I’ve been watching and listening to a lot of true crime recently (no surprise there). It’s gotten me thinking, “What will people think of me when I’m gone? Who will tell my story?” Tonight, after a tall glass of wine, I decided I would. I will tell my story. It’s not full of greatness, but it’s my story. It’s full of hardship, heartbreak, and, hey, lots of dead people. That’s a Hercules reference if anyone is wondering. For many years I haven’t been able to remember large chunks of my life. To this day, I’m not sure if it’s because there’s a lot of trauma in my past or because a shrink prescribed me 200mg of Zoloft at the ripe old age of 14. Recently, I’ve been getting more glimpses into my early years. I’m finally starting to remember middle school. My chronic scrapbooking and obsessive photo taking have helped me remember.
My earliest memory is simple, but it brings me joy everytime I think about it. I’m in a high chair at my grandma’s dinner table. She made pork chops and ranch-style beans. Because I was a weird kid and she enabled me, I also had sliced sharp cheddar cheese to dip in my ranch-style beans. I feel I need to specify that it was sliced off a block. It wasn’t shredded cheese (I’m not a monster). I’m still not too sure how old I was in this memory. That’s the downside of memories; they aren’t shot in third person.
Fast forward to middle school, where my next memory takes place. This is also where things get fuzzy. I’ve tried to access the pictures I took back then, but I don’t remember my MySpace password, and Netzero doesn’t exist anymore. Fun fact, my parents had dial up internet until I was in college. All of my social media from back then (e.g. MySpace) had the password recovery set to, first, our AOL email and then our Netzero email.
I remember getting into feuds with my middle school band director quite often. She didn’t like me because she thought I didn’t apply myself, and I didn’t like her because she gave me one of the hardest instruments to play (shoutout to my fellow French horn players). I didn’t have much time to practice because of my other extracurriculars and my homework. I was a farm kid. I raised sheep and goats from third grade until the time I graduated high school. That was how we saved money so I could go to college. That was also the only time I really spent with my dad growing up.
I remember one year at the county fair (my first year showing sheep, actually), there was an incident. For background, my dad used to give the goats and sheep a little bit of beer before shows to keep them calm. This decision was made after my first goat drug me down in the show ring, but I didn’t let him go. Everyone in the audience felt bad for me, and I was beyond embarrassed. My dad decided then that wouldn’t happen again. My first year showing sheep, we found out how smart lambs can be. My lamb that year, Buddy, developed a bit of a taste for alcohol. He would actively seek it out. One of my dad’s friends, Mr. Randy, left his mixed drink sitting on top of our show box that was chained to the side of our lambs pen at the fairgrounds. Buddy caught Mr. Randy not paying attention, reared up on his pen, and knocked Mr. Randy’s mixed drink into his field trough and promly drank the whole thing. Poor thing was drunk as a skunk. Mr. Randy learned an important lesson that day: Don’t leave your booze unattended around a Kilgore show animal. I actually have a lot of memories with my dad at the county fairgrounds. Some are better than others.
I remember one year we got into a screaming match to end all screaming matches. I don’t even remember what the argument was about. Something about the animals. What has stuck with me is how I felt in that moment. I just felt so broken and guilty at the same time. I felt like I was a failure and a disappointment, and I blamed myself. Maybe if I had done what he wanted, he wouldn’t have yelled at me like that. I also felt disrespected, and I was filled with rage. I felt disrespected and confused. He taught me to never let a man raise their voice at me, but he was the one yelling, raising his voice at me. I yelled back. I wasn’t going to be disrespected like that, not by my own father. Needless to say, that was the only screaming match we got into like that. It ended with me crying, but not out of hurt. I cried out of rage, out of confusion, as a defense mechanism. I learned young that my tears could be weapons, so I used the most powerful weapon in my arsenal, my tears. My mom came to my defense and presumably chewed him out.
