What Can You Learn From Your 18 Year Old Self?

It was a couple months back that I saw a invite to my 15 year High School reunion on my Facebook page. I was flooded with all kinds of thoughts (some negative, mostly positive), but what really got me thinking was a comment left from one of my former class mates. He did not enjoy his high school years and he let everyone on the invite know it.

I couldn't help but think what I could have done differently and if I was part of the problem.

Before we get to the question 'If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your 18 year old self,' let me first go way back in time and give you my personal story and how these events would lead me to the path I am on right now as I type this.

I started Kindergarten in Decorah, Iowa at West Side Elementary School. Of course, life was good. We had nap time, recess and not a care in the world. We had story time, singalong time and crafts. It was epic, and as kindergarten passed, so did first grade. But just as life seems to do, it just had to throw a curve ball that would change my life forever.

In October 1988, I was playing on the merry-go-round during recess along with several kids. I somehow got my right leg between the ground and the merry-go-round, and with one very quick snap, twist and pull, I had torn my ACL, along with half of my Meniscus and a good part of my cartilage at just seven years old.

The doctors would later compare my knee injury to that of a football player when they are hit. It took the same force to blow my knee out.

One thing you have to understand is that this was a very, very, very rare occurrence. I remember several doctors telling my mom and dad that children just do not have knee problems.

When they took me to the local doctor, it was automatically dismissed that I could be having any kind of knee trouble. We finally saw a local doctor who had just came out of medical school who was the first to bring up the possibility of a major knee injury. He finally sent us to The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, which is now one of the most respected hospitals in the country. It was only 75 miles away from my house in Decorah.

After countless MRI Scans and my first two knee scopes, it was clear I had torn my ACL clean. They ended up taking half of my meniscus, and I had lost over 60 percent of my knee cartilage. I've had nine knee surgeries total to date, and I still have a few to go.

With all of this going on and the amount of school I had missed in 2nd grade, I was held back a year and would graduate in 2000 instead of 1999.

This was devastating to me! I mean come on, all of sudden I could be with my friends and I had to repeat the same grade? I can remember being in the Mayo Clinic and literally having over 20 Doctors want to come in and feel the movement and shifting that I had going on. It was then that I noticed that the doctors, the teaching staff and my class mates didn't know how to handle my injury, I was a kid! The possibility of re-injurying and causing further damage to a already tore up knee was not good. That sounds really weird to say but it is true I was way to small for any kind of reconstructive surgery where I would receive a cadaver ACL that had to be screwed into my bone, but that surgery wouldn't come for a long time. The doctors had to explain to my Mom and myself that I couldn't run or play nothing like that because they had keep what they had intact. It was after my first knee scope I was taken to The Prosthetic Lab in Rochester, Minnesota to be fitted with what I would and still carry for the rest of my life, my C.T.I. knee brace. At that time I was the youngest person to have ever been fitted for a C.T.I Brace. It had to be custom made which was about 4 times smaller than the normal size brace which would provide me with some stability.

Growing up with this type of injury, I was put on a very, very strict 'what not to do' list. I can still hear the doctor say it: No running, jumping, hopping, skipping, swinging, sliding, cutting, pivoting or other physical activities until we can better understand exactly what is going on with your knee and how we can fix it.

I understand now that they didn't want me to cause more damage to an already destroyed knee. But to a seven-year-old kid, I just couldn't understand. Depending on how my surgeries went and if my knee had swelled up to the size of a grapefruit, my future activities were up in the air.

I kept a pretty solid rotation of my crutches, CTI Brace and this immobilizer that went from my ankle to my groin. It kept my knee from bending with five steel rods that I would have to wear for six months at a time. Now this is where I don't know what the teaching staff was thinking, because I couldn't play or go out to recess. The question was, what do they do with me when my other class mates got to go out for recess?

I didn't get to stay inside in the class room. Even better, they didn't send me to the office to chill! I had to go outside with the other students when it was time for recess, sit in a chair against the school building and watch everyone else throw down for recess. Now that I was sitting in a chair outside came the teasing, the name calling and everything else that goes along with bullying. Let's be real: kids can be straight-up mean!

As my junior high years rolled around, so too did more knee surgeries, crutches, wheel chairs and my parents divorce. They all coincided with my discovery of music and the exact moment that I knew that I wanted to talk on the radio.

Entering junior high was the start of seeing different cliques in school -- the jocks, the cool kids, band and so on. You start making connections with people that have the same interest.

My 6th and 7th grade years were pretty rough, being bullied by the older group for being different or whatever the reason was for them to target on me. Some of the fights could have been avoided, though I had this seriously smart mouth that would get me into some situations that I wish I could have bailed out of.

But most of it just had to do with the simple fact I was different and I was a target. This drove me to the point that I hated to go to school for those two years, and it was at this time that one of the biggest turning points of my life happened: I discovered music.

One of the greatest memories I have is when I came home from school after having a really bad day and my dad came home after work and noticed that I was pretty down. He helped me down the stairs to the basement of our house and showed me his record collection, along with one of the gnarliest sound setups ever.

