I have found even in owning my snakes that people are scared more of the look and the thought more so than the snakes themselves. People have a twisted misconception about snakes, which plays into why they are scared of them. Most of this comes from Hollywood. Just like they do with sharks, wolves, and tigers they know it sells and they know it sells even better when it puts fear in peoples heart and mind. They take these beautiful animals and make people so afraid of them that they kill them on sight instead of leaving them alone. People seem to think that just because they can kill means that they go out of their way to harm people. This just isn’t true. The carnivorous animals help keep the population down on other creatures that aren’t as “scary looking”. Think of it this way; if there were no snakes to eat the mice, rats and other rodents that crawl around everywhere think of what the population would be in your house. There are already countless numbers of mice and rats in peoples houses, whether they know about them or not, that amount would be doubled if the snakes were not around to eat them. If people would take the time to get educated on these animals they might still have the fear of being bitten, which is a good fear to have, but they wouldn’t be afraid of just the thought of a snake. Which means the thought of owning a snake, as a pet would appeal to many more people, and having a snake as a pet would be more understandable to others. I cannot tell you about the looks I get playing with my babies, it is quite entertaining to me. I will have on a nice evening outfit, with my makeup done and five inch heals on looking all cute and “did up”. I will walk outside and have friends and family ooing and awing over me until they see my Jungle Ball Python crawling around my neck and hair. They automatically jump back the moment they see him, get all scared and their attitude goes from aww how cute to “What in the Hell?!” It amazes his me that so many people are afraid of him even though he is only around two feet long and not close to being full-grown. Even more so that they can be around him for five, six minutes with no problem as long as they don’t see him, but as soon as they see him is when they get scared. If he was so mean and scary then he would have tried to do something while they didn’t recognize him. Snakes like any animal will go for easy prey. What is easier than something that doesn’t even see you? I guess it is like when I played Ice Hockey, I would show up in heels a skirt and a nice “fancy shirt” then look on my shoulder to see a stinky hockey bag, with a stick in my hand. It isn’t exactly the look people are used to be seeing in the hockey rink. I loved those looks too because it made me laugh and it made people think that I was to “girly” to play hockey and I was no good on the ice. Yeah right! I was one of the meanest people on my team. I was one of the enforcers, and depending on who the referee was I could live in the box for a good period or two. Not that I tried to get in there, but I was mean I would run people into the boards, check them to get the puck stuff like that. It was so fun then after the game or practice I would get all “dressed up” again. It amazed people. The same goes for the snakes they look all mean and evil, but in reality are so sweet, and fun. They have their own enchantment to them that is different from any other animal. You may not be able to play fetch or comb their hair as you would a dog, or a cat, but they offer a whole new experience people just have to be willing to be open to it instead of cowering in fear. I have found even in talking to people about my snakes at first they are scared and amazed that someone like me would have a snake. I offer them the chance to hold them or touch them, and most of the time I have to persuade people to and ask them more than once. After I convince them to hold and touch them have I changed their opinion because they can see first hand how the snakes are soft, almost silky smooth, and not really dangerous, but curious animals that really mean no harm to anyone, except maybe a rat or a mouse. When you do decide that a snake is the pet for you then you need to consider everything there is that goes along with owning a snake.
Choosing a snake
When thinking about buying a snake you need to first consider what kind of snake you want. Snakes are like dogs, some get bigger than others and require different specifications. For first time owners I would recommend a Ball Python. They, to me, are the easiest to own. Others would recommend a Corn Snake but I do not like Corn snakes, although they do have bright vibrant colors and stay relatively small. I think they are ugly, and very squirmy. I would suggest a Ball because (not only are they one of my two favorite types of snake) they do not get much bigger than seven feet, depending on the sex, and they are quite tame. If they are afraid they will curl up into a ball and you can literally roll them around on the floor (I don’t recommend this), and, most of the time, will not bite. If they hiss just put them back into the cage and don’t mess with them while they calm down a little bit. The other one of my favorites is my next suggestion. Although they can be more aggressive and are not as timid as a Ball, and they do get bigger than a Ball Python will; they also have a beautiful pattern and have their own unique mystery about them. It is the Boa Constrictor. In particular the Red Tailed Boa Constrictor they have a beautiful red tail (hence the name). The Boas are a lot more bold than a Python is but as long as they are treated well, have food, aren’t scared or feel threatened they are just fine. Now I wouldn’t suggest getting this as a first time owner because the first timer will probably have some nerves going and snakes, just like any animal, can sense fear which in turn can make them on the defensive side. A boa can get up to ten feet long and over forty pounds. When buying a big snake like this there are several things you need to consider. First they will be around for around 30 years. That is a long-term commitment! You need to make sure that there is someone who will help you to handle it when it gets bigger, and you need to make sure you will be able to handle the feeding. What starts out as a mouse and a rat leads into small mammals, rabbits, gunny pigs, etc. Now after you have chosen the type of snake you need to consider whether or not you want a baby or an adult.
Baby vs. Adult
You think about it and decide you want a baby snake to take care of it and watch it grow. Great! Baby snakes are a lot less intimidating and very cute. They have a bright, vibrant color, and are very soft (like freshly shaved skin with baby oil on it). A baby snake as you can see (depending on the kind) can be smaller than a berry! While the babies are very cute they are also timid and shy. A baby Python (any snake really) is more likely to bite, hiss or strike just because it is a baby and doesn’t know any better. The more you handle it the better it will be and the more “friendly” it will become. It will get used to being handled and it won’t stress the snake out as much. Snakes do have their own personality. I have a few that are moody and others that are the sweetest in the world. Justin, my boyfriend, just bought a Spider Ball Python, a baby only 3 weeks old and only had one meal. Man I swear that snake hates Justin he has bitten, hissed, and struck at Justin ever since he got him. I went and picked the snake up before Justin even had a chance to say anything and the snake didn’t do any of that. He loves to get played with by me. He has never even hissed at me before. One time I had him and he was exploring everything calmly and quietly until right when I handed him to Justin then he went nuts and started hissing as Justin. I thought it was so funny because Justin handed the snake back to me and he was calm again. There is just something that the snake doesn’t like about Justin. He wasn’t to happy about that, but now that the snake is older he knows better and he doesn’t hiss or bite him anymore. Even in the same household the snake can play favorites (maybe not to that extreme) but when the snake is out of the cage and one person is holding it; it may slither to another person in the house because there is something that the snake likes better about that other person. Just like any other animal in your house. Take your dogs, when you get home with the others living in your house who does the dog go to first? That is his favorite right, so why wouldn’t snakes be the same? Full-grown snakes are also available for sale as well as the baby ones. You will pay more for a full-grown snake because of the cost to care for it for years, but you will not have to worry about raising it or feeding it pinkie mice or rats. A full-grown snake is good if you want one that is already fully used to being handled and has a good eating habit. You want to breed it right away or just show off your fully-grown large snake. No matter which type of snake you want or what size you want you will have to have proper caging and bedding for it.
Caging Requirements
No matter what snake you have an escape proof cage is required. A glass reptile aquarium is the best way to go, unless you want to breed them. If you want to breed snakes than having 20 and 30 glass aquariums can get pretty crowded, so there is a better way to house snakes if you plan on keeping a lot of them. They are called Now I specify reptile because you cannot just go out and buy any aquarium or use your old fish aquarium because there are differences between the two. For instance a fish aquarium is deep but no to wide and the lid just sits on the top because the fish will not climb up to the top and try to escape, as a snake will.
With these girls by myself I felt the confidence to venture out to the social side of college. We attended comedy clubs, went out dancing, and frequented the movies at least once a week. We attended student government sessions and joined the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program. I learned that no matter how different we all were, we shared a dream of helping others. I actually graduated with a minor in leadership and public service, thanks to the strong will of my friends. Because I had gained confidence in myself outside of sports, I felt it was time to instill that in others. I worked with a little girl, in whom I saw a lot of myself in. She was into sports and had a sort of “tomboy” mentality. We would hang out at the arcade or play basketball at school with her friends. She was really cool and fun, but I quickly learned she was dyslexic and flunking out of school. I asked her about school and she hated it. No wonder. So what to do? Stay her “cool, older, friend” or turn into a teacher? Against my insecurities I began to focus our time more on school. I could tell she was not thrilled, but I wanted to help her, not just be her friend, but be her mentor; to make her life a little easier, at least for the time being. We would both sit and do homework; I would take her to the public library at first to show her that other children her age also had homework to complete. But it seems that she always felt uneasy being there, I think a little embarrassed. I then began to take her to my college library, she was speechless, I gave her the tour of the six levels stuffed full of books, magazines, and sleep-deprived students just trying to get by. She saw that spending time on school work wasn’t for those with “problems” but a way of life for the normal college student. She did some of her best work there, really buckling down and concentrating. I would check her work and could see the improvement. This became our weekly routine for a while, until one day I arrived at her school for our annual library cram session and her teacher pulled me aside. At first she praised me for the change she’d seen in our girls math and science grades. I took no credit, just explained our move to the college library. But there was bad news…. Our girl had been missing a lot of school and was in jeopardy of failing. How could this be? I asked. She was beginning to love school. The teacher explained that before I came along our girls’ mother would keep her home from school when she had tests or had projects. To make matters worse, when the school contacted the girl’s mother to talk about their options the mother took it the wrong way and pulled her daughter out of school all together to be home schooled. But the ultimate disappointment was that because our girl was no longer affiliated with the school I was not allowed to mentor her anymore. I was crushed, to say the least. What was I supposed to do; this girl had become a huge part of my life for the last few months. I debated, consulted my friends, and even the director of the program. Finally I decided I needed to say goodbye in person. Her mother allowed me to take her to the park one last time. