About two and a half years ago, my family and I went through some tough times. My sister, Samantha, had been going through some things and was having mental problems. She became distant and left us, wondering what was bugging her. She stayed in her room and rarely came out. She avoided us. We tried to console her and comfort her, but she wouldn’t let us. She grew more and more alone. We all wondered what she was going through, me the most. I tried to help but she didn’t even let her little sister in on her secrets. Unfortunately, it seemed like we would never know. She was always blue and frowning. She never had any fun. When we did go to events, she acted the same as she always did. Sad, lonely, glum. This went on through Halloween and Thanksgiving. She started to make our parents worried and disappointed. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I got curious and tried to figure out what was going on. I tried to help. I just...couldn’t. No matter what I did or tried she wouldn’t change. I started to get worried and saddened. I was failing at something so important. My sister! I started to get angry, confused, frustrated. I nearly yelled at her for not answering me. Then when my parents told me to leave her alone. What’s the big deal? I was just trying to help her. I boiled inside. My dear big sister, hurting me and my family. I finally snapped. It was right around Christmas. We were at our parents’ house. She seemed very sad. I tried to console her. She just told me to leave her alone. I tried to stay calm. It didn’t work. I blew up! I yelled, trying to get her to explain. What was wrong? All she did was mope around and be depressed! I had it! She yelled back. It became an argument between us, loud and fierce. She finally yelled at me to just leave her alone and stormed off. All I had done was made everything worse. We stopped talking for a long time. My parents fought. They split up for a while. At least they got back together. I saw it coming. I had been boiling for a while. I could’ve avoided it. I could have stopped it. But, I didn’t. At the time, I thought nothing could. We just recently started talking again. We’re making it there. I know now to never intervene with someone's problems. I always let them come to me. I learned from my pain. But, I will never forget it.

My dumbest decision took place back in college. Well, halfway through college I was in my second year of college and I was dating my now wife, Linda, but by this time we have been seeing each other for a long time. So marriage had crossed both of our minds but I don't think either of us ever took it too seriously because we just wanted to finish college then we would worry about it and consider that. But the more that we went on the more I thought about it, I started to really think about proposing sooner than before we were out of college. Now, current me would tell my past self that he is an idiot but obviously, I can't do that so I kept thinking and thinking about it more and more, and then I finally decided that I would do it before I graduate and that seemed like the best thing I could do at the time but that was definitely not but hindsight is twenty-twenty. So that was the choice I was gonna propose and that is exactly what I did. Of course, she said yes, oh that sounded bad. I meant she could have been smarter than me and suggested to wait but no. So my parents would help pay for part of it and her parents would help with the expenses on one condition. If we wait till we graduated, but because we were dumb young adults so we pretty much told them we don’t need their help. So we dropped out of college and I went to work in the oil fields. And this made her parents furious and they were no longer offering any financial aid. Which really made it harder but we were determined to prove them wrong so I went to work while she attempted to finish college. Without a degree, I had to start at the very bottom of the chain. So I was doing everyone's dirty work. Now if I would have stayed and got a degree the first decade of working would have been a whole lot easier but it all worked out in the end and I worked my up to a really good job and we raised three daughters that all got their college educations.

One day I was at work and I got a call from my children's babysitter. The babysitter’s name was Taylor. She had told my three kids that it was time to eat. They got up off the couch and made their way to the table. The table was the kind that had a bench. Carter`s sister, Codi lifted the bench up so she could set it down. When she set it down it landed on Carter’s toe. The babysitter frantically called me to alert me to the situation. At first, I thought that it was not a big deal, but the bone was sticking out. I immediately headed home to take Carter to get help. When I arrived at the house, we took him to a CareNow in Burleson where the doctor decided to send us to a real hospital. When we got there the doctor handed him an I spy book and an iPod. This was so he would not see them stitching up his toe. For the last few stitches, the painkillers began to wear off and he had to take it like a man because the doctors could not give him any more painkillers to ease his pain. It was a rough experience but Carter ended up getting an iPod and a cool scar out of the incident.

