“So it finally happened. I got caught.  I had expected it for some time, living in the shadows, and hoping no one would see me doing it.  But alas my time had come, and I had no one to blame but myself.  I made the bad decisions. I lived as I pleased.  And now I would pay dearly.”

In August of 1997, I was a college graduate that loved to have fun and who had just gradauated from a college where I could not make my own decisions.  This did not make for a very good combination.  I tried to figure out what I wanted to do as far as work was concerned, but it wasn’t easy.  I wanted to be some sort of half pastor/ radio DJ/ politician. Like a mix between Rush Limbaugh (he was “in” back then) and Billy Graham.  Instead I chose to be a high school history teacher in Atlanta.  Pretty cool, huh?  I thought so.  I remember loading up my new car – a 1993 cherry red Nissan Sentra, and began the drive from Tucson, Arizona where my parents lived, to Hotlanta.

After leaving Tucson at 9:00 pm on Friday, August 1st, I finally arrived in the “land of sweet tea” on Sunday, August 3rd at around noon.  The friends I was temporarily living with in Atlanta had called me and told me they would be away.  They left a key underneath the flowerpot or something, and I could make myself at home.  They were at some camp with kids and I was in Atlanta until next Friday by myself.  Cable television kept me busy until around 5:00 pm until I got bored and decided to drive around the suburb I would be living and explore.  On that drive, I discovered Chick Fil-A. But it wasn’t open on Sunday!

Then I received a call from my friend Ruben.  Ruben was a crazy man who loved to stretch me in all things adventure and this conversation would be no exception.  He confessed he was in Massachusetts, having a great time,and since I had a week before I had any responsibilities, I should come up.

Now remember I had just driven 35 hours or so to get to Atlanta and had only arrived hours before. But something about Ruben the adventurer always made me say yes.  So around 7:30 pm, my car hit the highway again to drive to the northeast, a place I had only visited once before.
I share this story with you because this was the way I lived my life.  Adventure and fun drove my decisions.  No one dared to tell me what to do any longer.  I could drive to Massachusetts if I wanted to drive to Massachusetts on an hour’s notice. I could go to bed when I wanted to go to bed. (I know that is a funny thing to say for a 21 year old, but the college I attended had a bedtime of 11:00 pm)  And I would from now on make my own decisions.  I was free!  You might even say I was my own king.

By October of the same year, I had hit my stride.  My students loved me.  I taught not only in school, but also a “singles class” at the church I attended.  Don’t worry, I was not teaching people how to be single, I was teaching life, a subject I was certainly qualified to teach, right?.  In short, I was on fire.

The only thing I didn’t have was money, but that would come sooner or later, now I was serving and having a blast with a bunch of people around me – peers, parents, students, and whoever else wanted to come around.  I remember walking from one class to another one day telling myself how invincible I was becoming. Life couldn’t get any better than this!

But it could get worse.

Thinking your invincible is a little like thinking you’re the best at the game of basketball because you hit a shot from 3 point land while you’re shooting around by yourself.  No one can prove you’re not the best, and of course that’s where the burden of proof lies.  So when you hit the shot, you smile smugly to yourself about how good you are,and how the Celtics deserve to have a guy like you on their team.  Basically what I’m saying is, it’s ludicrous to think that way…

This was part of an rough draft introduction to a project I recently started working on entitled,”The Worst Story ever told and a few really bad ones too.”