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I asked her how she felt about being homeschooled. And to my surprise she wasn’t that thrilled. She said she’d miss her friends and playing ball. I told her that I could not mentor her anymore and she was upset, so was I. The rest of the visit was very subdued, we absently talked about sports and movies until it was time to take her home, we hugged and then I drove away. I felt helpless. I never heard from the girl again. And I can only hope that she was reinstated into school and received the help she so desperately deserved. The one good thing that came out of that whole terrible situation was my new found interest in children, their learning abilities, their rights. I researched and wrote a compelling paper on children and homeschooling and its negative social implications in rural areas. I had never given thought to working with children, but after that semester in college I learned that I wanted to protect and give justice to those who cannot ask for it themselves. I then proceeded to volunteer for Rainbow House, a home for abused and neglected children. I dedicated my time and love to those who were not receiving either. My heart broke every time I left that building, but it flourished every time I walked in. I had learned something about myself that semester. I cared about the well-being of others. I wanted justice for all, especially children. I learned how to be compassionate and how to love without limits. And to this day I am a better person for it. I will never forget the emotions I felt that entire semester. For once, it seemed, I was thinking about someone other than me, a pretty big feet for a 20 year old. The rest of college continued on this path, volunteering my time, and trying to find myself. I made new friends, developed new interests, and had a blast. When my senior year rolled around I was at a loss. What was I going to do with my life? I had never really thought about it. Sure, I always wanted to be in the FBI and be a secret agent, but that wasn’t practical. So what reality did I face? I wanted to have a rewarding career, wanted to help people, and wanted to be part of greatness. So, with a little help from a career fair I signed up for the Missouri State Highway. A few weeks later I received a letter. The Highway Patrol wanted me to come down and take the entrance and fitness test. I was so excited, but at the same time nervous. I spent the next few weeks trying to get in shape, I was so nervous. The night before I couldn’t sleep, so my friends, being as great as they were, stayed up with me, watching movies, and pigging out on popcorn, anything to take my mind off of the following days’ events. The next morning I arrived in Jefferson City at seven a.m. I was joined by a mismatched group of people, all as nervous as me. The test was administered at exactly eight a.m. It took almost two hours to complete. I checked and even rechecked my answers a couple times, before resigning, Knowing I gave it my best. An hour later the results were posted. I scored the second highest out of the group! I was thrilled to hear it. It definitely took some of the pressure off. However, that meant that I had to complete the physical fitness part of the exam in only one hour. Talk about butterflies. But physical activity was the one thing I could always do well. Being a crazy, hyper, child had helped that. I teamed up with one of the other girls in the group to help each other out. We were required to do sit-ups, vertical jumps, shuttle runs, loading and unloading a gun, and finally a mile run. I was so crazy with nerves and adrenaline that I completed every event above and beyond what was asked. My competitiveness had taken over and I had to be the best. Finally, it was over. I drove home drained but content. I had given my all. A couple weeks later I received a notice in the mail, I had made it into the next round. I was to come back and complete a polygraph test, the next phase in the test. I was thrilled my hard work had paid off. I had my reservations about the job itself, could I really pull people over, could I arrive on crash scenes, could I walk up to a mother and tell her that her child had just been killed on the highway? Was I ready for that? My biggest concern, was the most superficial, how would I look in the uniform, and the hat…, really? I finished out my senior year in a blur, until that is, the last day of class. I was going out to celebrate, I mean big time, I was a college graduate with a future ahead of me. My friends and I got dressed up and went out like rock stars. We hit the downtown to live it up with the rest of my fellow good timers. We had set no limits on the night, which I later came to regret for the rest of my life. We decided to call it a night around 2 a.m., so trying to be responsible drunkards called a cab. Since it was not only the my last day of class but about 2,000 others the cab companies, to say the least were backed up. They gave a two hour wait time. Hell, we only lived a mile away. My friend had drove us downtown and was intend on driving us home, she however, could not even form complete sentences, let alone fully open her eyes. I, however, was walking and talking and fully functioning. In my inebriated state decided that I should drive, I could still see the road. Like all tragedies, the heroine has to go through adversity and anguish before she can overcome. So, as you can imagine. I was pulled over, arrested, and spent three hours in the campus “drunk tank” before I was allowed to bail myself out. It was all over, my life, my career, what now, why had I thought I wouldn’t get caught? How was I supposed to face my parents and tell them that I had been arrested when they were coming to see their little girl accomplish their dreams for her? What a disappointment. In one stupid moment I had crushed my own dreams. How could I work in the criminal justice field having been a criminal myself? My graduation was bittersweet, to say the least. Instead of enjoying the moment, I had to find a lawyer for my case and had to apply for a temporary license, just to drive home. Previous to my irresponsible act of stupidity, I had elected to spend the summer in New Hampshire with my aunt, to work and live on the beach. I needed to get away, looking back I was running, just as I had ran away to the farthest college. I saw this summer as a new start. Nobody knew me and I could be whoever I wanted. My summer had looked like a dream. She lived right on the beach and was friends with everybody, it had promised to be a fun filled few months. Now, as reality set in I was screwed. How was I supposed to get a job with a car? I now had huge lawyer fees, court costs and to boot I had to attend 21 hours of Alcoholics Anonymous classes in a neighboring town. What a fun filled summer…. My parents never really expressed disappoint in me when I broke the news. They didn’t have to, I felt it enough for the three of us. My parents rarely, if ever, had shown disappointment in me. But, because they had raised me so well, I felt that when I made bad decisions, which I had a habit of doing…a lot, I wondered why they kept me around. They knew I knew better, I knew I knew better, yet, it seemed I disregarded my conscience regularly for a good time. I never cared about consequences, instead always opting for the immediate pleasure. That was, until the DWI. Those consequences are still haunting me to this day. To my advantage my aunt lived less than a mile from the “boardwalk” a local hot-spot filled with bars and restaurant, and always packed with tourists. I applied to over ten different places, and again thank God for my aunts’ social abilities I received a job in a restaurant where she knew the bartender and night manager. As excited as I was that my life wasn’t a complete failure, I was again in the situation of having to meet new people. But this time I had no other option I had to make some money and this was my only hope. I began work, it seemed the staff was all a team, a very close team, “great I thought, they don’t want outsiders” and to my dismay a few of them didn’t. But since most of the girls that worked there were foreign, from places like Poland or Bulgaria, they were friendly and willing to teach me the ropes. We soon became friends and started hanging out after work and since we were forced to spend ten hours a day or more together we became very close. I did return to Missouri to take the polygraph test in the middle of June. I walked in with a defeatist attitude, seeing as how I had no license, instead a piece of paper with my charge and a temporary permit. To say the least they weren’t impressed. When my turn came around I was nervous, I felt little, insignificant, and a failure. How was I supposed to impress them with my knowledge and commitment to justice when I, myself, couldn’t even follow the rules? The instructor was nice enough; he tried to set my mind at ease as best he could, considering I was hooked up to a machine five different ways. He explained the procedure stating that he was going to ask me the same questions once with the machine off, then with it on. He made a statement that at the time seemed like meaningless jargon, but now means the world to me. He said that the purpose of the polygraph test was not to help the Highway Patrol hire those who are perfect, instead to hire those who take responsibility for their actions. What good was a trooper who was perfect? They wouldn’t be able to show compassion or understanding, instead they wanted those who knew the difference between right and wrong, acted in the right, but could understand the wrong. Not until a year later did I truly understand this statement. Needless to say later that month I received a letter stating that I had not been chosen to be a state trooper. I was crushed, now what I thought, if they didn’t want me who would. I had no life plan and no purpose. Looking back at my time in New Hampshire I was able, in the midst of all the events, to have a great summer. I developed a relationship with my aunt that I had never had the opportunity to do before. We became best friends; we went out together and more often just stayed in and hung out. We cooked together and worked together. I know that we both learned a lot from each other that summer. I would not trade it for a single thing. She helped me to see that life happens and that there are always other options. She encouraged me to go back to school, education she said, was always a good investment. Seeing as she was a teacher, I was inclined to take her advice. Suddenly I felt like I had a plan, go back to school, screw the Highway Patrol, I’ll get so much education they’ll be begging me to work for them. I searched and researched schools, programs, and locations. I wanted a hands-on school that could teach me the physical part of criminal justice and help me to gain certificates in the process. Again, I wanted to be the best. With every find, my aunt and I discussed its pros, cons, and success rate. She helped to see that limiting my search to Missouri was not the best idea; I needed a good education, not one out of convenience, broaden my horizons. My best friend had married her high school sweetheart who was enlisted in the United States Navy and moved to Virginia Beach, she told me about a school down there that was always advertising its criminal justice program and its certificates. She picked up and mailed a few brochures to me to look over. After a few phone calls I decided to give it a look. I viewed the school and was immediately pulled in by its curriculum and one of the teachers, who had previously been a profiler for the police, the exact job I wanted. I made up my mind, but still I was a little hesitant. Another issue I had been struggling with in New Hampshire was that for the first time in my adult life I was home sick. It is important to mention at this point that I had been blessed with a very culturally sound background. For family vacations my grandparents often took us on cruises on their yacht to private islands. We took other cruises to Alaska, Panama City, Aruba, Columbia, etc. I was a very lucky kid. I traveled to New Mexico with family, Texas, a couple times, with friends, Ireland once and pretty much everywhere else in the continental United States. In most cases my parents were lucky to get a phone call stating I arrived safe. I always felt if they were okay then why worry? I could take care of myself as well. But this time it was different, my dad had suffered a broken back and several surgeries, and my mom was hormonal. It seemed I was missing the rest of my family, especially my grandmother, my biggest fan. We had just found out she had lung cancer and I felt guilty moving even further away when I knew she needed me. But after talking to both my parents and my grandmother they encouraged me to go back to school. And Here I am. Right before I was to move to Virginia Beach I was involved in an accident. I was hit by a drunk motorcyclist crossing the street in a cross walk. I was thrown about 20 feet landing on my side, in turn dislocating my left knee along with severe contusions and several cuts and bruises. I have the worst luck! The accident was a nightmare and I am not even talking about the level of pain. I could hardly walk and therefore could not return to being a waitress. I went to the doctor and had tests run to be told that surgery was my best option. Great, here I was in a new town, at a new school, without parents or family about to have knee surgery. Thank God for my friend Stacey, without her, I know I would not be here. So I had surgery, fully aware of the irony that my life was. Even if I had gotten in the Highway Patrol I would not be able to go now with a bum knee. Double Whammy. I continued with school, started rehab for the knee, but again began to feel the sweep of disappoint wave over me. I was 23, wasn’t I supposed to have a steady job by now with a daily routine and a paycheck? Why didn’t I just except the fact that I was going to have to settle for less? I was defeated. I needed a break, I needed home. So that’s what I did. I went home for a weekend. I let it all go and just enjoyed myself. I had a blast, I visited family, friends, and had coffee with my dad, something I had always taken for granted. But when I arrived back in Virginia, instead of clearing my head the trip had only clouded it more. Why was I living 18 hours away? Why was I still running away from the things I loved the most?
I believe that my strengths derive from my personality. I am a very optimistic person and try to think of the bright side. The strength in my faith helps me see the good in things. I am a very friendly person who loves to make friends and socialize. I also am a very forgiving person, this can be a great strength to me. How forgiving i am, i have found, can also be a weakness. I feel that my view on life is also a strength. I have seen and learned many things that not many 19 year olds have had the oportunity to experience. My other strength is my imagination, with it i can come up with great ideas and enjoy more situations. This is my view of who i am.
Through the signiture strength test, I have learned what strengths are stronger than the others. I have learned that Humor and Playfulness is my top strength. This is very believeable. I have always tried to fill my life with humor. Me and my father have always had a humor that noone, other than my father and I, can really understand. When we are together we can have a very dry humor. Of course my father and I think it is hilarious, but sometimes other people don't think so. An exaple of our humor would be:
*A person runs into the edge of a table and says "Ow" *My father and I would say "Look out there is a table there!"