When I was 30, my wife tried to throw me a surprise birthday party. She sent me golfing with a friend, this was odd because she never sent me golfing. While I was out golfing she was setting up for the surprise birthday and getting everything ready. While we were out golfing, I went from the course back to the cart to grab my putter. Wrapped around my putter was a snake that was about six feet long. When the snake ordeal was over we headed back. I knew what was in store for me because she never sent me golfing so I knew something was up.

You know the funniest thing I remember doing was when a friend and I thought we knew how to drive a dump truck. We took her for a spin not knowing anything about how to drive it. You know it turns out that driving a dump truck is a lot harder than you think. As we were driving I was trying to shift the ears but was not doing a good job, the truck kept lurching forward. I remember I at least stalled like five or six times it was pretty bad. By the time I started figuring out how to drive it was too late, next thing I knew my backside had busted the back glass. We came back with the busted glass and a funny story to tell. A lot of things you have to try to learn so I did learn that day. I learned a very important thing that day and it was that if you don't know how to do something it's probably best not to do it.

Another great story was when I thought one of my boys had hit me in the head with a football but turns out that I got electrocuted. So it had been a long day working with the cows and getting ready for the rodeo. We were all out there and the boys had been messing around with the football and I felt something kinda hit me in the back of the head. I had just assumed that the boys had hit me in the head with the ball then I realized that the electric fence had shocked me. It was just something that had caught me off guard. I just wasn’t expecting it. Moral of the story you should always check what’s around you before you start doing things. You would think that living on a farm would have taught me to watch out for the fence but here we are. It wasn’t the first time I had been shocked by a fence so I think that’s why it caught me off guard.

When I was 17 she had to run to Target to get some groceries for her family. I had walked into Walmart and got everything for my family. When I was grabbing all of our groceries and putting them in the corvette, I had gotten in and noticed that the car had broken down. The only thing that they could do was wait for my dad, but he had a 45-minute drive to get to where they are. While I was waiting on my dad to get here I had seen many people walking by. It happened to be very icy that day as well. I had started honking at people as they would walk to scare the snot out of them. They would honk and then duck their heads down so that the people couldn't tell it was from the corvette that they were driving. I kept on doing this for about thirty minutes until this one old lady showed up, which they didn't realize was very old. I had honked and the old lady slipped with her groceries and fell straight backward on the ground. She had hit her head so hard she had been knocked out. completely. I didn't know because she had ducked her head below the window. This lady that was driving by had called the fire department and an ambulance showed up. I Didn't realize it because they were hiding and nobody was walking by. When the ambulance showed up so did my dad. Before my dad had found my car he saw the ambulance. He asked a nearby lady what was going on and she told him the whole story. After he heard the story he had been on the search for them, which didn't take very long. When everybody got home after my dad fixed the car, he had a talk with them. My sister and I had to work all winter break to pay for that lady's hospital bills. It didn't take too long but we had gotten it done and paid for her bills. We went and had dinner with her and ended up becoming good friends with her after all of that.

I was 18 and it was my senior year of high school, I had just left the tanning salon when your dad and his friend were driving past and his friend said to him ‘That's gonna be my future wife.’ and your dad said to him ‘her ?’ pointing at me, and he said ‘Yeah. Her.’ your dad looked at him and said ‘Oh I know her.’ and pulled up next to me and said ‘Hey Stephanie’ and at first I didn’t realize that Nate was a full-grown adult. I thought he was a kid. They had just finished moving your dad into his new apartment so he was all slouched over in his front seat so I didn't really acknowledge it at first till your dad's girlfriend at the time called me and said ‘Guess who likes you.’. So of course wanting to know I asked her who and she told me, Nate Peters. I said ‘Uhhh whos Nate Peters?’ and she said ‘Joey's friend. You met him the other day at the tanning salon’ I told her ‘Ohhh him? He looked like a kid sitting in the passenger seat.’. A couple of weeks passed by and your dad, his girlfriend, Michaell and Melissa, Nate, and I, all went out to dinner together. Nate and I didn’t say a single word to each other the entire time and at the end of the night Michael took Nate’s phone and put my number in it and your dad's girlfriend took my phone and put Nate’s number in it. We still didn’t say a single word to each other. A few weeks later we were at a friend’s house and still had barely said anything to each other and at the end of the night when everyone was getting ready to leave and saying bye to each other Nate goes ‘Well goodnight. I’ll talk to you later’ and I was a little upset by now and said to him ‘Are you gonna kiss me or not?!’ and he said ‘Well I guess I am’. We’ve now been married for almost 15 years and have lived in Grandview for a total of 10.

