I can’t remember just how old I was, nine or ten maybe, but I do remember the small, government funded flip-phone that my mother handed me as we drove through the pharmacy drive through pick-up window to get “Daddy’s medicine.” It buzzed and rang and did all of the things that all of the other cell phones did at the time. It had an orange led screen and a plastic dial that you would use to navigate around the home screen (if you could see it). It was the most cheaply made device you could have imagined, but I liked that little thing. I remember walking up the creaky wooden porch, with my new prized possession, to the trailer home I grew up in down a dirt road in Hornersville, Missouri. It was Mom and Dad and I, and my little brother who was probably around 2 at the time. I still remember that trailer. White and brown paint that faded toward the foundation as the moss crept up the edges and tin fencing around the base that my nana had painted brown, because then no would could distinguish it from a five-star hotel. My bedroom window had a hole in the window around the size of a golf ball due to me and my dad “hitting balls” too close to the house. I always used that broken window as an excuse that my room as “too cold” to sleep in, so I would get to sleep with mom and dad in their bed. They hardly went to sleep before 2 A.M so you could imagine how much of a burden that was. I remember the first thing you saw when you opened, first the “storm door” and then the “main door” was the countertop that separated the living room from the kitchen. Things were always piled on that island counter so I would pretend it was like a fortress that divided the two rooms where there was actually no clear distinction. At the front of the trailer was the kitchen, small and compact but equipped with everything we needed. Then, (on the other side of the fortress) there was the living room with a small couch, a tv propped up by some books, always a stain somewhere on the shag carpet, and a lot of Native American décor thanks to my dad. Heading toward the back of the trailer you passed through a narrow hallway with two closest that I was “never supposed to look in.” Heading back further, you reached the bathroom/laundry room. In hindsight, I could have probably sat on the toilet, and touched the bathtub, washer, dryer, and the sink without lifting my butt off the seat. There was always “black stuff” as I called it on the seal of the bathtub that I was afraid of, but got over it because I loved bath time. Between the closets of doom and the bathroom, you found my room, with the broken window and a small bed fit for a nine year old. A closet with sliding mirror doors that I thought were actually pretty cool. I had some toys from my older cousins who passed them down and the occasional gift from my Nana Sue. The last room in the trailer was my parents’ bedroom. I remember the closet I always found the Christmas presents hidden in with the same kind of sliding mirror doors as in my room. I remember the (probably King Sized) bed that took up 3/4 of the room and the multiple windows outlooking the backyard. I remember the wooden back porch that my nana and grandpa had added on to the back of that trailer for mom and dad. I don’t remember being out there much, but I do remember how close-quarters it was to my grandparents’ house right next to the trailer. We had a cat, Purzy, who was as big as a mountain lion (at least in my memory.) I remember this place. It was home.

Unfortunately, the objective facts about the trailer aren’t all that I remember. It was a common theme that I would wake up (drastically) earlier than either one of my parents to turn on the TV in the living room to watch either Tom and Jerry or Dexter’s laboratory. Often it was the CLASH, BOOM, BANG of Tom and Jerry that woke mom up. Then, she would make me some Cheerios or whatever cereal we had and she’d watch cartoons with me (or she’d fall asleep beside me in the recliner.) My spot was always on the right side of the little couch that was the perfect angle for not getting any glare from the windows so I could watch my cartoons with ease. I got up one morning and was agitated to find mom sleeping on my side of the couch when she’s usually in bed with dad in their room (Dad didn’t get up until early afternoons most days). It was routine that either I got mom up or something I was doing woke her up, so I decided to just give her a little shake. I went over to her and at first whispered, “Moooom, I’m up,” and then “C’mon, I got Tom and Jerry on!” Some days it was easy to wake her up, while other days I quite literally had to slap her to do so. This day was the latter. Amidst me trying to wake her, I saw that little orange led screen shining dimly in the crack of the couch cushion. “Oh man!” I thought to myself. I hadn’t seen my phone in a few days as I thought I’d lost it. I had better check to see if Nana Sue had called me to tell me about her new Restaurant that she wants to try out. I wasn’t by any means a genius or Savant as a kid, but I was brighter than most. I could read high school to college level books in elementary school with pretty much no struggle. So, I didn’t have any problem reading the texts my mom had sent to a guy named “Jason” saying that she loved him and a few other things I didn’t know the meaning of at the time. In hindsight, I know that it was harder to get mom up on certain days because she’d taken too many pills the night before and the same for Dad. This time, it was too hard to get mom up and I thought it was funny how she’d been texting somebody on my phone, so I wanted to show dad. Somehow, someway I was able to get Dad up and I showed him the phone.

I don’t quite remember much after I handed the phone to my dad. I never saw the phone again and I don’t think I saw my parents in the same room for a long time after that night. I later came to realize that my mom had been cheating on Dad for some time with a “friend” whose house we would visit on occasion. I eventually understood that we went to this friend’s house to get “clothes,” or that’s what my parents always told me. I caught on when I grew a little bit older that they were making drug runs to either get amphetamines, crystal meth, or somewhere in between. This is not the only time I will be mentioning substance abuse, as it fills many of the memories I have from my childhood. So, to summarize, mom had been cheating on dad with a man they had gotten drugs from for a few months. Great. We will get back to the rest of how this story unfolds a little bit later, but I want to emphasize the struggle it was to digest this as nine years old, already acting as a father for my little brother Logan. And this book is about those struggles, but more specifically how I overcome them and harnessed them to fuel me in my quest for a better life than the one I had. This isn’t a book that gives the narrative of rags to riches; rather, it is a journey that explores my mindset and emotions as I navigated through some of the hardest times in my childhood to get to an Ivy League college on a full scholarship to pursue my life’s biggest goals, and one of them is writing this book. I hope to take you on this journey with me. While my story has it’s fair share of sorrow and neglect, those feelings are offset by the sources of hope I found in my journey through life. Let me take you back with me….

CAREER RANTING AND ETC.

I feel that my life could go fly-off dramatically in one of two directions. The first one is the more obvious – I’m here at Dartmouth College with honors in all of the classes I’ve taken so far, multiple citations from professors who would attest to my perseverance, and a few close friends who know my story pretty well. I feel that I could go really far into the “hard ass” stuff that has fueled me so far. I feel that it would be amazing to work at the highest levels of government one day – maybe even advise the president on pressing issues. But at what cost would this come? I could keep pretending that I’m interested in all of this climate bullshit and earn a platform of influence through that lens. It has gotten me pretty far in life within the past year. I just got done with an internship at Princeton University – where Albert Einstein did research and the movie “A Beautiful Mind” was filmed. It’s all great, and it’s all grand stuff, I just don’t know if it’s really what I want. I know that I want to make something for myself, and I know I will one day. But I feel that I’m getting further and further away from my passions. I love weather and every aspect of it. Particularly, I want people to turn to me when they have concerns about the weather. During Winter Storm Uri and Viola, it was awesome to provide weather updates to my classmates via snapchat and social media. It was also an amazing experience to share NWS and SPC updates via snapchat as well – people listened and I loved it. The question is: how far do I want to go in this prestigious hard-ass feel I’ve been playing for so long? Maybe it’s all a part of my journey – that I’m supposed to graduate from Dartmouth College with an obscure degree in “Applied Climate Science and Communication.” Disregarding all fame, prestige, and fortune, my ideal job would be to become a highly respected meteorologist back at home in Region 8. I love the idea of being in the spotlight, talking about weather on a daily basis, providing weather updates online, and being out in the storm – I feel that I would love it.