*A person accidently hurts themselves and says "Ow that hurt" *My father and I would say "Then why did you do that?"
Of course the person who got hurt wouldn't think it that funny, but my father and I find it amusing. That is just one side of my humor. I have the ability to adjust my humor to the age group of the audience. Able to be silly with a small child, more intelectuallu humorus with an older person, and use todays young adult humor with my friends. Many of my friends enjoy my company because i can make them laugh, no matter the circumstance. I can help someone get over a time of sadness with comforting humor.
I am also a very playful person, I love to play. I can spend hours with a young child playing with blocks, or spend hours having fun with adults. My playfulness can come off as flirting sometimes, which can help if I have an interest in a particular woman. I love to tease friends and at the same time like to be teased. My playfullness can help me interact with more people, and helps me interact with people and make friends.
Humor and playfulness can help me in a business situation by making me very aproachable. It helps me get along with co-workers and patrons, which can be very important. It also can give me the oportunity to make a task more fun, but still get it done. People that work in groups with me will enjoy it and will more likely work harder.
Another strength of mine, as it turns out, is Kindness and Generosity. Which is very relative to humor and playfulness. My kindness comes out when people exclude people that are different. I have the tendency to try and make friends with that certain individual. I try to be kind to everyone even if they do not have the best disposition torwards me. I may not like the person but i try to display my kindness in hope that I can learn more about them and maybe make them my friend. Along with my humor my kindness is what helps me become a better friend.
Generosity is few and far between today. Many people are self centered and dont care enough for the less fortunate. I have travled to South Africa and lent my time to helping people, who are extremely less fortunate than most americans. I spent three months building homes, not just houses, for the people in the townships of South Africa. People who litteraly live in tin cans and wooden shantis. I didnt expect anything in return other than that they take care of the house. My generosity lets me see the side of people that not many get to see.
My kindness and generosity come it great help in the work area. It makes me very adaptable to peoples needs, and also lets me be of more help to a person. It helps me work better with other and adapt to their needs, as well as mine. Without kindness and generosity people wouldn't be able to work together as well.
Sprituality, Sence of Purpose, and Faith is all that we have, when we seem to have nothing. So I must say i value this strength above all the others. Faith has gotten me through some tough times in my life. Times when i had no idea what to do next or even what to do then. My spirituality has made my world the way it is today. With spirituality i can view things in a different way and have more hope on certain outcomes. I believe my faith and spirituality directly supports my top two strengths. With it i can view things more optimisticly, and i can treat others more kindly.
One of the times i needed faith is just recently when i quit my job working at 7-11. I was very unhappy there and it wasn't helping me live a good healthy life, while im down here. I quit my job on faith that somehow things would work out, and it has. because i am unemployed i am able to take on the heavy work load of this semester, because i have time. When i was running out of money, my mother happend across over 500 dollars of bonds that my grandparents had bought for me when i was a little kid. And now i have to oportunity to sit back a little and look for a job that will work out for me. I have faith that that too will come at the right time.
My faith and spirituality effects almost every aspect of my life. It effects the way i interact with people and how i treat them. At a job it helps remove some stress from big projects, and i believe that it helps me on insight on what to do. If i am able to believe that i will be able to do something than I get the strength to do it.
As I look at the strengths i wrote down before the test and after, they are very simular. I was pretty accurate on what my strengths were. Looking at these strengths i do believe that they are my top strengths. I feel that in writing down my strengths and why i believe they are my strengths. i have been able to better understand myself and why I act the way i do. On January 30, 1989 at 7:00 in the morning, in Sacramento, California, I was brought into this world kicking and screaming. I was brought home to my loving family Pam and Charles Tupitza. We lived in a beautiful one floor house. Our front yard had a big patch of ivy surrounding a massive tree. We had a nice sized back yard with a vegetable garden, flower garden, play structure, and a nice big compost heap. There was a nice couple that lived on the other side of the fence in our back yard. They had a beautiful backyard with a small peach orchard. I used to love visiting them, I would even take my little red wagon and ride down there hill. I loved that house, and unfortunately I only lived there for five short years. I had many friends when I lived there, and still keep in touch with a few. Every few years my father and I will travel to California to see them. The Vreelands, Kazensas, O’Bryans and the little girl that sometimes visited her aunt next door.
I have learned from the few years that I have lived on this earth, that God created mankind in is image and likeness. We are all created to love, care, and be kind just like him. I believe that each person on this planet have a purpose for their life. This purpose is so big that it will affect this generation and future generations to come. One day in the mid 90’s, my father had a vision from God that showed our family owning a business. This business will consists of many companies in an enterprise. Each sibling will own at least one company in this enterprise. I have five brothers and a sister, so the enterprise will consists of least seven companies. When my father told the family about what God wanted us to do that planted a seed, dream, and a vision in me. I started thinking, what I can do to help my fellowman by owning my own company. So, for years I have been struggling with that answer. I want to help in so many ways. I want to help spiritually, physically, educationally, financially, and emotionally. Sometimes it can be hard to figure out how to help this generation. I know I was born to lead, serve, help, and love my fellowman, but how? I have this burning desire to help and this promise seed inside of me of greatness, but how can I be of a use to help serve my fellowman. This is what our family business T-Snow Enterprises is all about. A family of nine trying to help our generation become the best the God intended for us to become. We want to leave an inheritance to the next generation. We want to leave an inheritance of love, kindness, servitude, grace, mercy, and prosperity. To see our children and children’s children live out there dreams and goals in life will be nice. Well, it is kind of interesting how God brought us to this point of trying to serve mankind through our business enterprise. It all started when my parents were born in the late 1940’s. My mother was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. My father was born and raised in Europa, Mississippi. My father left Mississippi in 1965 looking for work in Memphis. My parents met at the City of Memphis Hospital while working together there in 1966. They got married in August of 1969 in Memphis, Tennessee. Later that year in November, my father got drafted in the United States Army. The following year in May, he started his tour in Vietnam. After serving 2 ½ years in the Vietnam War, he came back to Memphis to get his college degree. In 1974, my father received his college degree in computer science and he was hired by IBM. IBM transferred my father to Maryland to work. In 1975 the following year, my mother started to work for IBM as a secretary. Later that year, I was born in October. My parents bought there first house, in 1976, in northern Virginia. In 1979, after having her third child, my mother resigns from IBM. For the next 8 years, my mother had five children. My father during those years supported our family of nine by continuing working at IBM. In 1994, God told my father to start the family business, so he retired from IBM. So, here we are trying to inspire, motivate, and help the world become a better place. As a family, we are trying to find our place in this generation in our business. We are trying to use our talents and gifts that God have given us to better the world through business. Our family has talents in different areas. One of my younger brothers has a talent in music. He can write, sing, and compose music with the best of them. Our goal is to start a music label, under T-Snow enterprises, and have my brother run the company. He can serve the world by giving inspiration through music. Richard Sheridan in The Rivers said, “Is not music the food of Love?” that is what music can do to people. Music can encourage, motivate, inspires, and love. It helps people when they are down in spirit. One song by gospel artist Yolanda Adams helps my brother, the musician; believe in Jesus Christ our Lord. So, music can change the world. Music lives forever, in time and out of time. William Wordsworth once said in the Solitary Reaper, “The music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more.” Music lasts forever! It brings people together from all different backgrounds. One of my favorite philosophers Henry David Thoreau said, “In a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language.” Amen to that my friend. Amen. Another brother has the gift of teaching children. He relates to a child like no other person I know. The children love him. He has been working at a children’s day care academy for years. So, our family has decided to open a Christian children academy center. My brother will own and run the company. The goal is to open the centers all around the world. This real have a huge affect in our generation, because if you can teach children the basics of life early, they will have a positive affect in this world. Children are the future. We need to get real serious about our children’s future. Just looking at a child, you are amazed of the beauty and grace of God. James Russell Lowell said, “Children are God’s apostles, day by day sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace.” So, you have to start with the children, if you want to change this world. Opening a center will help change the world. The center will teach the children how to read and play together. Reading is so important to our children development. Knowledge is power when use. Gail Haily in her Caldecott Medal acceptance speech said,
Children who are not spoken to by …responsive adults will not learn to speak properly. Children who are not answered will stop asking questions. They will become incurious. And children who are not told stories and who are not read to will have few reasons for wanting to learn to read.
So in this center, they will be read to. They will learn how to read. There are so many ways to tech a child. One way is by the Improved Reading Way by Masha Rudman a University of Massachusetts educator. She states, “If a child is reading aloud to you and comes to a word she doesn’t understand, don’t immediately ask her to sound it out. Instead say ‘What makes sense here?’ Then the child has to think about how that word fits in with what she’s been reading.” So, there are many ways to teach a child to read. If we can get to our children early and teach them values, and help them in the learning process, the sky is the limit. So with this Christian children’s academy, we believe we can make this world a better place, one child at a time.