I'm on my way to pick up Jhett and Kade so we can go down to KD lake and fish. Now sometimes I have to explain to Jhett that fishing and catching are two different things and that he needs to be patient if he wants to catch a fish. Now Kade on the other hand worries me a little. The little punk is the definition of a redneck, he's bouncing all over the place touching everything in my truck. When we arrived we unloaded all our equipment into the orange Kubota up by the house of Mr. Ken Davis and his wife. Well, Kade instantly jumped into the driver seat and said “Hop in!!”. I convinced myself if he can drive a Tractor through downtown Grandview he could handle a little Kubota…..right? Well, I got my answer about 10 seconds later when Kade pops it into high and gases it and I swear he's trying to hit every pothole on this property Jhett and I are clinging to the tailgate for dear life. Well we managed to get to the pond in one piece and without losing my breakfast I pulled out the bait which was worms, we all grabbed one, and about 10 minutes later there were lines in the water. Now I’m sitting in my own little prop chair, Jhett found a rock to lean up to and Kade is sitting straight in a mudhole, neither Jhett nor I say anything about this. We’re about 20 minutes in when Jhetts bobber goes under he starts reeling his string back in, he battles that thing for about 20 seconds when he finally gets it on land. We get a little picture then I get the hook out, and we pitch it back into the water, and wait for the next bite. Now Kade’s bobber goes under and we repeat this process but with a little twist, Kade yanks his fish out of the water, picks it up, and goes for a picture, even though its a mudcat that’s covered in dirt and mud, but hey I take a picture take the hook out and toss it back into the water. Now we're done with fishing and we pack all our stuff back onto the Kubota we head back up to the truck, and I'm driving. We lock the gate so none of the cattle escape, and we get into my truck. This is something that we enjoy doing very much, and I love getting to teach little life lessons to these two kids, we’ll see what the next trip brings.

My first kiss, I was 14 and my mom went to visit a friend and her friend's son was someone I went to school with and we went off to go play tag in the barn. He asked me if I wanted to go to the loft of the barn, I said sure and we talked for a bit and then he leaned in and kissed me on the lips. I got up and said, “I have to go find my mom” and left, we didn't talk after that. When my dad passed away I was 12, and my family and I went to a ball game, my brother got his first-ever trophy there. So to celebrate we all went home and my dad made his famous homemade Frito pie. After it was ready to eat my dad's chest started to hurt and he told my mom to call the doctor, the doctor said “to get to his office as soon as possible because it might have been a heart attack so we all quickly drove to the doctor’s office and on the way my dad rolled down his window and threw up. Then he took a deep breath in and didn't breathe back out. He died of a heart attack with all us kids in the back seat. The day I found out I was pregnant with my daughter Laura Keller, I was 17 and I knew something was wrong so my boyfriend said I should get a pregnancy test just in case, but I said no and ended up waiting 4 months until finally, he convinced me to get one. I went out and got one and, I took it and it said POSITIVE, but I wouldn't believe it even after the second one I wasn't going to believe it unless a doctor said it themselves. So we went to the doctor and had to wait 3 days to get the results back and there was no way I was going to tell my mom and if I called the doctor it would come back as a bill and say who I called so my boyfriend asked a girl he worked with to pretend to be me and they said I was pregnant so my boyfriend called me crying and said “you are pregnant baby” not long after that my mom drove up in the driveway so I ran to the door before she could walk in, she looked at me confused and I said “mom, I'm pregnant” so she got back in the car and drove off I sat on the couch and started crying and then she came back and sat down at the table and right before she got back I had called my boyfriend and said “do NOT come over she is back” and he said too bad and that he was already on his way and my mom said “you will have to marry him, but not till after you graduate, you will not see him till after you graduated which was 5 months away and I said, I can't do that. Then my boyfriend drove up and I ran out of the house and jumped in his car and said “GO!” so we drove to my best friend's house and then he said he had to go tell his parents. They asked where I was and to bring me there and that we could stay with them till they saved up enough to get a down payment on a house, shortly after we got married.

