While in middle school I began smoking pot. I continued smoking pot because it allowed me to become half-way normal and it allowed me to fit in to a crowd. As time went on I continued to smoke pot and my school began to suffer. I am still unclear if it was the marijuana or if my complete and utter depression was the cause of my lack of ambition for learning. I was a very intelligent kid, more so than many of the other students. I did learn a lot while in school, but I didn’t care at the time. I simply did not care. I had no thoughts of what lay ahead and if I did have some glimmer of thought for the future, once again, I did not care.

I was kicked out of Westville Public Schools so my mother and I moved to Locust Grove,OK to start anew. This seemed to help for some time, but eventually my depression and marijuana took its toll. Two weeks before my graduation day I was expelled from school. Before you form any opinion of myself as a child I will offer you this bit of information. I was never violent towards others. The only fights I was ever involved in was not started by myself. I would, however, throw fits of rage, whereas I would punch myself, punch lockers, walls, etc. . But I never punched anyone else out of anger. One moment I would be this bright kid with an aversion to musical instruments. I would be overtly happy and very compassionate towards others, however when I became upset it was a fairly disturbing ordeal. I remember the first time I had one of these “fits” in Locust Grove, my principal took me in to the office and was very confused. He said “since I have known you, I have always liked you. You are a very intelligent kid. You walk through the halls singing and playing your guitar, and then you turned in to a completely different person.” I will remember this until the day that I die because it meant a lot to me. I was truly, while in my fit-of-rage, a completely different person. I know now that my actions then were controllable because I never hit anyone. I would avoid lashing out violently against other people, but it did seem, at the time, an uncontrolled rage, where all of my logical thought went out the window and the only thing left was the need to lash out.

I grew up extremely poor. I remember spending 6 months living on the Illinois River near “Chewy Bridge” in pup tents. My brothers and I would ride the bus to a convenient store about a mile from our “home” and walk through a field to get there. We didn’t want people knowing we lived on the river, this is why we set up the “pick-up” at the store down the road. This store, however, was not open for business.

My Step-father was extremely abusive and would punch and slap us for the simplest “wrong-doings.” I remember when I was about eight or nine, my brother Chris made a smart-ass comment to James, our step-dad, and I remember watching Chris being hoisted off of the ground by his throat and thrown in to the other room. Fortunately he landed on the bed, but I’m not sure that makes up for my step-dad’s actions. As children, my brothers and I were on a constant look out for the incoming hand or fist that could emerge from no where for no particular reason. My dad had a short temper and made very good use of it. When you must walk-on-eggshells in your own home it can make for a very stressful environment and that is possibly one of the reasons I’ve had the issues I’ve had. I don’t know if this is true or not but it definitely seems like it could have that effect on someone.

After being kicked out of Locust two weeks before my graduation, I decided that I would go on to college like my brothers had. I received my G.E.D. during the summer after school was out, and I was enrolled at Northeastern State University the next available semester. My first semester went by without a hitch. I made a 4.0 gpa that semester and seemed to enjoy myself. *note* my current wife and I got together when I was 17; she was 18. She went to NEO during my Senior year in high school and then came with me to NSU. *end note*

My next semester, however wasn’t so great. I purchased a computer with my student loan money and would begin gaming all night, every night. I would skip classes just so I could play StarCraft online. This caught up with me and my grades began to fail because instead of doing my work and going to class I would sit in my dorm room and play StarCraft as much as I possibly could.

While in my second year in college I said to hell with it and left. I moved to Skiatook with my mom and began looking for a job. My wife, not wanting to be alone at school, quit too and came to live with me. We both got fairly decent jobs and eventually got an apartment. I changed jobs every three months or so due to some indignation from my employer. However menial an offense against myself was I would just quit and go to another job. I didn’t realize at the time how quickly this would catch up with me.

I began working as a nurses aide at a nursing home. I absolutely loved it. It was a very rewarding job for me and it was by far the most appreciative. I was very good at what I did and the residents loved me. They would always come to me for help with something because, unlike most of the others, I would do it without hesitation, within reason, and I was always extremely nice and helpful. There was a particular resident that gave me a bit of advice that I would cherish forever. She was a woman that had been in a car accident when she was 32. She only had the use of her right arm, and she would use it to pull herself up on the bed. She was completely coherent in mind and very opinionated. She was placed in the nursing home at 33 and had been in that same nursing home for over twenty years. She was an extremely bitter and hateful person and she disliked men with a passion. The other aides in the nursing home said that no man was allowed to change her, turn her, help her use the bathroom for any reason ever. The nursing home had to have two women on duty at all times because of her request.