My summers would be spent going to summer camp at Fayetteville State University. There would be an activity bus that would come and pick us up in our neighborhood. I always looked forward to it because we would swim, play basketball, tennis, and play softball. I liked swimming the best though because it was all about getting in the pool. I didn’t do much traveling when I was young so going to summer camp was the highlight of the summer. During my elementary school years, I have encountered some interesting things. I had some good teachers, but there was an area where I struggled. It was my comprehension. I was a great speller and that was the only thing I had going for me. I grew up in a household where proper grammar was not used at all. So, I adopted the bad habits of improper grammar and it caused me to struggle once it came to take standardized tests. As I would read the passages, my mind would wander because the passages were so boring. Then a section of the test, I would have to either make grammatical corrections to the paragraphs or no corrections would be needed. I couldn’t decide which corrections to make at that time. It was confusing because I was on the A-B honor roll throughout elementary school. I didn’t like to give oral reports because of stage fright and I was a very shy person. I grew up in a time where discipline was highly enforced. I had a math teacher who was known for paddling students when their behavior was out of control. He would walk them out of the classroom and go around the corner. He would have the person to lean forward against the wall and spank him or her with the paddle. See, it was acceptable by parents back then. You would have to run laps around the track too. I had to run some laps myself because I would always be the one laughing in class. I didn’t get into trouble for talking, just laughing. My school was located across the street from my neighborhood, although we had to walk about a mile and a half to and from everyday. Like I said before, the guys in my neighborhood were pretty close. We would walk together in packs as if we were wolves. There would be moments where fights would break out, but other than that everyone got along with one another. I looked forward to report cards coming home because my father would give me five dollars if my grades were very good. The teacher would give me my report card and I would look it over with a big smile on my face because I would have A’s, B’s, and a few C’s on there. I would smile all the way home, and I would show my parents the grades and wait for my reward. I was a well-behaved student and my report card would always reflect it. My mother would go to the parent-teacher conferences, and the teacher would tell her how much he or she loved me in their classroom. My mom would joke and say, “Are you talking about my child?” If there was no homework to be done, I would either watch cartoons on television or go outside and play with my friends. My father was a diabetic, and I would watch him take his insulin early in the morning. Saturdays were special days for my father and me because we would watch wrestling on television. He introduced it to me and I have been watching it ever since. It would also come on at eleven o’ clock at night. Well, I would be sleeping at that time, where he would wake me to watch it with him. Sometimes I would watch it and other times, I would remain asleep. I recalled a time when my mom, sister, and I were with my father and he had a stroke to where he was temporarily blinded. This had surprised me because I had never seen anything like this before. We had to call the ambulance to pick my father up and take him to the hospital. My sister cried her eyes out as the ambulance drove away. His vision was restored and he was released from the hospital. I was so happy because he was home again. I loved my mother to death, but there was one thing she would do that I could not stand. If she was lying down on the couch and her purse was next to her on the floor, she would call me from across the room just to pick it up and give it to her. I would think there would be more, and she would say, “That’s it.” Now I would have to go back across the other side of the room. Afterwards, I would go outside before she would call me to do anything else. I would run to the park to get away, although that would not work at times. My mom still yelled for me to come home for whatever reason. That occurred every-time I was having a good time with my friends. Mostly, it would be a good game of basketball and the score would be tied and we needed one basket to win. She would call and I had to get someone to replace me before I left. I would run all the way home and complain at the same time. My mom had worked out an agreement with the office manager in our neighborhood about selling icy cups for extra money. Of course, the office had to receive a percentage of the earnings. That experience was kind of fun because all the kids in the neighborhood found out and they were coming by for icy cups. They called my mom the “icy lady” and we would charge fifty cents per icy cup. You would have a lot of kids coming by as early as eight o’ clock in the morning for icy cups. I thought we were doing pretty good, but after you subtract for sugar, cool-aid, cups, and giving the office their cut, we were left with just a little bit. I understand that each little bit helps, yet I didn’t see any progression. Our business experience lasted for a couple of months and kids were asking if we were going to sell the icy cups again. My mother and father had reconciled their differences and we were a family again. One Sunday, I pretended to be sick just so I can stay home and be with my dad. I had succeeded by lying to my mother and she let me stay home. As soon as she left for church, I suddenly started feeling better and my father let me go outside and play with my friends. I was ten years old at the time when all this happened. My friends and I were playing basketball at the basketball court. We played until we got bored of playing and someone suggested we go throw rocks at cars. There was some woods located near the basketball court. My friends and I gathered some rocks and waited in the woods for cars to drive by. As the cars would go by, we would throw rocks at them and hide. After about twenty minutes of doing that, we walked by this house that had rabbits in it. Just behind that house was a couple of mobile homes and beside the mobile homes was an air conditioning company. The company had a lot of marble cut rocks in front of it. There was a barbed-wire fence between the air conditioning company and the woods we were hiding in earlier. We gathered those rocks and started throwing them at the mobile homes. We broke a lot of windows and also caused hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of damage to the different properties. There were cars driving by as we were throwing the rocks and one car pulled over yelling. The driver said, “Hey you kids, what are you doing?” So I immediately dropped the rest of my rocks and ran. All of us were able to jump the fence except one and he was caught. The rest of us were hiding out in the woods as the police showed up. The boy rode with the police taking them to everyone’s house and telling their parents. By this time, my mother was home from church and she was very upset with me. My mother suddenly yelled at the top of her lungs for me to come home. Once I got home, she told me to go straight up to my room and wait for her. I knew what was coming next. She went and got a switch and brought it up to me. I was stretched out across the bed where my shorts kind of raised up a little exposing the back of my thighs. I tried to psych myself up by being tough and take the spanking. As my mother was hitting me with the switch, it felt like my skin had split open from all of those licks. I immediately started crying because I thought my legs were bleeding. Lets just say, I never thought about throwing a rock ever again. My mother has always been the disciplinarian in our family and my father has been the laid back one. One afternoon, my father and I were riding in the back seat of a car and I kept sitting up from my seat while the car was moving. In other words, I was being nosy and trying to see everything. My father said, “Son, sit down.” He was just as calm when he said it, so he said it again. I was still not listening to what he was saying. Now this time, my father took his hand and he popped me right on the legs. I was so shocked he hit me that I didn’t say a word or move the rest of the car ride. That was the only time my father ever spanked me, and I was glad.
Let’s rewind a bit from where I left off last. In 1985, my baby brother was born, on Mothers’ Day no less. I don’t remember a whole lot about that event. What I do remember is that my grandmother came to stay with us for a while and that mom had to stay in the hospital for some extra time. Having a new baby in the house probably changed a lot, but I just remember being stoked that I was a big sister. I think I would have preferred the bouncing bundle had been pink instead of blue, but what little girl doesn’t? I tried to help out as much as I could, but I’m not sure how much assistance I actually was. After all, I was only six years old. Mostly I just went and got things for mom; blankets, burp rags, pacifiers. As a mom now myself, I know that she appreciated even the smallest effort. Fast forward a couple of years. It’s now time to leave Hawaii for the second time. Like I said before, the party was pretty cool. Let’s just say that wet slip-n-slide plus inebriated sailors equals one hell of a muddy good time. The only real downer for me was my pool. While being used as the rinse area, it became a casualty. Ah well, we were moving anyway. We flew from Hawaii to California, where we met our cars and then drove the rest of the way to Florida. I have to say, I think that is still the most memorable road trips I’ve ever taken. Dad and my older brother took the two door car while mom, my younger brother, and myself were in the caravan. I thought that thing was awesome. Three rows of seats and one of them was all mine, when I wanted it. Mostly, I sat up front and played navigator. We stopped at the Grand Canyon. Wow! What a sight. Of course, the mood was ruined by my prankster big brother pretending he would shove me over the edge. Good thing he wasn’t riding in the van, otherwise that could have made the trip a lot more intense. We didn’t have cell phones back then, but we always managed to stop at the same places. I thought it was pretty magical. I learned later that the magic was a cool thing call triple A trip-tiks. Mom and Dad planned ahead where they wanted to stop. Most of the time, we stayed close enough to see the other car. The two door Mazda was canary yellow, so its not like it was that hard to see. One morning we got McDonalds breakfast. I can’t remember if we got it to go or if Mom just saved some of hers for the ride. Anyway, While she was enjoying her hashbrown later in the car, a bee flew into the car and landed on it. She screamed and threw it out the window, all the while trying very hard to stay on the road. She pulled over to get her wits about her. One night during our trip, we kids were killing time in the hotel room jumping from bed to bed. At some point in the fun, my little brother’s training pants ended up on his head. I’m pretty sure they were clean, at least I hope so. He ran around screaming and we were all laughing like crazy. I wrote a poem about it for school later on and won a prize. That’s really about all I can remember from that trip. I’m sure my Mom will read this and remind me of something later on, which I’ll be sure to add later. So, we made it Florida. I think it took us about ten days. We moved in to this tiny, two bedroom apartment. In all of my nine years, I never had to share a room with anyone. Now, I was sharing with BOTH of my brothers. Yuck! We spent several months there while we waited for our new house to be built. It was pretty cool. I was in elementary school and my older brother was in middles school. The schools had different schedules and Mom drove us in each day, since we lived outside of the zoning for the school. The staggered schedules turned out to be a pretty cool thing. Mom would drop one of us off at school and then take the other to the house site to check the builders’ progress. Then, on the pick-up trip, the other sibling got to visit the site. Mom video taped most of the construction. It was pretty cool to see. It started out as an empty lot. Then there was a foundation, walls, roof, and everything else. It was actually quite fortunate that we made daily visits, because the builders messed up one the changes my parents had made to the floor plan. I almost had to share a room again, or sleep in the dining room. Good eye, Mom. The neighborhood we moved into was brand new. We were one of the few houses on the block and there were no houses on the lots behind us. Not yet, anyway. I had my own room again, ah. I still love that house. Maybe it’s because I have to most childhood memories there. I almost cried when my parents finally sold it. So, now that we were in the new house, I could take a bus to school. The community was growing though and, within no time, there was a new school going up just down the street. I loved being able to walk or ride my bike to school. It wasn’t all that far and I never had to worry about missing the bus. Rainy days were a bummer though. The fifth grade is when I started having vision issues. I blame it on poor development planning on the school’s part. Who installs brick read chalk boards and then supplies the teachers with yellow chalk? My last name was at the end of the alphabet then, so I say in the back of the classroom. After days and days of having to move to the front just to take my notes, someone sent word home to my folks that maybe I should have my eyes checked. Enter the awkard four-eyed stage of my life, which lasted well into high school. Somewhere during that year I fell and broke my wrist. Running around with my next door neighbor, I tripped and landed on the concrete with a snap. Mom didn’t believe it was as bad as it was and she didn’t take me to the doctor right away. I still like to bring that little stinger up every now and then. Mom knows I’ve really let it go though. Sixth grade brought a new school and new experiences. I had to get used to changing classes all the time. Suddenly, I had some say in what electives I got to take. I sat through one or two art classes before I realized that it just wasn’t for me. I decided I might like to try the band on for size. And size had a lot to do with my instrument choice. Dad wanted me to play the French horn, but I just didn’t feel like I could hold it for long periods of time. The flute was an alternate choice, but holding it up the way you have to seemed it might me too tiring. I decided on the clarinet, and I loved it. I have to agree with the studies that show music enhances learning. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I know that school subjects seemed even easier once I started playing an instrument. This was also the year I discovered a great love of math. During a regular class, the teacher gave us a test of some things we had not worked on before. It was a pre-algebra placement test. I had a natural talent for it, and was assigned to pre-algebra the next year with several of my other classmates. Man, math was my best subject. Still is. I love the problem solving. I even love when I get things wrong because I get to go back and figure out where I made the mistake. Very few subjects in school, or in life, are that cut and dry. Seventh and eighth grade kind of blended together. I don’t remember a whole lot of things about that time. I do remember standing outside in the courtyard to watch shuttle launches. I also remember my science teacher, Mr. Hall, taking me aside and telling me how much he knew I was capable of and pushing me to do better. I will admit it, I was a lazy student. I hated to do homework (except math, of course) and I really never studied for tests. He must have made an impact, maybe not immediately, but he is one of the few teachers whose name I still remember. Eighth grade was also when I met my best friend, Jen. She and I stayed close through high school, even after my family moved away from Florida. This year I was taking Algebra and Spanish I, both counted for high school credit. The Spanish class was actually at the high school. I would ride the high school bus to the high school in the morning and they would bus us from there to the middle school. It was a long school day for me, but I enjoyed it. I think I did a summer school semester for gym class, but I could be wrong. Like I said before, my memory is a little sketchy sometimes.
