Excerpts from my life explaining who I am and who I have been!!!
This page is my lame ass excuse for being a maniac. I was a semi-normal teenager (mainly because I doubt there really is a normal one!!). Somehow I found myself working the ultimate McJob ( Yes, I really worked for McDonalds for a time.) with a married girlfriend. Someone hadn't learned to share in kindergarten and took exception to his wife humping me. After he found out about us, he decided to buy a scope for his rifle...and hunt ME!! This was in 1979, the military recruiters weren 't exactly scrambling to fill quotas since the demand for bodies is greatly reduced during peacetime. Not a good thing for someone with few resources and an overwhelming desire to relocate. I spoke to all 4 recruiters at their office because the first 3 kept saying they could take me in 6 months to a year. The USMC recruiter on the other hand, just asked, When do you want to go?" He also thought it was wise to mention that they would teach me to kill while I was gone... just in case this guy didn't get over his attitude. So that's how I managed to find myself (over a year after High School) in Boot Camp. To be fair, the Marine Corps does do a minimal job of teaching you to kill. They taught me to hit a grapefruit sized target from 500 yards away without a scope and some hand-to-hand combat tips. Now they DID instill the desire to kill... your drill instructor!! The next 3 years was spent in Cali fighting the "Battle of Drug Dependency". I like to think it was a draw, but quite a few people who have known me a long time swear I lost. To be fair to them, there was a time that I would be smoking "ganja" with rastafarians who would tell me, "No more mon, I've had enough" and I wasn't anywhere near done. (But I'm getting ahead of myself!) My first job upon returning to Georgia was at he Fulton County Election Board but it was a short term solution. And yes, I did smoke pot with a pole evaluator on election day. ( Doesn't that make you proud of Democracy? LOL) Followed closely by a stint driving a wheelchair van shuttling the elderly from a nursing home to their doctor appointments. The one lesson I took away from that experience was that most of them regretted the things they hadn't tried much more than the ones they had that had bitten them on the butt. I AM paraphrasing there. There was a series of crappy jobs over the next few years. Actually, there were so MANY crappy jobs that until somewhere in my 30's I literally had had more jobs than birthdays!!! I also got married during that time period but I'll spare y'all the details of my failed marriage. It goes against my No Whining policy!!! The only notable occurrence during that time was that my thyroid went hyperactive and I didn't notice until I had lost down to under 125 pounds...and I'm over 6 feet tall. That was during the time we were getting divorced so I just kept blaming it on my nerves. It also leads into the next phase of my life..becoming totally crazy. I got treated at the VA hospital, was jobless and living with my dad. That in itself is enough to make a person crazy. ( To this day I just can't understand people who live with their parents well into adulthood. Personally I would rather be homeless than live with a parent and have actually made that choice!!!) This was 1991. In early March 1992 I got back just under 500 dollars from the IRS. That was the capital I used to enter the next phase of my life. Although I had no job or transportation, I was so desperate to start my life anew that I used that money to rent a room in a really BAD boarding house. There was floors sagging so bad you could see into the floor below in places ,and 2 raccoons lived in the attic and walls who would come into your room and steal your food. That cost me 300 for the first month. It took me 3 weeks to get anyone to hire me and that job lasted less than a week. My rent came due, and I hadn't received the few dollars from the job, so I was evicted immediately. Greenpeace actually hired me despite the fact I was suddenly homeless. Mainly because door to door people working for a non-profit make a pretty rotten wage!! I was homeless for the first 8 months I worked for them because it's hard to save up deposits AND get a place when you have no references. (Not to mention trying to pay child-support and paying for a hotel 2 weekends a month so I'ld have a place for visitation!!) I did that for another year and a half before burning out. I managed to work enough odd jobs to pay my living expenses for the 6 weeks it took me to get my Taxi Drivers license. Which starts a new phase: LIVING ON THE EDGE I was still a pot smoking semi-hippie when I worked for Greenpeace, (because I've always been the kind of person who could find things) and was supplying about 1/2 the pot my co-workers were smoking. Not really making any money at it but it WAS paying for a good portion of my habit. When you drive a cab for a living, you really meet a strange section of humanity. And since I knew where a LOT of the drugs were coming from in Atlanta, I moved there so I could make the connections that would allow me to move up the chain so I could buy larger quantities of marijuana for a better price. I went from buying an ounce and selling 3, 1/4's to have one to smoke, to buying a 1/4 pound at a time. I was GOOD at this..making connections AND finding customers. Flash forward a year. My buddy, who booked bands in bars, wanted to bum a joint for the band. I trusted him so gave him the keys to my cab and told him to look in the briefcase in the trunk. ( By this time I had quit renting a cab and was driving my own cab..a 1981 sedan de