While passing her room one day she yelled for me to come in there. I went in there to see what she needed and she told me that of all of the nurse aides that she has seen come and go, I was the best of all of them. She told me that I had a gift for making people feel better and live more comfortably. She told me that if I didn’t go to nursing school she was going to have to kick my ass. Her confidence in me shocked the life out of me. I was just about the happiest person you would ever meet in the next few weeks. After having that conversation. She would request that I assist the other aides when needed. She would let me be in the room, she would let me turn her and do things that she would never let any other man do. I was not, however, allowed to ever “clean” her. She didn’t want me to touch her, because she felt it inappropriate. I didn’t care about not being able to clean her but it made such a profound impact on my life that I would soon apply for nursing school.

At my first nursing home I started out making $6.66/hr. Not near what I was making at my first jobs in Tulsa. Once certified, I began looking for employment at more elaborate nursing homes that would pay their employees what they were actually worth. *note* There are no nursing homes that pay a nurse aid what they are worth *end note*. After some time I picked one. I worked at this nursing home in Owasso for about two weeks. This nursing home would not allow any one other than nurses to read the file as to the condition of the patient. I am a person who glorifies autonomy and I assume most people would rather do for themselves and that is how I cared for patients. I would let them do what they could and I would pick up the slack elsewhere. There was a man who had just came in to the nursing home. I brought him his food and his milk, water. I set the milk down, asked him if he needed anything else and he said no. I proceeded down the hall, delivering food where it needed to go. I was then confronted by an LPN and was rushed in to that mans room. She began to scold me in his room about the carton of milk. I did not open it. When I apologized for the mistake I let her know that I didn’t know he was unable to open it himself and I had asked him if he needed something else and he said no. Keep in mind, this all occurred in this mans room. She began yelling at me calling me an idiot, wondering why I am working as a nurse aide if I can’t fulfill the simple task of opening a carton of milk. I “told” this nurse to go out in the hall and I proceeded out the door and in to the nurses station. I then began to get hostile with her, letting her know that is is completely unethical for her to scream at another employee while in a patients room. I let her know that all she needed to say was, “can you open mr. so and so’s milk please and don’t forget next time,” and that would have been that. She continued screaming at me so I told her I wouldn’t put up with that kind of treatment from anyone and I walked out the door. That was a Friday. I went in to the Nursing home on Monday morning to let them know what had happened that night. They were going to fire me until I told them what took place. They ended up firing the nurse and I told them that I would not work there anymore because I would feel uncomfortable there after what happened in front of the other nurses and nurse aides that night. They understood and I went on to the Tulsa Nursing Center.

I worked weekend doubles at the Tulsa Nursing Center for about 5 months. I had a Boss named Grant who was an RN. He was an openly gay person and he began making comments to me about how uncircumcised penis’ are easier for anal sex. This man would call me in to his office to discuss things of this nature. I would just listen and go on. I finally got tired of it and reported him to the D.O.N. Her response was “Grant already made us aware that you told him you were bisexual and that he was afraid it might lead to conflict later on.” They didn’t want to hear what I had to say so I quit.

I went to truck driving school after that and a month later I was on the road. I drove off and on for 5 years OTR. In my fourth year of driving we had a child, Zoe, and were living in a rat trap at the time because the rent was cheap. We decided to purchase a house in a small town called Chelsea. We paid 60k for it, it is a very nice house with an acre of land. It’s a 3 bedroom two bath home that had been almost completely redone. It was a little small but it was perfect for us and we were in love with it the moment we saw it. It was a pastel yellow color with a rose bush near the porch and two large flowery bushes in the yard.