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Fear and Hollywood
I have found even in owning my snakes that people are scared more of the look and the thought more so than the snakes themselves. People have a twisted misconception about snakes, which plays into why they are scared of them. Most of this comes from Hollywood. Just like they do with sharks, wolves, and tigers they know it sells and they know it sells even better when it puts fear in peoples heart and mind. They take these beautiful animals and make people so afraid of them that they kill them on sight instead of leaving them alone. People seem to think that just because they can kill means that they go out of their way to harm people. This just isn’t true. The carnivorous animals help keep the population down on other creatures that aren’t as “scary looking”. Think of it this way; if there were no snakes to eat the mice, rats and other rodents that crawl around everywhere think of what the population would be in your house. There are already countless numbers of mice and rats in peoples houses, whether they know about them or not, that amount would be doubled if the snakes were not around to eat them. If people would take the time to get educated on these animals they might still have the fear of being bitten, which is a good fear to have, but they wouldn’t be afraid of just the thought of a snake. Which means the thought of owning a snake, as a pet would appeal to many more people, and having a snake as a pet would be more understandable to others.
I cannot tell you about the looks I get playing with my babies, it is quite entertaining to me. I will have on a nice evening outfit, with my makeup done and five inch heals on looking all cute and “did up”. I will walk outside and have friends and family ooing and awing over me until they see my Jungle Ball Python crawling around my neck and hair. They automatically jump back the moment they see him, get all scared and their attitude goes from aww how cute to “What in the Hell?!” It amazes his me that so many people are afraid of him even though he is only around two feet long and not close to being full-grown. Even more so that they can be around him for five, six minutes with no problem as long as they don’t see him, but as soon as they see him is when they get scared. If he was so mean and scary then he would have tried to do something while they didn’t recognize him. Snakes like any animal will go for easy prey. What is easier than something that doesn’t even see you? I guess it is like when I played Ice Hockey, I would show up in heels a skirt and a nice “fancy shirt” then look on my shoulder to see a stinky hockey bag, with a stick in my hand. It isn’t exactly the look people are used to be seeing in the hockey rink. I loved those looks too because it made me laugh and it made people think that I was to “girly” to play hockey and I was no good on the ice. Yeah right! I was one of the meanest people on my team. I was one of the enforcers, and depending on who the referee was I could live in the box for a good period or two. Not that I tried to get in there, but I was mean I would run people into the boards, check them to get the puck stuff like that. It was so fun then after the game or practice I would get all “dressed up” again. It amazed people. The same goes for the snakes they look all mean and evil, but in reality are so sweet, and fun. They have their own enchantment to them that is different from any other animal. You may not be able to play fetch or comb their hair as you would a dog, or a cat, but they offer a whole new experience people just have to be willing to be open to it instead of cowering in fear. I have found even in talking to people about my snakes at first they are scared and amazed that someone like me would have a snake. I offer them the chance to hold them or touch them, and most of the time I have to persuade people to and ask them more than once. After I convince them to hold and touch them have I changed their opinion because they can see first hand how the snakes are soft, almost silky smooth, and not really dangerous, but curious animals that really mean no harm to anyone, except maybe a rat or a mouse. When you do decide that a snake is the pet for you then you need to consider everything there is that goes along with owning a snake.
Choosing a snake
When thinking about buying a snake you need to first consider what kind of snake you want. Snakes are like dogs, some get bigger than others and require different specifications. For first time owners I would recommend a Ball Python. They, to me, are the easiest to own. Others would recommend a Corn Snake but I do not like Corn snakes, although they do have bright vibrant colors and stay relatively small. I think they are ugly, and very squirmy.
I would suggest a Ball because (not only are they one of my two favorite types of snake) they do not get much bigger than seven feet, depending on the sex, and they are quite tame. If they are afraid they will curl up into a ball and you can literally roll them around on the floor (I don’t recommend this), and, most of the time, will not bite. If they hiss just put them back into the cage and don’t mess with them while they calm down a little bit. The other one of my favorites is my next suggestion. Although they can be more aggressive and are not as timid as a Ball, and they do get bigger than a Ball Python will; they also have a beautiful pattern and have their own unique mystery about them. It is the Boa Constrictor. In particular the Red Tailed Boa Constrictor they have a beautiful red tail (hence the name). The Boas are a lot more bold than a Python is but as long as they are treated well, have food, aren’t scared or feel threatened they are just fine. Now I wouldn’t suggest getting this as a first time owner because the first timer will probably have some nerves going and snakes, just like any animal, can sense fear which in turn can make them on the defensive side. A boa can get up to ten feet long and over forty pounds. When buying a big snake like this there are several things you need to consider. First they will be around for around 30 years. That is a long-term commitment! You need to make sure that there is someone who will help you to handle it when it gets bigger, and you need to make sure you will be able to handle the feeding. What starts out as a mouse and a rat leads into small mammals, rabbits, gunny pigs, etc. Now after you have chosen the type of snake you need to consider whether or not you want a baby or an adult.
Baby vs. Adult
You think about it and decide you want a baby snake to take care of it and watch it grow. Great! Baby snakes are a lot less intimidating and very cute. They have a bright, vibrant color, and are very soft (like freshly shaved skin with baby oil on it). A baby snake as you can see (depending on the kind) can be smaller than a berry!
While the babies are very cute they are also timid and shy. A baby Python (any snake really) is more likely to bite, hiss or strike just because it is a baby and doesn’t know any better. The more you handle it the better
it will be and the more “friendly” it will become. It will get used to being handled and it won’t stress the snake out as much. Snakes do have their own personality. I have a few that are moody and others that are the sweetest in the world. Justin, my boyfriend, just bought a Spider Ball Python, a baby only 3 weeks old and only had one meal. Man I swear that snake hates Justin he has bitten, hissed, and struck at Justin ever since he got him. I went and picked the snake up before Justin even had a chance to say anything and the snake didn’t do any of that. He loves to get played with by me. He has never even hissed at me before. One time I had him and he was exploring everything calmly and quietly until right when I handed him to Justin then he went nuts and started hissing as Justin. I thought it was so funny because Justin handed the snake back to me and he was calm again. There is just something that the snake doesn’t like about Justin. He wasn’t to happy about that, but now that the snake is older he knows better and he doesn’t hiss or bite him anymore. Even in the same household the snake can play favorites (maybe not to that extreme) but when the snake is out of the cage and one person is holding it; it may slither to another person in the house because there is something that the snake likes better about that other person. Just like any other animal in your house. Take your dogs, when you get home with the others living in your house who does the dog go to first? That is his favorite right, so why wouldn’t snakes be the same?
Full-grown snakes are also available for sale as well as the baby ones. You will pay more for a full-grown snake because of the cost to care for it for years, but you will not have to worry about raising it or feeding it pinkie mice or rats. A full-grown snake is good if you want one that is already fully used to being handled and has a good eating habit. You want to breed it right away or just show off your fully-grown large snake. No matter which type of snake you want or what size you want you will have to have proper caging and bedding for it.
Caging Requirements
No matter what snake you have an escape proof cage is required. A glass reptile aquarium is the best way to go, unless you want to breed them. If you want to breed snakes than having 20 and 30 glass aquariums can get pretty crowded, so there is a better way to house snakes if you plan on keeping a lot of them. They are called Now I specify reptile because you cannot just go out and buy any aquarium or use your old fish aquarium because there are differences between the two. For instance a fish aquarium is deep but no to wide and the lid just sits on the top because the fish will not climb up to the top and try to escape, as a snake will.
Tremendous job here, Stephanie!
With these girls by myself I felt the confidence to venture out to the social side of college. We attended comedy clubs, went out dancing, and frequented the movies at least once a week. We attended student government sessions and joined the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program. I learned that no matter how different we all were, we shared a dream of helping others. I actually graduated with a minor in leadership and public service, thanks to the strong will of my friends.
Because I had gained confidence in myself outside of sports, I felt it was time to instill that in others. I worked with a little girl, in whom I saw a lot of myself in. She was into sports and had a sort of “tomboy” mentality. We would hang out at the arcade or play basketball at school with her friends. She was really cool and fun, but I quickly learned she was dyslexic and flunking out of school. I asked her about school and she hated it. No wonder. So what to do? Stay her “cool, older, friend” or turn into a teacher? Against my insecurities I began to focus our time more on school. I could tell she was not thrilled, but I wanted to help her, not just be her friend, but be her mentor; to make her life a little easier, at least for the time being. We would both sit and do homework; I would take her to the public library at first to show her that other children her age also had homework to complete. But it seems that she always felt uneasy being there, I think a little embarrassed. I then began to take her to my college library, she was speechless, I gave her the tour of the six levels stuffed full of books, magazines, and sleep-deprived students just trying to get by. She saw that spending time on school work wasn’t for those with “problems” but a way of life for the normal college student. She did some of her best work there, really buckling down and concentrating. I would check her work and could see the improvement. This became our weekly routine for a while, until one day I arrived at her school for our annual library cram session and her teacher pulled me aside. At first she praised me for the change she’d seen in our girls math and science grades. I took no credit, just explained our move to the college library. But there was bad news…. Our girl had been missing a lot of school and was in jeopardy of failing. How could this be? I asked. She was beginning to love school. The teacher explained that before I came along our girls’ mother would keep her home from school when she had tests or had projects. To make matters worse, when the school contacted the girl’s mother to talk about their options the mother took it the wrong way and pulled her daughter out of school all together to be home schooled. But the ultimate disappointment was that because our girl was no longer affiliated with the school I was not allowed to mentor her anymore. I was crushed, to say the least. What was I supposed to do; this girl had become a huge part of my life for the last few months. I debated, consulted my friends, and even the director of the program. Finally I decided I needed to say goodbye in person. Her mother allowed me to take her to the park one last time. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I asked her how she felt about being homeschooled. And to my surprise she wasn’t that thrilled. She said she’d miss her friends and playing ball. I told her that I could not mentor her anymore and she was upset, so was I. The rest of the visit was very subdued, we absently talked about sports and movies until it was time to take her home, we hugged and then I drove away.
I felt helpless. I never heard from the girl again. And I can only hope that she was reinstated into school and received the help she so desperately deserved. The one good thing that came out of that whole terrible situation was my new found interest in children, their learning abilities, their rights. I researched and wrote a compelling paper on children and homeschooling and its negative social implications in rural areas. I had never given thought to working with children, but after that semester in college I learned that I wanted to protect and give justice to those who cannot ask for it themselves. I then proceeded to volunteer for Rainbow House, a home for abused and neglected children. I dedicated my time and love to those who were not receiving either. My heart broke every time I left that building, but it flourished every time I walked in.
I had learned something about myself that semester. I cared about the well-being of others. I wanted justice for all, especially children. I learned how to be compassionate and how to love without limits. And to this day I am a better person for it. I will never forget the emotions I felt that entire semester. For once, it seemed, I was thinking about someone other than me, a pretty big feet for a 20 year old.