My life has been awesome. I had a lot of very good events that made up my childhood. It is very hard to choose from, as my childhood was very eventful, filled with great moments. If I had to choose, my favorite part of my childhood was traveling to Ohio to see my Uncle Bob and other family members. Whenever I went there, I had a very great time. First of all, I would always enjoy playing in the swimming pool for hours and hours. I loved to swim, and being at Uncle Bob’s gave me the opportunity to do what I liked. Hanging out in the pool gave me an exhilarating feeling of happiness and joy. It was also nice to get a good soak in the pool on a blazing hot summer day. I would always play with my cousin Joe in the swimming pool, and we would always have so much fun and enjoy so many moments that I still cherish today. Each of us played pool (the game) and as we played more, we got better. It became competitive every time and we would always go at it with each other.

Next, I would always eat corn dogs and hot dogs (big ones in fact) and put lots of condiments on them to make them taste better. They were always very good, and they made me very full and incredibly satisfied. My go-to drink when I visited my Uncle Bob’s house was some nice, cold, refreshing A&W Root Beer. Again, the root beer never missed, as it quenched my thirst and gave me the perfect refreshment. Another great part about staying at my uncle's house was the amount of time I got to spend with my family. It is always nice to check up on family, ask them how they are doing, and hear about stories that they’ve had, especially when you don’t see them every day. It is always nice to cherish the moments that you have with your family because that is what matters in life. I will always remember the times that I saw my Uncle Bob.

I had a very potentially serious event that happened to me when I was only in college. The main reason I got to college was playing basketball, even though I was very smart. I was very good at the sport and they recognized me. I enjoyed it a lot and had lots of fun playing it all through my life, from my childhood to my senior year in college. This was one of the bad days of basketball in college, however, my love for basketball forced me to stay for the weekend, while my roommate went home to see his family. My dorm room was only capable of carrying two people in it, so he was my only roommate, at the time. Little did I know, something else was in there with me. One night, I fell asleep as it was very late and suddenly, I felt a weird, painful sting in my left knee. I passed out within moments. When I woke up, not long after I passed out, my leg was very swollen and purple. I almost immediately scouted out the area for the culprit. I found no sign of it. I was about to give up when I saw something brown and fast scurrying across the floor of my dorm room. It was a spider. A disgusting, weird, eight-legged creature, I killed it almost instantly, using my left shoe. After this, I searched up what the spider was. It turned out to be a Brown Recluse spider. I noticed that a very unlucky individual may have to go to the hospital for its bite. With that, I sped to the hospital. I soon realized that I was that very unlucky individual. This seemingly not very dangerous spider bite made it so I couldn’t play basketball for a full two weeks. I was devastated about it. Basketball was my entire life, at the time. Soon after, I realized basketball was not that important to me and I shouldn’t worry so much about it. It is only a sport, and I have bigger things to worry about, like the rest of my life.