It was about a year later that the miles began slipping. I would sit, sometimes for five days in a row, waiting to pick up a load. This is what I like to call the “Bush-Economy.” This is kind of a side note, but the year after Bush passed his “tax-cuts” was the first year that I have ever once in my life had to pay in money at the end of the year. This isn’t an integral part to the story, but it does denote an obvious issue with our leadership at that time. When times were good I was making about 60k a year, but my take home was about 45k. Much of that 45k went to feeding my face while on the road. It is very expensive to live in a truck driving across country. Anyhow, back to the story…I would have some weeks that I would make only 200-300 dollars because the only time you make money is when you are driving and since I would wait sometimes 5-6 days for a load, this would take its toll on my life.

My mortgage began to get behind and I couldn’t seem to get enough good weeks in for driving to make up for the fact, so I decided it was best to get out of trucking. I got a job at Alorica, a call center for Sprint. I’m a very technical person and I was troubleshooting PDA’s and such for Sprint customers. I truly enjoyed my job because it was so mentally challenging trying to figure out what could be wrong with someone’s phone when it wasn’t the obvious problem. I was very good at it and became a Team Captain within 6 months. I was planning to become a manager in the near future, I was just biding my time, letting them see my leadership qualities before applying for the management job.

Of course nothing is that easy, right? Well I began to experience excruciating pain in my throat and neck accompanied by a lump on my throat. I went to the doctor 3-4 times, and they didn’t know what it was so they were going to send me in for a biopsy. The office that the Native American hospital contracted me out to see waited until about two days before my appt. to call me and tell me they would have to reschedule for a month later because the doctor that was going to see me had to drop his daughter off at the airport on that day and he wanted to be there to see her off……*sigh*…..I became fairly belligerent at the secretary because I didn’t care if the doctor was going to drop her off and that she needed to get me in immediately and bump the next person because I was in a terrible amount of pain and stress, given the fact that I thought it might be cancerous. There was nothing that she could do so I told her and her doctor, basically, to go do a particular something to themselves. I contacted the contract health at the Native hospital and let them know, and they would reschedule an appt. for me. *I have still not heard back from them*

The pain in my throat subsided and for a day or so I was fine, then I began getting what seems to me like bone and/or joint pain, all over my body. In my hip, my shoulder, my arm, on the side of my head and most of the pain came from my back. I would have days that I couldn’t get out of bed at all because it hurt so bad to move and I would have to call in to work 2-3 times for this. I had gone to the emergency room one night because the pain was so bad, and they ran a Mono test that came back positive. They said that mono is the cause of the pain and it may last up to two years….*sigh*….

Upon calling in on my fourth time, they asked that I bring them a doctors note, and I understood their request. I went back to the doctor, got a note describing my ailment and brought it back to them at work. Now…the day they asked me for the note was the Thursday before the fourth of July in 2009. Even thought the 4th fell on a Saturday, everyone decided to close down everything on the Friday, so not only did I miss those days previous to when I came back to work and was asked to leave until I could get a doctors note, I was unable to work that Thursday through that Sunday. All together it was 6 days off in a row…Ouch… I brought their doctors note in on Monday. *keep in mind I had to drive 45 min. to get to work…that was one way, so 90 min. total.* Upon receiving the doctors note I was informed that mono is contagious so I would have to get a release form…*omfg*… I went back home, got a release note the next day, not paying attention to the date specified …. only to discover that the doctor put my release date as the next day, Wednesday, as my return to work date. Now..this note actually stated that mono wasn’t a communicable enough disease to warrant me staying home from work. That is the info the doctor put on there. I would infer from that note that regardless of release date, their reasoning for sending me home was irrational at best and there was no reason for me to be away from work at all. Still yet, the HR dept. didn’t want to have some law-suit on their hands and made me leave and come back the next day. I got fairly upset because at that point I had already wasted 3 trips to work and had missed over a weeks worth of work. 8 days to be exact.

Here’s a little info on mono—98% of all human beings already have the virus, most of it from childhood. If you got it while you were a child you didn’t experience much of the adverse reactions as kids react differently to it than adults do. If you got the virus while you are an adult, the effects are much more severe and last a lot longer. Also you should keep in mind that Mono is contagious for life. Throughout the course of your life the virus will become active, most of the time without any effects and you wouldn’t know when it is active, but when it becomes active it is contagious. So regardless of whether you have it now and it is active does not mean you will spread it because almost everyone already has it and it is spread through saliva, and in rare cases your tears.