The rest of college continued on this path, volunteering my time, and trying to find myself. I made new friends, developed new interests, and had a blast. When my senior year rolled around I was at a loss. What was I going to do with my life? I had never really thought about it. Sure, I always wanted to be in the FBI and be a secret agent, but that wasn’t practical. So what reality did I face? I wanted to have a rewarding career, wanted to help people, and wanted to be part of greatness. So, with a little help from a career fair I signed up for the Missouri State Highway. A few weeks later I received a letter. The Highway Patrol wanted me to come down and take the entrance and fitness test. I was so excited, but at the same time nervous. I spent the next few weeks trying to get in shape, I was so nervous. The night before I couldn’t sleep, so my friends, being as great as they were, stayed up with me, watching movies, and pigging out on popcorn, anything to take my mind off of the following days’ events. The next morning I arrived in Jefferson City at seven a.m. I was joined by a mismatched group of people, all as nervous as me. The test was administered at exactly eight a.m. It took almost two hours to complete. I checked and even rechecked my answers a couple times, before resigning, Knowing I gave it my best. An hour later the results were posted. I scored the second highest out of the group! I was thrilled to hear it. It definitely took some of the pressure off. However, that meant that I had to complete the physical fitness part of the exam in only one hour. Talk about butterflies. But physical activity was the one thing I could always do well. Being a crazy, hyper, child had helped that. I teamed up with one of the other girls in the group to help each other out. We were required to do sit-ups, vertical jumps, shuttle runs, loading and unloading a gun, and finally a mile run. I was so crazy with nerves and adrenaline that I completed every event above and beyond what was asked. My competitiveness had taken over and I had to be the best. Finally, it was over. I drove home drained but content. I had given my all.
A couple weeks later I received a notice in the mail, I had made it into the next round. I was to come back and complete a polygraph test, the next phase in the test. I was thrilled my hard work had paid off. I had my reservations about the job itself, could I really pull people over, could I arrive on crash scenes, could I walk up to a mother and tell her that her child had just been killed on the highway? Was I ready for that? My biggest concern, was the most superficial, how would I look in the uniform, and the hat…, really?
I finished out my senior year in a blur, until that is, the last day of class. I was going out to celebrate, I mean big time, I was a college graduate with a future ahead of me. My friends and I got dressed up and went out like rock stars. We hit the downtown to live it up with the rest of my fellow good timers. We had set no limits on the night, which I later came to regret for the rest of my life. We decided to call it a night around 2 a.m., so trying to be responsible drunkards called a cab. Since it was not only the my last day of class but about 2,000 others the cab companies, to say the least were backed up. They gave a two hour wait time. Hell, we only lived a mile away. My friend had drove us downtown and was intend on driving us home, she however, could not even form complete sentences, let alone fully open her eyes. I, however, was walking and talking and fully functioning. In my inebriated state decided that I should drive, I could still see the road. Like all tragedies, the heroine has to go through adversity and anguish before she can overcome. So, as you can imagine. I was pulled over, arrested, and spent three hours in the campus “drunk tank” before I was allowed to bail myself out.
It was all over, my life, my career, what now, why had I thought I wouldn’t get caught? How was I supposed to face my parents and tell them that I had been arrested when they were coming to see their little girl accomplish their dreams for her? What a disappointment. In one stupid moment I had crushed my own dreams. How could I work in the criminal justice field having been a criminal myself? My graduation was bittersweet, to say the least. Instead of enjoying the moment, I had to find a lawyer for my case and had to apply for a temporary license, just to drive home.
Previous to my irresponsible act of stupidity, I had elected to spend the summer in New Hampshire with my aunt, to work and live on the beach. I needed to get away, looking back I was running, just as I had ran away to the farthest college. I saw this summer as a new start. Nobody knew me and I could be whoever I wanted. My summer had looked like a dream. She lived right on the beach and was friends with everybody, it had promised to be a fun filled few months. Now, as reality set in I was screwed. How was I supposed to get a job with a car? I now had huge lawyer fees, court costs and to boot I had to attend 21 hours of Alcoholics Anonymous classes in a neighboring town. What a fun filled summer….
My parents never really expressed disappoint in me when I broke the news. They didn’t have to, I felt it enough for the three of us. My parents rarely, if ever, had shown disappointment in me. But, because they had raised me so well, I felt that when I made bad decisions, which I had a habit of doing…a lot, I wondered why they kept me around. They knew I knew better, I knew I knew better, yet, it seemed I disregarded my conscience regularly for a good time. I never cared about consequences, instead always opting for the immediate pleasure. That was, until the DWI. Those consequences are still haunting me to this day.
To my advantage my aunt lived less than a mile from the “boardwalk” a local hot-spot filled with bars and restaurant, and always packed with tourists. I applied to over ten different places, and again thank God for my aunts’ social abilities I received a job in a restaurant where she knew the bartender and night manager. As excited as I was that my life wasn’t a complete failure, I was again in the situation of having to meet new people. But this time I had no other option I had to make some money and this was my only hope. I began work, it seemed the staff was all a team, a very close team, “great I thought, they don’t want outsiders” and to my dismay a few of them didn’t. But since most of the girls that worked there were foreign, from places like Poland or Bulgaria, they were friendly and willing to teach me the ropes. We soon became friends and started hanging out after work and since we were forced to spend ten hours a day or more together we became very close.
I did return to Missouri to take the polygraph test in the middle of June. I walked in with a defeatist attitude, seeing as how I had no license, instead a piece of paper with my charge and a temporary permit. To say the least they weren’t impressed. When my turn came around I was nervous, I felt little, insignificant, and a failure. How was I supposed to impress them with my knowledge and commitment to justice when I, myself, couldn’t even follow the rules? The instructor was nice enough; he tried to set my mind at ease as best he could, considering I was hooked up to a machine five different ways. He explained the procedure stating that he was going to ask me the same questions once with the machine off, then with it on. He made a statement that at the time seemed like meaningless jargon, but now means the world to me. He said that the purpose of the polygraph test was not to help the Highway Patrol hire those who are perfect, instead to hire those who take responsibility for their actions. What good was a trooper who was perfect? They wouldn’t be able to show compassion or understanding, instead they wanted those who knew the difference between right and wrong, acted in the right, but could understand the wrong. Not until a year later did I truly understand this statement. Needless to say later that month I received a letter stating that I had not been chosen to be a state trooper. I was crushed, now what I thought, if they didn’t want me who would. I had no life plan and no purpose.
Looking back at my time in New Hampshire I was able, in the midst of all the events, to have a great summer. I developed a relationship with my aunt that I had never had the opportunity to do before. We became best friends; we went out together and more often just stayed in and hung out. We cooked together and worked together. I know that we both learned a lot from each other that summer. I would not trade it for a single thing. She helped me to see that life happens and that there are always other options. She encouraged me to go back to school, education she said, was always a good investment. Seeing as she was a teacher, I was inclined to take her advice. Suddenly I felt like I had a plan, go back to school, screw the Highway Patrol, I’ll get so much education they’ll be begging me to work for them. I searched and researched schools, programs, and locations. I wanted a hands-on school that could teach me the physical part of criminal justice and help me to gain certificates in the process. Again, I wanted to be the best. With every find, my aunt and I discussed its pros, cons, and success rate. She helped to see that limiting my search to Missouri was not the best idea; I needed a good education, not one out of convenience, broaden my horizons. My best friend had married her high school sweetheart who was enlisted in the United States Navy and moved to Virginia Beach, she told me about a school down there that was always advertising its criminal justice program and its certificates. She picked up and mailed a few brochures to me to look over. After a few phone calls I decided to give it a look.
I viewed the school and was immediately pulled in by its curriculum and one of the teachers, who had previously been a profiler for the police, the exact job I wanted. I made up my mind, but still I was a little hesitant. Another issue I had been struggling with in New Hampshire was that for the first time in my adult life I was home sick. It is important to mention at this point that I had been blessed with a very culturally sound background. For family vacations my grandparents often took us on cruises on their yacht to private islands. We took other cruises to Alaska, Panama City, Aruba, Columbia, etc. I was a very lucky kid. I traveled to New Mexico with family, Texas, a couple times, with friends, Ireland once and pretty much everywhere else in the continental United States. In most cases my parents were lucky to get a phone call stating I arrived safe. I always felt if they were okay then why worry? I could take care of myself as well. But this time it was different, my dad had suffered a broken back and several surgeries, and my mom was hormonal. It seemed I was missing the rest of my family, especially my grandmother, my biggest fan. We had just found out she had lung cancer and I felt guilty moving even further away when I knew she needed me. But after talking to both my parents and my grandmother they encouraged me to go back to school. And Here I am.
Right before I was to move to Virginia Beach I was involved in an accident. I was hit by a drunk motorcyclist crossing the street in a cross walk. I was thrown about 20 feet landing on my side, in turn dislocating my left knee along with severe contusions and several cuts and bruises. I have the worst luck! The accident was a nightmare and I am not even talking about the level of pain. I could hardly walk and therefore could not return to being a waitress. I went to the doctor and had tests run to be told that surgery was my best option. Great, here I was in a new town, at a new school, without parents or family about to have knee surgery. Thank God for my friend Stacey, without her, I know I would not be here. So I had surgery, fully aware of the irony that my life was. Even if I had gotten in the Highway Patrol I would not be able to go now with a bum knee. Double Whammy. I continued with school, started rehab for the knee, but again began to feel the sweep of disappoint wave over me. I was 23, wasn’t I supposed to have a steady job by now with a daily routine and a paycheck? Why didn’t I just except the fact that I was going to have to settle for less? I was defeated. I needed a break, I needed home. So that’s what I did. I went home for a weekend. I let it all go and just enjoyed myself. I had a blast, I visited family, friends, and had coffee with my dad, something I had always taken for granted. But when I arrived back in Virginia, instead of clearing my head the trip had only clouded it more. Why was I living 18 hours away? Why was I still running away from the things I loved the most?
I believe that my strengths derive from my personality. I am a very optimistic
person and try to think of the bright side. The strength in my faith helps me see the
good in things. I am a very friendly person who loves to make friends and socialize. I
also am a very forgiving person, this can be a great strength to me. How forgiving i
am, i have found, can also be a weakness. I feel that my view on life is also a
strength. I have seen and learned many things that not many 19 year olds have had
the oportunity to experience. My other strength is my imagination, with it i can come
up with great ideas and enjoy more situations. This is my view of who i am.
Through the signiture strength test, I have learned what strengths are stronger
than the others. I have learned that Humor and Playfulness is my top strength. This is
very believeable. I have always tried to fill my life with humor. Me and my father have
always had a humor that noone, other than my father and I, can really understand.
When we are together we can have a very dry humor. Of course my father and I think
it is hilarious, but sometimes other people don't think so. An exaple of our humor
would be:
*A person runs into the edge of a table and says "Ow"
*My father and I would say "Look out there is a table there!"