ville, AKA a pimp car! LOL) He came back with my keys and said, "Don't ever do that shit to me again...what all is in that briefcase?" I thought about it for a minute and told him, " A 1/4 pound of killer weed and a pound of commercial mex pot, a 1/4 pound of crystal meth, a 1/4 pound of hash oil, (already in 2 gram vials).....oh and 10,000 hits of acid." Yes, things HAD gotten out of hand....in retrospect. It seemed okay at the time. I read an article in the newspaper, around that time,that listed the 5 most dangerous jobs in America...the ones where you were most likely to die while working. Number 1) Taxi Driver 2) over-the-road Truck Driver 3) Firefighter 4) Police officer and 5) Drug dealer. Now I was doing 1 and 5, AT THE SAME TIME!!! How does that exponentially raise the odds of your dying a violent and bloody death? Eventually I got busted. The odd part is it was because I bought a battery for a woman and put it in her car. This was because her husband (She was in the middle of a divorce, of course.) had taken it to keep her from taking her car. Her neighbors witnessed this and called the police, saying I was stealing the car. Of course, I had a couple of thousand + cash on me and no visible means of support (having quit the taxi business....it being the really dangerous job!!LOL) not to mention a small quantity of drugs and a gun on me. Now I wasn't in the car reported stolen and it WAS illegal search and seizure. Too bad I had no cash left for a real lawyer. I had to settle for a "Public Pretender". After several trips to court they "plea bargained" (RAILROADED!!!) my charges in exchange for a guilty plea, they got to keep all the crap and cash they had seized and I had 3 years probation if I went to a "rehab" center for the first 8 months of it. The lying bitch had sent me to a bootcamp for people too old for the extra hard core bootcamp they usually send youthful offenders. Eleven months into this 8 month program,(it became a 5 month program the second month I was there...for new arrivals!!) I was taken back before the judge who revoked the rest of my probation in exchange for 6 more months in the county jail. Anyway, after 15 months in cages I knew I was done with that phase. Luckily for me, I was visiting a friend the first weekend after I got out when he got a call for work and got me in on the job. Finally, a job that didn't suck AND paid a decent wage. I worked hard and quickly moved up the "call-list". That's the list they use to determine who gets called into work whenever work is available because it is a sporadic type of work. I did this for over 2 years and had gone from 12 dollars an hour to 17 AND was getting a pretty good amount of work. Since I was still living in Atlanta I occasionally ran into old friends and "business" associates. So I knew quite a few people still in the drug business even though I was retired from that life. A former associate asked me to accompany him to help him find someone he was planning on doing a deal with, supposedly because I knew the city much better than he did. I was reluctant but the meet was at Lowes and I did need a new tape measure for my job since I had recently broken mine. I also had no vehicle so I rode along, figuring it wasn't any of my business what others do. Before I had a chance to go inside (because I was finishing a hot dog in the truck) a gun was put to my head and I was arrested for "Conspiracy to Distribute Methamphetamine". The GBI made a deal with my "buddy" to release him on a reduced bond in exchange for testimony against me. Now even tho he had all the drugs on him, I was the one they wanted because they figured they had a slam dunk conviction against him. He skipped and as far as I know, has never been caught again. The GBI offered me a deal, just set up someone I know and they'll reduce the charges against me .(It just ain't me!) Personally, my idea of integrity means not fucking your friends over...no matter how much it may benefit you to do so. I took it to trial. Using hearsay and perjury, the GBI managed to get a conviction. I was sentenced to 30 years....and a 300k fine. The judge did suspend 15 years of it and sentenced me to serve 15 years. I was a model prisoner, made trustee and then parole after just 5 years. I also managed to read about 1200 books during those 5 years. That may explain why I'm such an articulate thug...........LOL (Oh and FYI, on my first day at the parole office I was informed that in addition to my 300,000 fine, I also owed the state of Georgia 40,000 for my trial and another 135,000 for housing me for 5 years!! SO technically I started out 475k in debt less than 5 years ago...how do you feel about the amount YOU owe now?) Parole started just before Thanksgiving 2004. I've been in no more trouble. I got my old job back after a couple of months and was able to transfer my parole to Orlando, (There is MUCH more work in my field here!) on Dec. 7th 2005. 2006 was the first year in my life that I made over 20 thousand dollars legally..at 46 years old. Actually, I made 28k that year. In 2007, I started the year with a 15% raise, and grossed a few hundred dollars less. In 2008 I got a 5% raise and grossed slightly less. (YOU CAN CALL ME AT 407-680-8319, tweet me @stevedreamweavr or email me: [email protected] ) Are you wondering, " why is he bothering to reveal all this?" The answer is simple: I believe that ethics and integrity are of the utmost importance; and honesty is the one thing I can always bring to the table. Whether you call it "The Golden Rule", Karma, what goes around comes around or anything else, the concept is still the same. It's the one rule I ALWAYS do my best to follow!!