We were helping this guy, and he had these big peacocks. Now, he didn't like them too much, so the next night, we drove up to his house, went to the barn, shined a flashlight in the peacock's eyes so it couldn’t see then put a box over one of them and took it home, The next morning we went to school and we brought the big peacock with us, After the first tardy bell, we took the big bird and brought it inside, let it loose, and went back to our pickup, After the next bell, we went to class after two or three periods passed. We got curious and asked to go to the bathroom so we looked in every hall and finally we found it. It was in the school counselor's office. He was on the other side of his desk and was on the phone crying for someone to come and take this massive peacock away. Soon after, they did an investigation and found out it was me and my buddy. As punishment, we got sent home for three days.

Me and my buddy went to a calf scramble, and you know how country people are loud. Well, we got to our hotel and we saw there was a great big swimming pool and it had three different heights of diving boards. So we got situated and walked out to this pool, and stripped down. After a little while, the hotel staff tells us to get proper swimwear on and to quiet down. We went back to our room and once again they told us to quiet down and that they had sent a guy to monitor us. He was a short unemotional guy. The next morning, we left the hotel to go to the rodeo and when we got back, we got into the elevator. There was a man in the elevator, Soon, we got to talking and he asked us if we were coming from the calf scramble. We said yes, and he said to me, ¨I'm performing at the calf scramble¨. So we introduced ourselves and as he was introducing himself he said his name was Will Rogers. When my buddy and I got out of the elevator our jaws dropped.

The scariest thing that has ever happened to me was whenever I was around 8 years old. It all started on a hot summer in East St. Louis, Illinois. My siblings and I, Brenda, Walter, Mary, and Paul were all playing hide and go seek outside. Our backyard butted up to train tracks so that's where we were playing. It was around 8 o’clock at night, so well after dark, when my brothers and sisters decided to go into the house and leave me out there. All of a sudden out of nowhere I see this large shadow reach out for me. I tried my best to scream but I couldn't. It was like all of a sudden my voice had completely disappeared. I was able to make it back to the house safe but that is one day that I will never forget. A big lesson I had learned from that encounter is to always stay in large groups especially at night.

The happiest day of my life was when my first child was born. At the time I was 21 years old. It was early on April 16, 1977, 6 in the morning to be exact, I had woken up early to bake a birthday cake for someone when all of a sudden I got very sick very fast. I had no idea what was going on because I was only 32 weeks pregnant at the time. I rushed over to the hospital arriving at around 7:30 am. The doctors were telling me they would most likely do a C-section due to her being 8 weeks early. Right as they were discussing the C- section I started having labor pains. In less than half an hour later my firstborn, Kimberly, was here. Due to her being born 8 weeks early she was put in the NICU. At that time hospitals did not let the parents stay at the hospital with their babies so I had to drive up there every day if I wanted to see her. After 6 long weeks in the NICU, she was finally ready to be brought home.

I loved all of highschool, it was all fun, I especially loved seeing my friends. I was friends with everyone, and I was always very nice to people. When I entered high school I suddenly became very popular out of nowhere. People started voting for me for Baseball sweetheart, Prom Queen, and I was voted 2nd most popular. The girl who won first was also very sweet, and I even voted for her. I didn’t exactly know why they voted for me, but they did. I never had a problem with anyone, except there was this one time that someone spread a rumor that my friend and I did not like another girl in our grade, Sindy. Of course, this was false, we liked Sindy she was very sweet. So when anyone asked about the rumor we said “No, we like Sindy”. Eventually, that got back around to her and we became good friends. “Everyone will try to say things to try and stir up some drama, but just be nice because that will turn around on them because they’re expecting you to react.” This is the best advice I can give to you.

When I was in school girls weren’t allowed to play sports, or even run track. We of course would play basketball and things in the gym, but we could never play in an actual game. The only sport we were allowed to do was cheerleading. I of course did cheerleading, but I always wanted to run track. I was very fast, and would sometimes race some of the boys outside of school and would win. Girls back in the day weren’t even allowed to wear pants like y’all do now. We had to wear dresses and skirts. I didn’t wear a pair of jeans for the first time till I was in my thirties. This was because pants were always known as something that men would wear. But people nowadays can wear whatever they want. But back then times were very different than they are now.