A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away lived a kid who hadn’t a care in the world. In the small Indiana town he called home, he had a ton of friends and spent his summers riding bikes around the neighborhood, building makeshift ramps out of scrap pieces of wood, and giving the stay-at-home moms (of which there were many in those days) around the neighborhood minor heart attacks with stunts that would give Evel Knievel pause.

Then one day his own mother told him the grandfather he loved more than anything was dying of leukemia. The family would move to Michigan as his dad had agreed to step in and run the auto parts stores his grandfather had turned into a thriving business.

His first day of school in Michigan would set the tone for the remainder of his childhood. One of the kids took him aside and told him that if anyone tried to beat him up, he’d protect him. Why anyone would beat him up was such a foreign concept. Back in Indiana, there’d been no cliques, no bullies, and no reason to need one of the bigger kids to protect him.

Unable to reconcile such idiocy in his mind, he retreated into his own world and found solace in the music that blasted from his stereo. It became his most trusted friend when others failed him. It understood him when others couldn’t be bothered to try. When his grandfather passed away – having beaten the cancer, but being too weak to stave off the pneumonia that followed – he lost the one human who never judged him harshly, who’d always believed in his every dream as if it were his own. This was a man who’d been told by a teacher that he’d never amount to anything. Years later, after having become a successful business owner, he was visited by this same teacher, who’d come into the store for the express purpose of saying he was wrong. The kid always remembered this when someone told him that he too would never amount to anything. (more…)