I was written up for getting upset at the HR lady and sent on my way. My stats were perfect and up to that point I had never missed any days from work. They did, however, take my Team Captain position away from me and gave it to a guy that had only been on the floor for 3 weeks. I refused to help anyone on my team, I requested to be moved back to my old team. I had been offered the Team Captain position while on someone else’s team. I like that boss more than my current boss. I actually changed schedules so I could be Team Captain, and this is how they repaid me.

I became increasingly more secluded in my work. I would take my calls, go home and start over again the next day. I refused to answer people’s questions telling them to go ask the Team Captain. He initially came to me a lot to ask me questions because he had only been there for 3 weeks and didn’t even know close to what I knew. I refused his help as well. I was scolded by my boss for not helping and I informed him that it was no longer my job to take time away from my calls to answer questions for everyone else and that he could forget about any help because I wouldn’t give it.

I was then written up because I wouldn’t join in the Team Chat and assist others with problems. I told them again that it was not my job to do that anymore, that he had a Captain and that’s what he is for. They said I needed to act like an adult and do it anyway because I’d never get the position back if I was like that. I told them I didn’t care.

Two days later, a memo was sent to everyone in regards to our pay stubs. No longer would they print out paper pay stubs, it would now only be accessible online. Many people began bitching about it and for good reasons. I instructed the to the okdol.gov website and informed them of Oklahoma Labor Law in regards to paper pay stubs.

It is the policy that this “paystub” must be in paper form. It is not enough that the employee be given a web site wherein he/she can print off a paper paystub. The employee must be given a paper paystub.

This is the exact verbiage on the ok.gov/odol website. None of the others were willing to say anything, so I decided to say it for them. In a very informative and formal letter directed to the payroll and human resources dept. I quoted that, gave them a link to the site and let them know why I was letting them know. I stated that many of their employees were upset in regards to the new policy of not receiving a paper pay stub anymore.

Upon arriving to work the very next day, I was pulled in to a conference room and fired on the spot. They said they wouldn’t discuss the reasons why they were firing me and that it didn’t matter why because they were terminating my employment. Upon leaving I happened across the head boss of the Alorica site, and I stopped in to let him know that I had wanted to do good by the company and sent the letter regarding the odol labor law the day before. He informed me that, “yeah…our lawyers were looking in to it and discovered that Oklahoma is one of the very few states that require paper pay stubs and that they would be doing away with that policy.” I almost laughed myself out of his office when I heard that. His lawyers just so happened to be looking in to that the same day, even after the implementation of the policy, and coincidentally it coincided with my letter and the day I got fired. *whew* talk about coincidences. I know why I was fired, they know why they fired me……but……

I immediately filed for unemployment only to find out that they had recorded about 20 of my calls and in those “summaries” of my calls on the day I sent the message, they stated I was short with the customer and that I cold transferred someone to a line that was supposed to be a warm transfer. They stated that I had changed my name in the Team Chat, which I had, and that that was against company policy and I was fired for all of those things. ahhh the way they can stick it to you.

When I had requested an appeal for my unemployment denial, they sent me about a 50 page packet of offenses as to why I was fired. Talk about dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. Oklahoma has no law in which an employee has many rights, and the right to having a job is not something Oklahoma cares about. They have no laws protecting the working class and that a business can fire me for whatever offense, however menial it may seem. An Oklahoma judge, in my thinking, is going to be as biased as the politicians are in this state as to who is looked at more respectably.

I gave up my bid for receiving unemployment. I began looking for a job. I applied to 15 different trucking companies, many of them stating that my 10 month leave from driving over the road meant I wasn’t qualified enough to work for them, even though I had about 4 years experience, incident and accident free, driving.

It was at that point that I decided to go back to school and this time I knew what I wanted to be….a Nurse. I am currently enrolled in college, taking my first semester, pretty much all over again. Now let me bring you up to speed.

My wife had been in community college for the last year and a half. She didn’t work while in school because at the time she enrolled I made enough money to take care of the family w/o her income. She graduated just after I was fired from Alorica, however, she was also 6 months pregnant and showing. No one is going to hire a woman that is that close to her pregnancy because she is going to be taking maternity leave soon-after.