*A person accidently hurts themselves and says "Ow that hurt"
*My father and I would say "Then why did you do that?"
Of course the person who got hurt wouldn't think it that funny, but my father and I find
it amusing. That is just one side of my humor. I have the ability to adjust my humor to
the age group of the audience. Able to be silly with a small child, more intelectuallu
humorus with an older person, and use todays young adult humor with my friends.
Many of my friends enjoy my company because i can make them laugh, no matter
the circumstance. I can help someone get over a time of sadness with comforting
humor.
I am also a very playful person, I love to play. I can spend hours with a young child playing with blocks, or spend hours having fun with adults. My playfulness can come off as flirting sometimes, which can help if I have an interest in a particular woman. I love to tease friends and at the same time like to be teased. My playfullness can help me interact with more people, and helps me interact with people and make friends.
Humor and playfulness can help me in a business situation by making me very aproachable. It helps me get along with co-workers and patrons, which can be very important. It also can give me the oportunity to make a task more fun, but still get it done. People that work in groups with me will enjoy it and will more likely work harder.
Another strength of mine, as it turns out, is Kindness and Generosity. Which is very relative to humor and playfulness. My kindness comes out when people exclude people that are different. I have the tendency to try and make friends with that certain individual. I try to be kind to everyone even if they do not have the best disposition torwards me. I may not like the person but i try to display my kindness in hope that I can learn more about them and maybe make them my friend. Along with my humor my kindness is what helps me become a better friend.
Generosity is few and far between today. Many people are self centered and dont care enough for the less fortunate. I have travled to South Africa and lent my time to helping people, who are extremely less fortunate than most americans. I spent three months building homes, not just houses, for the people in the townships of South Africa. People who litteraly live in tin cans and wooden shantis. I didnt expect anything in return other than that they take care of the house. My generosity lets me see the side of people that not many get to see.
My kindness and generosity come it great help in the work area. It makes me very adaptable to peoples needs, and also lets me be of more help to a person. It helps me work better with other and adapt to their needs, as well as mine. Without kindness and generosity people wouldn't be able to work together as well.
Sprituality, Sence of Purpose, and Faith is all that we have, when we seem to have nothing. So I must say i value this strength above all the others. Faith has gotten me through some tough times in my life. Times when i had no idea what to do next or even what to do then. My spirituality has made my world the way it is today. With spirituality i can view things in a different way and have more hope on certain outcomes. I believe my faith and spirituality directly supports my top two strengths. With it i can view things more optimisticly, and i can treat others more kindly.
One of the times i needed faith is just recently when i quit my job working at 7-11. I was very unhappy there and it wasn't helping me live a good healthy life, while im down here. I quit my job on faith that somehow things would work out, and it has. because i am unemployed i am able to take on the heavy work load of this semester, because i have time. When i was running out of money, my mother happend across over 500 dollars of bonds that my grandparents had bought for me when i was a little kid. And now i have to oportunity to sit back a little and look for a job that will work out for me. I have faith that that too will come at the right time.
My faith and spirituality effects almost every aspect of my life. It effects the way i interact with people and how i treat them. At a job it helps remove some stress from big projects, and i believe that it helps me on insight on what to do. If i am able to believe that i will be able to do something than I get the strength to do it.
As I look at the strengths i wrote down before the test and after, they are very simular. I was pretty accurate on what my strengths were. Looking at these strengths i do believe that they are my top strengths. I feel that in writing down my strengths and why i believe they are my strengths. i have been able to better understand myself and why I act the way i do.
On January 30, 1989 at 7:00 in the morning, in Sacramento, California, I was brought into this world kicking and screaming. I was brought home to my loving family Pam and Charles Tupitza. We lived in a beautiful one floor house. Our front yard had a big patch of ivy surrounding a massive tree. We had a nice sized back yard with a vegetable garden, flower garden, play structure, and a nice big compost heap. There was a nice couple that lived on the other side of the fence in our back yard. They had a beautiful backyard with a small peach orchard. I used to love visiting them, I would even take my little red wagon and ride down there hill. I loved that house, and unfortunately I only lived there for five short years. I had many friends when I lived there, and still keep in touch with a few. Every few years my father and I will travel to California to see them. The Vreelands, Kazensas, O’Bryans and the little girl that sometimes visited her aunt next door.
I have learned from the few years that I have lived on this earth, that God created mankind in is image and likeness. We are all created to love, care, and be kind just like him. I believe that each person on this planet have a purpose for their life. This purpose is so big that it will affect this generation and future generations to come.
One day in the mid 90’s, my father had a vision from God that showed our family owning a business. This business will consists of many companies in an enterprise. Each sibling will own at least one company in this enterprise. I have five brothers and a sister, so the enterprise will consists of least seven companies. When my father told the family about what God wanted us to do that planted a seed, dream, and a vision in me.
I started thinking, what I can do to help my fellowman by owning my own company. So, for years I have been struggling with that answer. I want to help in so many ways. I want to help spiritually, physically, educationally, financially, and emotionally. Sometimes it can be hard to figure out how to help this generation. I know I was born to lead, serve, help, and love my fellowman, but how? I have this burning desire to help and this promise seed inside of me of greatness, but how can I be of a use to help serve my fellowman. This is what our family business T-Snow Enterprises is all about. A family of nine trying to help our generation become the best the God intended for us to become. We want to leave an inheritance to the next generation. We want to leave an inheritance of love, kindness, servitude, grace, mercy, and prosperity. To see our children and children’s children live out there dreams and goals in life will be nice. Well, it is kind of interesting how God brought us to this point of trying to serve mankind through our business enterprise.
It all started when my parents were born in the late 1940’s. My mother was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. My father was born and raised in Europa, Mississippi. My father left Mississippi in 1965 looking for work in Memphis. My parents met at the City of Memphis Hospital while working together there in 1966. They got married in August of 1969 in Memphis, Tennessee. Later that year in November, my father got drafted in the United States Army. The following year in May, he started his tour in Vietnam. After serving 2 ½ years in the Vietnam War, he came back to Memphis to get his college degree. In 1974, my father received his college degree in computer science and he was hired by IBM. IBM transferred my father to Maryland to work. In 1975 the following year, my mother started to work for IBM as a secretary. Later that year, I was born in October. My parents bought there first house, in 1976, in northern Virginia. In 1979, after having her third child, my mother resigns from IBM. For the next 8 years, my mother had five children. My father during those years supported our family of nine by continuing working at IBM. In 1994, God told my father to start the family business, so he retired from IBM. So, here we are trying to inspire, motivate, and help the world become a better place.
As a family, we are trying to find our place in this generation in our business. We are trying to use our talents and gifts that God have given us to better the world through business.
Our family has talents in different areas. One of my younger brothers has a talent in music. He can write, sing, and compose music with the best of them. Our goal is to start a music label, under T-Snow enterprises, and have my brother run the company. He can serve the world by giving inspiration through music. Richard Sheridan in The Rivers said, “Is not music the food of Love?” that is what music can do to people. Music can encourage, motivate, inspires, and love. It helps people when they are down in spirit. One song by gospel artist Yolanda Adams helps my brother, the musician; believe in Jesus Christ our Lord. So, music can change the world. Music lives forever, in time and out of time. William Wordsworth once said in the Solitary Reaper, “The music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more.” Music lasts forever! It brings people together from all different backgrounds. One of my favorite philosophers Henry David Thoreau said, “In a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language.” Amen to that my friend. Amen.
Another brother has the gift of teaching children. He relates to a child like no other person I know. The children love him. He has been working at a children’s day care academy for years. So, our family has decided to open a Christian children academy center. My brother will own and run the company. The goal is to open the centers all around the world. This real have a huge affect in our generation, because if you can teach children the basics of life early, they will have a positive affect in this world. Children are the future. We need to get real serious about our children’s future. Just looking at a child, you are amazed of the beauty and grace of God. James Russell Lowell said, “Children are God’s apostles, day by day sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace.” So, you have to start with the children, if you want to change this world. Opening a center will help change the world. The center will teach the children how to read and play together. Reading is so important to our children development. Knowledge is power when use. Gail Haily in her Caldecott Medal acceptance speech said,
Children who are not spoken to by …responsive adults will not learn to speak properly. Children who are not answered will stop asking questions. They will become incurious. And children who are not told stories and who are not read to will have few reasons for wanting to learn to read.
So in this center, they will be read to. They will learn how to read. There are so many ways to tech a child. One way is by the Improved Reading Way by Masha Rudman a University of Massachusetts educator. She states, “If a child is reading aloud to you and comes to a word she doesn’t understand, don’t immediately ask her to sound it out. Instead say ‘What makes sense here?’ Then the child has to think about how that word fits in with what she’s been reading.” So, there are many ways to teach a child to read. If we can get to our children early and teach them values, and help them in the learning process, the sky is the limit. So with this Christian children’s academy, we believe we can make this world a better place, one child at a time.
My summers would be spent going to summer camp at Fayetteville State University. There would be an activity bus that would come and pick us up in our neighborhood. I always looked forward to it because we would swim, play basketball, tennis, and play softball. I liked swimming the best though because it was all about getting in the pool. I didn’t do much traveling when I was young so going to summer camp was the highlight of the summer.
During my elementary school years, I have encountered some interesting things. I had some good teachers, but there was an area where I struggled. It was my comprehension. I was a great speller and that was the only thing I had going for me. I grew up in a household where proper grammar was not used at all. So, I adopted the bad habits of improper grammar and it caused me to struggle once it came to take standardized tests. As I would read the passages, my mind would wander because the passages were so boring. Then a section of the test, I would have to either make grammatical corrections to the paragraphs or no corrections would be needed. I couldn’t decide which corrections to make at that time. It was confusing because I was on the A-B honor roll throughout elementary school. I didn’t like to give oral reports because of stage fright and I was a very shy person.
I grew up in a time where discipline was highly enforced. I had a math teacher who was known for paddling students when their behavior was out of control. He would walk them out of the classroom and go around the corner. He would have the person to lean forward against the wall and spank him or her with the paddle. See, it was acceptable by parents back then. You would have to run laps around the track too. I had to run some laps myself because I would always be the one laughing in class. I didn’t get into trouble for talking, just laughing. My school was located across the street from my neighborhood, although we had to walk about a mile and a half to and from everyday. Like I said before, the guys in my neighborhood were pretty close. We would walk together in packs as if we were wolves. There would be moments where fights would break out, but other than that everyone got along with one another.
I looked forward to report cards coming home because my father would give me five dollars if my grades were very good. The teacher would give me my report card and I would look it over with a big smile on my face because I would have A’s, B’s, and a few C’s on there. I would smile all the way home, and I would show my parents the grades and wait for my reward. I was a well-behaved student and my report card would always reflect it. My mother would go to the parent-teacher conferences, and the teacher would tell her how much he or she loved me in their classroom. My mom would joke and say, “Are you talking about my child?” If there was no homework to be done, I would either watch cartoons on television or go outside and play with my friends.