Another great memory I have is when I had a "red" goat. For anyone unaware, "red" in animals refers to a full brown color. Of course, me being in high school, I named the goat Red. I wish I had a photo I could share. He was a great goat. He was basically a big, ornery dog, but he loved me. We did well in the county fair, so we made it to the Main Sale, which is for those that place 15th place and higher in the county show for each animal category, but kids can only sale one animal. For example, since I showed lambs and goats, if I placed in both, I would have to pick which one I wanted to sale. Red and I were walking around the fairgrounds one night when I see Mr. Randy and his daughter. I approach them just to chat. Unbeknownst to me, Red decided the back of Mr. Randy's knees looks delicious and he just starts chomping. He bit the crap out of the back of Mr. Randy's knee. He screamed and shouted obscenities (for obvious reasons). On the night of the sale, me and Red see Mr. Randy again because his daughter made the sale with her lamb. I walk to him and say, "Red say hi to Mr. Randy," and without missing a beat, he tells me to "keep that damn thing away from [him]." Needless to say their friendship did not prosper after Red decided to turn Mr. Randy's blue jeans into a nice little snack.
We had to do volunteer work in order to qualify for the county fair. One year, I was getting ready to go do some volunteer hours, and my eye was itching and burning like crazy. Luckily, one of my parents’ neighbors is an optometrist. They drive me to Doc’s house, and he takes a look at my eye. He says I have a scratch in my retina and puts some weird orange dye in my eye. I can barely see out of it, and it’s super swollen. Unfortunately, this was the last available day to get hours that year, so I had to go. My parents slapped a pair of sunglasses on me, and we called it good. Thankfully, my dad was the one in charge of the lamb division that year, so I was working under him. I spent my Saturday afternoon pulling industrial staples out of wooden tables from where they had secured the tablecloths the previous year. Ironically, one of the few times that my parents actually took my medical issues seriously.
I remember I played volleyball in junior high. I was one of the fattest on the team, but damn could I put some heat behind my serve. I even played for the track team. I was in discus and shotput. I was not good at either. I was actually getting really good at volleyball toward the end, but my sports career was cut short. In seventh grade, I started experiencing a lot of knee pain and joint popping. My mom and my track coach both thought it was because I wanted to get out of running. It got even worse my eighth grade year to the point where I had to quit sports, drop out of athletics and transfer to physical education instead. The pain and swelling just kept getting worse. My mom took me to my pediatrician who referred us to this absolute quack who didn’t know his own ass from a hole in the ground. His only solution was physical therapy to strengthen the joint. Fast forward exactly one year to my freshman year of high school. I didn’t play sports anymore because they hurt too much, so I joined the marching band instead. The pain, swelling, and popping continued. My mom finally listened to my incessant whining and took me to a doctor in the same office as my grandma’s orthopedist. He did a CT scan, some x-rays, and concluded that there was a small something on my scan. He wasn’t sure what exactly that something was, so he scheduled me for arthroscopic surgery in November of 2009 at the ripe old age of 14. They did the surgery and found that my meniscus looked like cottage cheese. It was so far beyond repair that they had to remove 90% of it. My left knee hasn’t been the same since. If only my mom would have taken me to that doctor sooner, instead of “Dr.” Can’t-find-his-own-ass-with-two-hands-and-a-flashlight. In college, my knee problems returned. I was exercising regularly to try and lose weight, so the swelling was damn near constant. I knew something was wrong. I knew my knee shouldn’t be doing that. I went back to visit Dr. Knee Surgery when I visited my parents. Captain Obvious told me it was just because I was fat, and if I lost weight, my problem would go away. I was understandably upset because he wouldn’t even listen to my problem. He took one look at me, decided my weight was the issue, and that was the end of it. Upon my return to my university, I found a different orthopedist, one that had worked for our local NBA team, the Spurs. He took one CT scan, saw how busted up my knee was and knew he had to act. He actually got me approved for a stem cell injection when I was only 23 years old because he told my insurance I had the knee of a 65 year old. I also found out that they score arthritis on a scale of zero to four. Zero is where you want to be, and my knee was at a two. To this day, whenever my mom tries to brag about her being right about something, I remind her who was right about my knee being busted (not her, clearly). To this day, Dr. Saenz is one of my favorite doctors I’ve ever had because he genuinely listened and cared. He didn’t try to write me off or ignore my concerns. He knew I was young, but I was worried because this wasn’t the first time I had these issues. He cared, which is the bare minimum for doctors, but this was the first doctor besides my pediatrician who showed me they actually cared.
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