I made enough money at my Alorica job that I could pay for the utilities, food, cars, insurance and household items. I did not however, make enough money to pay my mortgage. So the whole 10 months that I worked for Alorica, our mortgage was not paid. We knew what was coming eventually, and that is foreclosure. We ended up moving most of our stuff in with her mom in Locust Grove and are going to live there. We are completely out of money at this time and we are relying on family members for gas, diapers and whatever else comes up in the meantime. We do get plenty of food stamps thank goodness, but the only thing that pays for is food.

Once again, I am making a 4.0 gpa and I have never been more enthused about anything other than the day Zoe was born. I feel pretty bad about the situation I have gotten our family in to, but I have realized that getting fired from this job and hitting rock bottom is probably going to end up being the best thing that could ever happen to me, because once I graduate…I’ll never ever have this problem again. That is a silent promise I am making to my wife, my children and myself.

I am currently still in the house that we purchased because it is only 15 miles away from my college and it gives me time to get all of my work done and it saves gas. Unfortunately the water and gas has already been shut off, so I am left with electricity and a phone and internet, but that will eventually run out as well and I will be forced to move 45 minutes away from my school and in to a very small, cramped and cluttered place. Jean, my wife’s mom, is somewhat of a pack-rat, so she has things in her house that she has had for years and years and years and it just piles up so the only rooms we have access to, to any extent, is the living room, which is tiny, our bedroom and zoe’s bedroom. The kitchen is pretty much non-existent, and the dining room as well. It’s no place for a child to grow up, but we plan on fixing it up a little bit to make it more livable. I do spend my days off up there and I enjoy the time I’m with my family, but everytime I see the situation we are in it makes me a little sad knowing that we aren’t as independent as we once were, but I just keep telling myself that one day it will be much better.

This has been a fairly humbling experience, to say the least. It has made me realize just how fragile our life is and that one bad decision, or miscalculation can completely ruin one’s life. It also makes me better understand when they say “a bird that flies high in the sky has to come down to land in order to get water.”

I’ve made a lot of mistakes and for some time I wanted to push the responsibility, or blame if you will, onto someone else, but for all of this wrong that has occurred in my life, I now realize that I’m the one to blame. Yeah, a lot of the circumstances may not have been good ones, but my decisions ultimately caused the outcomes. Had I not sent that letter to the payroll and HR dept. I probably wouldn’t have been fired on that day. I’m sure of that, my stats were sure of that. My intent was not malicious, but it did have to do with big business circumventing law to meet their own needs. I got so fed up with the lack of rights for workers that when I found a mistake I would make sure they knew about it. I knew about that law because I have studied Oklahoma state labor laws ever since I began working because the only way you can make anything better is through an understanding of those laws that you must either abide by or use for your own protection. Regardless, I sold myself out for people that will never remember me, they will never appreciate the sacrifice I made for them. I ask myself a lot…was it worth it? Knowing that I solved some menial problem in relationship to workers rights? I would like to think that it was worth it, because that company doesn’t force people to go online to get it. You can go online to get it now, but you still get a paper paystub regardless. Whether or not the action I took was worth it or not…what’s done is done. I did it, it’s done and here I am.

I am starting all over again and I’m actually pretty excited. I would be more excited if I wasn’t so dependent on everyone else for gas money, et., but I will manage. I can not wait for the time when I walk across that stage to get my degree. I am hungry for that. I need it. Not only do I want just a degree, but I want to do it with all A’s. As I said before…I’m a smart guy, I always have been. The difference before was that I had no want or need to apply myself. It is much different this time and I’m so ready to get it done.

Well, I do appreciate you taking the time to stop by my blog and hear my story out. I will keep you updated for as long as I possibly can; like I said before, my internet will only be available for maybe another month. I also hope, for some of you who read this, you can learn something from it and keep from making the same mistakes I have. The most important thing to take from this is that you should think about the consequences of almost anything you say and/or do, before you do it. If you don’t then you may not like the outcome. You will want to blame everything else, but ultimately your decisions are yours and yours alone. No one else should have to suffer because of a decision you decided to make. I’m not saying everything is completely your fault, but in most cases we could all have done things differently and the outcome would’ve changed dramatically.

Thanks for visiting and please come back.