, with her somewhat new Pontiac Vibe and the loan that went with that and other financial details, the financing didn't go through.

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Bizarrely, it was also in 2005 that I went to a summer camp held then at Lake James in northern Indiana. That summer camp was a Constitution-learning camp. It was a bright spot in an otherwise dim year, despite the fact that I hated going to camps. It was there that I obtained my first copy of The Law, by Frederic Bastiat, where I first sung the old song "Dixie," where I learned the lyrics to "Taps," and where I was nominated for something and won a contest for cabin art.

Not Long After 9/11

Let's backtrack a bit. Given my intellectual nature, some might be surprised to know what I did at a concert when I was almost young.

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Downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It was just days after 9/11. I had seen the TV footage of the Twin Towers come down. People were still kind of on-edge. High alert.

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My family had decided to take me to a Three Dog Night concert. We were back around the 4th row from the front. It was getting toward the finale of the show. I had a plan. When the show ended, I knew I needed to make my move.

I ran up, jumped the stage, and continued trying to follow the band members backstage. I wanted an autograph, a souvenir--something to commemorate the occasion.

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I didn't get very far backstage—just a few steps behind the curtains, so to speak. I let them know what I wanted, and Patrick Bautz was kind enough to give me one of his drumsticks that he used for the show—a drumstick that I still have over 16 years later. Cory Wells also signed a Three Dog Night piece of paraphernalia.

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The Courier-Journal, the local newspaper, took notice of the Three Dog Night event at the time, basically saying that the teenagers were going all wild at the show. My family knew who they were referring to, though the details were sparse in the paper, and technically speaking, I wasn't quite a teenager just yet.

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Anyway, here's a close-up macro-photo I took of the drumstick, now that I have the macro-lens to do so.