My father was a diabetic, and I would watch him take his insulin early in the morning. Saturdays were special days for my father and me because we would watch wrestling on television. He introduced it to me and I have been watching it ever since. It would also come on at eleven o’ clock at night. Well, I would be sleeping at that time, where he would wake me to watch it with him. Sometimes I would watch it and other times, I would remain asleep. I recalled a time when my mom, sister, and I were with my father and he had a stroke to where he was temporarily blinded. This had surprised me because I had never seen anything like this before. We had to call the ambulance to pick my father up and take him to the hospital. My sister cried her eyes out as the ambulance drove away. His vision was restored and he was released from the hospital. I was so happy because he was home again.
I loved my mother to death, but there was one thing she would do that I could not stand. If she was lying down on the couch and her purse was next to her on the floor, she would call me from across the room just to pick it up and give it to her. I would think there would be more, and she would say, “That’s it.” Now I would have to go back across the other side of the room. Afterwards, I would go outside before she would call me to do anything else. I would run to the park to get away, although that would not work at times. My mom still yelled for me to come home for whatever reason. That occurred every-time I was having a good time with my friends. Mostly, it would be a good game of basketball and the score would be tied and we needed one basket to win. She would call and I had to get someone to replace me before I left. I would run all the way home and complain at the same time.
My mom had worked out an agreement with the office manager in our neighborhood about selling icy cups for extra money. Of course, the office had to receive a percentage of the earnings. That experience was kind of fun because all the kids in the neighborhood found out and they were coming by for icy cups. They called my mom the “icy lady” and we would charge fifty cents per icy cup. You would have a lot of kids coming by as early as eight o’ clock in the morning for icy cups. I thought we were doing pretty good, but after you subtract for sugar, cool-aid, cups, and giving the office their cut, we were left with just a little bit. I understand that each little bit helps, yet I didn’t see any progression. Our business experience lasted for a couple of months and kids were asking if we were going to sell the icy cups again.
My mother and father had reconciled their differences and we were a family again. One Sunday, I pretended to be sick just so I can stay home and be with my dad. I had succeeded by lying to my mother and she let me stay home. As soon as she left for church, I suddenly started feeling better and my father let me go outside and play with my friends. I was ten years old at the time when all this happened. My friends and I were playing basketball at the basketball court. We played until we got bored of playing and someone suggested we go throw rocks at cars. There was some woods located near the basketball court. My friends and I gathered some rocks and waited in the woods for cars to drive by. As the cars would go by, we would throw rocks at them and hide. After about twenty minutes of doing that, we walked by this house that had rabbits in it. Just behind that house was a couple of mobile homes and beside the mobile homes was an air conditioning company. The company had a lot of marble cut rocks in front of it. There was a barbed-wire fence between the air conditioning company and the woods we were hiding in earlier.
We gathered those rocks and started throwing them at the mobile homes. We broke a lot of windows and also caused hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of damage to the different properties. There were cars driving by as we were throwing the rocks and one car pulled over yelling. The driver said, “Hey you kids, what are you doing?” So I immediately dropped the rest of my rocks and ran. All of us were able to jump the fence except one and he was caught. The rest of us were hiding out in the woods as the police showed up. The boy rode with the police taking them to everyone’s house and telling their parents. By this time, my mother was home from church and she was very upset with me. My mother suddenly yelled at the top of her lungs for me to come home. Once I got home, she told me to go straight up to my room and wait for her. I knew what was coming next. She went and got a switch and brought it up to me. I was stretched out across the bed where my shorts kind of raised up a little exposing the back of my thighs. I tried to psych myself up by being tough and take the spanking. As my mother was hitting me with the switch, it felt like my skin had split open from all of those licks. I immediately started crying because I thought my legs were bleeding. Lets just say, I never thought about throwing a rock ever again.
My mother has always been the disciplinarian in our family and my father has been the laid back one. One afternoon, my father and I were riding in the back seat of a car and I kept sitting up from my seat while the car was moving. In other words, I was being nosy and trying to see everything. My father said, “Son, sit down.” He was just as calm when he said it, so he said it again. I was still not listening to what he was saying. Now this time, my father took his hand and he popped me right on the legs. I was so shocked he hit me that I didn’t say a word or move the rest of the car ride. That was the only time my father ever spanked me, and I was glad.
Let’s rewind a bit from where I left off last. In 1985, my baby brother was born, on Mothers’ Day no less. I don’t remember a whole lot about that event. What I do remember is that my grandmother came to stay with us for a while and that mom had to stay in the hospital for some extra time. Having a new baby in the house probably changed a lot, but I just remember being stoked that I was a big sister. I think I would have preferred the bouncing bundle had been pink instead of blue, but what little girl doesn’t? I tried to help out as much as I could, but I’m not sure how much assistance I actually was. After all, I was only six years old. Mostly I just went and got things for mom; blankets, burp rags, pacifiers. As a mom now myself, I know that she appreciated even the smallest effort.
Fast forward a couple of years. It’s now time to leave Hawaii for the second time. Like I said before, the party was pretty cool. Let’s just say that wet slip-n-slide plus inebriated sailors equals one hell of a muddy good time. The only real downer for me was my pool. While being used as the rinse area, it became a casualty. Ah well, we were moving anyway.
We flew from Hawaii to California, where we met our cars and then drove the rest of the way to Florida. I have to say, I think that is still the most memorable road trips I’ve ever taken. Dad and my older brother took the two door car while mom, my younger brother, and myself were in the caravan. I thought that thing was awesome. Three rows of seats and one of them was all mine, when I wanted it. Mostly, I sat up front and played navigator. We stopped at the Grand Canyon. Wow! What a sight. Of course, the mood was ruined by my prankster big brother pretending he would shove me over the edge. Good thing he wasn’t riding in the van, otherwise that could have made the trip a lot more intense. We didn’t have cell phones back then, but we always managed to stop at the same places. I thought it was pretty magical. I learned later that the magic was a cool thing call triple A trip-tiks. Mom and Dad planned ahead where they wanted to stop. Most of the time, we stayed close enough to see the other car. The two door Mazda was canary yellow, so its not like it was that hard to see. One morning we got McDonalds breakfast. I can’t remember if we got it to go or if Mom just saved some of hers for the ride. Anyway, While she was enjoying her hashbrown later in the car, a bee flew into the car and landed on it. She screamed and threw it out the window, all the while trying very hard to stay on the road. She pulled over to get her wits about her. One night during our trip, we kids were killing time in the hotel room jumping from bed to bed. At some point in the fun, my little brother’s training pants ended up on his head. I’m pretty sure they were clean, at least I hope so. He ran around screaming and we were all laughing like crazy. I wrote a poem about it for school later on and won a prize. That’s really about all I can remember from that trip. I’m sure my Mom will read this and remind me of something later on, which I’ll be sure to add later.
So, we made it Florida. I think it took us about ten days. We moved in to this tiny, two bedroom apartment. In all of my nine years, I never had to share a room with anyone. Now, I was sharing with BOTH of my brothers. Yuck! We spent several months there while we waited for our new house to be built. It was pretty cool. I was in elementary school and my older brother was in middles school. The schools had different schedules and Mom drove us in each day, since we lived outside of the zoning for the school. The staggered schedules turned out to be a pretty cool thing. Mom would drop one of us off at school and then take the other to the house site to check the builders’ progress. Then, on the pick-up trip, the other sibling got to visit the site. Mom video taped most of the construction. It was pretty cool to see. It started out as an empty lot. Then there was a foundation, walls, roof, and everything else. It was actually quite fortunate that we made daily visits, because the builders messed up one the changes my parents had made to the floor plan. I almost had to share a room again, or sleep in the dining room. Good eye, Mom.
The neighborhood we moved into was brand new. We were one of the few houses on the block and there were no houses on the lots behind us. Not yet, anyway. I had my own room again, ah. I still love that house. Maybe it’s because I have to most childhood memories there. I almost cried when my parents finally sold it. So, now that we were in the new house, I could take a bus to school. The community was growing though and, within no time, there was a new school going up just down the street. I loved being able to walk or ride my bike to school. It wasn’t all that far and I never had to worry about missing the bus. Rainy days were a bummer though.
The fifth grade is when I started having vision issues. I blame it on poor development planning on the school’s part. Who installs brick read chalk boards and then supplies the teachers with yellow chalk? My last name was at the end of the alphabet then, so I say in the back of the classroom. After days and days of having to move to the front just to take my notes, someone sent word home to my folks that maybe I should have my eyes checked. Enter the awkard four-eyed stage of my life, which lasted well into high school. Somewhere during that year I fell and broke my wrist. Running around with my next door neighbor, I tripped and landed on the concrete with a snap. Mom didn’t believe it was as bad as it was and she didn’t take me to the doctor right away. I still like to bring that little stinger up every now and then. Mom knows I’ve really let it go though.
Sixth grade brought a new school and new experiences. I had to get used to changing classes all the time. Suddenly, I had some say in what electives I got to take. I sat through one or two art classes before I realized that it just wasn’t for me. I decided I might like to try the band on for size. And size had a lot to do with my instrument choice. Dad wanted me to play the French horn, but I just didn’t feel like I could hold it for long periods of time. The flute was an alternate choice, but holding it up the way you have to seemed it might me too tiring. I decided on the clarinet, and I loved it. I have to agree with the studies that show music enhances learning. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I know that school subjects seemed even easier once I started playing an instrument. This was also the year I discovered a great love of math. During a regular class, the teacher gave us a test of some things we had not worked on before. It was a pre-algebra placement test. I had a natural talent for it, and was assigned to pre-algebra the next year with several of my other classmates. Man, math was my best subject. Still is. I love the problem solving. I even love when I get things wrong because I get to go back and figure out where I made the mistake. Very few subjects in school, or in life, are that cut and dry.
Seventh and eighth grade kind of blended together. I don’t remember a whole lot of things about that time. I do remember standing outside in the courtyard to watch shuttle launches. I also remember my science teacher, Mr. Hall, taking me aside and telling me how much he knew I was capable of and pushing me to do better. I will admit it, I was a lazy student. I hated to do homework (except math, of course) and I really never studied for tests. He must have made an impact, maybe not immediately, but he is one of the few teachers whose name I still remember. Eighth grade was also when I met my best friend, Jen. She and I stayed close through high school, even after my family moved away from Florida. This year I was taking Algebra and Spanish I, both counted for high school credit. The Spanish class was actually at the high school. I would ride the high school bus to the high school in the morning and they would bus us from there to the middle school. It was a long school day for me, but I enjoyed it. I think I did a summer school semester for gym class, but I could be wrong. Like I said before, my memory is a little sketchy sometimes.
Phenomenal job, Jenna, Tommy, Will, Salim, and n2pitza!
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