The Numbers Game

Someone on Facebook sent me a number which represented the number of things I was to tell about myself that others may not know. My number was 13, and this is what I shared:

1. I took more LSD between the age of 14 and 16 than even Joe Walsh would consider himself an amateur.
2. I dropped out of school at the end of the 8th grade. Not legally but I did it.
3. At around age 14, I hitched hiked from NC to California. From Boston, to Florida. I slept under more bridges and inside Goodwill boxes than you would care to hear about. I showered in Truck Stops and honestly worked to earn a few bucks on the road.
4. At age 15,  I spent 45 days in a juvenile detention facility in Fredericksburg, Va. I was then extradited to the State of NC. I was handcuffed, and driven to Richmond, VA and was escorted by a VA State Trooper on a flight to Raleigh, NC. In Raleigh,  I was un-handcuffed by VA, and handcuffed by a NC Highway Patrol Officer, put in his car and was driven to Statesville, NC, where I was placed in the female side of the Iredell County jail.  They didn't have a juvenile detention facility and I was to young to be placed in general population of the jail. All all of this, because I ran away from home, and I was truant from school. I told judge Waller in Spotsylvania County Va., that I refused to return to NC. I stayed there for 38 days. All total I was in jail longer than most people charged with a crime. It was 83 days in jail. That leads to number 5. The judge in NC said he had seen enough, and my Probation Officer Lexy Ledman help me with number 5.
5. I was emancipated at 16 years of age.
6. I got married a few months later and was married for 13.5 years The magistrate in Spotsylvania, VA never asked me my age when I went to get married.
7. My first wife signed for me to go to work. She was 18,  I was 16. She signed for my workers permit because I was a minor and needed permission from an adult to work.
8. My wife signed my learner's permit so I could drive with her in the car at age 16..
9. My first wife pushed me to get my GED which I did 2 years before I would have graduated from High School.
10. My daughter was born when I was 18. A planned event in our lives.
11. I got a vasectomy when I was 18.
12. I went back to college when I was 37 and earned a Bachelor's and Master's degree.
13. If they would legalize LSD I would begin using it again today.

Okay I will give you some more due to pressure and popular demand.  All of these stories I told to my wife Janit Massey. She thought I was lying until I introduced her to my mother who verified them all. You can PM and ask her.

My number was 13 but I can't count because Of No Child Left Behind.

14. When I was in the first grade, I had a paper route in Love Valley, NC. I delivered about 40 newspapers everyday on horseback. Lucky and I went about 10 miles each day in a huge circle around the valley. It was and still is a town very much like Gunsmoke on TV. http://townoflovevalley.com/ . I have the book Love Valley signed by Andy Barker who built the Town of Love Valley with his father,  verifying our family was one of the originals that help to establish the town.
15. Love Valley had a Rock Concert in the Summer of 1970 that was second only to Woodstock. My dad still owned the Rock House that had blown up prior to the concert. The foundation of the home was used as a Community Kitchen during the Concert.  I met the Allman Brothers who headlined the Concert before they moved to their ranch in Georgia.
16. About a year before the Concert in Love Valley  the Rock House that dad owned blew up and a baby was killed in the explosion.
17. In the 7th Grade I had a friend that blew his hand off after finding Blasting caps in an abandoned house in Raleigh, NC. I help a friend, whom I just learned tonight has since died by suicide, blow the house up with dynamite we also found in the attic of that abandoned house. This was known to us as Dead Man's Lake. It is now called Eastgate Park.
18. I fell in love in the 7th Grade. To this Day I have a 1.5" A, and 1.5"H carved into my left wrist to remind me of the girl that taught me about puppy love.
19. In late 1971 we moved back to Love Valley from Raleigh, NC. My mother and I had a huge falling out, and it culminated in her shooting through my bedroom door with a 12ga shotgun. She walked in and put the gun in my face and gave me 5 minutes to get off her property. Hence the running away from home and hitch hitchhiking all over the United States.
20. I met a girl whose face I never saw during a thunderstorm in a Goodwill Box somewhere near Tampa, FL. It was dark and I could hear breathing in the box when I climbed inside. Eventually we talked and spent the night. She was gone before daylight the next morning.
21. I traveled around with the Fair for awhile to earn money, I even cleaned elephant crap and horse crap up for Ringling Brothers as an odd job to make money on the road.
22. I worked in a Union Job with Holly Farm's Chicken in N Wilkesboro, NC when I was 15. After about 6 months they found out I was not 18 and I got fired. I cleaned chicken heads off the floor and was responsible to clean two Chilling Machines which had to meet USDA inspection each day. I worked from 5 pm. and 5 am. Six days a week.
23. I worked for Service Town Truck Stop in Stafford, VA changing truck tires that weighed more than me.
24. I was a trained Spotter, and Dry Cleaning Specialist using perchloroethylene at 16 years of age. I was trained by Bruce Shelton of Kenmore Cleaners in Fredericksburg, Va.
25. I trained an investigator of Wake County Sheriff's Department how to hack Green Machine Bulletin Boards which were the precursor to the Internet. I had one of the first Bulletin Boards in Raleigh, NC. During that time.  I had hacked and brought down a large Pedophile Bulletin Board that was being run out of the Southeastern Baptist Seminary that is located on the Old Campus of Wake Forest, College in Wake Forest, NC.
26. In 2004 I started having pressure in my chest. This led to Quadruple By-Pass surgery in 11/2005.
I remember hearing this whining idiot moaning all night long and I looked over at Janit  who was sitting in a chair beside my bed when I woke up and said "Would someone shut that MF up. He has been moaning all fvcking night." She calmly looked at me and said baby, it is you that has been moaning all night.
​27. The Hospital refused to serve me coffee after my By-pass but the doctor said you can have as much as you want if you walk to the end of this 100 yard hallway to get it. Two days after surgery I walked to the coffee pot so many times, my legs where they harvested the veins split wide open and I bled out all over the hospital floor and had to go back into surgery. They served me coffee in bed after that, Both of my legs became septic. I lost all feelings in my legs for several years.