He told me that music helps when you get down and he then showed me how to take out a vinyl and then play it properly. He then walked up stairs and left me to my music where I could just jam and be the biggest rock star in the world.

I could forget about everything that was going on. The first album I grabbed was The Doors' "Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine" and I was hooked from then on. I won't get off topic because I could go on and on about "Rooster - The Basement Years" and the music I discovered by myself with my dad's turn table. I will say this: music literally saved my life.

When the Class of 2000 entered Decorah High School, I really didn't know what to expect because of the memories I had of some of the dudes that use to make my world not very pleasant. But I didn't care. I had music and the band shirts I wore and the music I played that was my badge...my shield, But I soon learned that they had forgotten about those days and had moved on because they had their own thing going on. That went for everyone else as well.

This was about the time that my mom and dad went through a divorce that was very public. When my dad had to leave the house, I was rocked pretty hard. This also marked a time that I'm pretty ashamed of how I handled the divorce, blaming my dad and being pretty ugly when all it would have taken was a simple conversation but to a grouchy 15-year-old kid that was not in the puzzle.

As I moved on from junior high unto high school, I also discovered the music of Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and more through my step dad Todd and his brutal CD collection that I would pick through and keep for myself.

With the high school years came more surgeries and more rehab for my knee, but it was also the first time that I was cleared to play sports. Of course, there were rules on what I could do and not do. I couldn't wrestle or play football, they (the doctors) were pretty nervous about me playing basketball and baseball and tried to focus my attention on some other sport or activity.

I was very involved in band and played the tuba all through school until I graduated. It was very cool to me that the fact that I could make music. I wanted to my own band and believe me I practiced and practiced on guitar and just couldn't get anything going. I was also in our school choir, FFA, our swim team and intermural basketball, as well as being in our school musicals like "Fiddler On The Roof" and "Bye, Bye, Birdie."

So I stayed pretty busy in my high school years and enjoyed them. It was during this time that I was walking home from school and I walked past the KVIK radio studios because the window in the studio was on street level and you could see right in. My mind was blown.

I couldn't make music myself, but I could play music on the radio and bring music to the people. I had so many mix tapes of myself recording my voice mimicking what I heard and always thinking I could do better than them.

Now, how does all of this tie into my core question of 'What advice would you give your 18-year-old self?'

I literally would listen to music 24/7, discovering bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slayer, Marilyn Manson. And yes, I did enjoy me some No Limit Soldiers, Cash Money and got my rap game pretty tight. But I was always looking for new music; I wanted to listen to it all.

Back then, you couldn't just jump on the computer and check YouTube and find music. You had to go look for it either through magazines or word of mouth. I remember seeing a classmate of mine who had some band names written in white out and seeing band logos that I had never seen before, but looked very, very cool.

I remember seeing Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie and others that I can't remember. But I wanted to see what these bands were about and what they sounded like.

This class mate of mine was pretty quiet and kept to himself from what I can remember, but I always would look for his back pack and see what bands he would put back on when the others faded. He was my connection to new music, but I never talked to him about music or asked him anything about his love for music.

What better way to make a bro then over some White Zombie? But I don't have an answer on why I didn't say anything or make any kind of an effort to make a bro.

After I graduated high school, my butt came to Texas literally a month after I graduated and I went to work for the Texas Department of Transportation. I put my dream of being a radio DJ on the back burner.

Fast forward to a couple months ago when I received an invite to attend my 15 year high school reunion. I was pretty stoked at the thought of seeing everyone because I can literally walk down the street and people have a hard time recognizing me. When you get to talking to them and seeing how has treated them, it's pretty cool.

But then I thought against going because I have this stereotype of what I think the reunion could be: that it's an ego swinging contest with the same groups staying tight because it is easy to make that judgement when you only know them from high school 15 years ago.

I had posted a few pictures of old-school me and some bros I grew up with just to get some laughs. Then, I checked out some comments on the Facebook invite and noticed a pop up saying the classmate who introduced me to bands like White Zombie, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson had posted a comment.

This is what he had to say about our 15 year High School reunion:

gee sounds lame, don't think I will be there

I would rather pick up trash off the streets than be there.

Alot of people thought they were hot sh!t back then

and thought they were better than everyone else

but they were not.

Lame. Get A Life People.

I read that statement and immediately felt bad because I felt a bit responsible for the feelings he had about his four years in high school.

I never picked on him or anything like that. I just didn't care to get to know him and talk about something that we had in common: a very, very different taste in music than anyone else.

Now, I'm not saying this to hold myself up at any kind of level. It just sucks that I could have made a bro for life over the love for music. Just because he was a little quiet and different, I chose not to talk to him and followed in the same footsteps of my personal experiences.

Does he think that way, too? Who knows. But I do know this that if could go back and talk to my 18-year-old self, there would be some knots put in my younger self's head.

At 18 years old, I was a mouthy, smart-ass kid that just barely got by with whatever I was doing. I could literally change the mood of a room. This was especially true in band. In my senior year, if I didn't feel like doing anything I could get the whole room to mutiny.

One very disappointing change I had made was turning into a bully. Constantly mouthing off and making other classmates uncomfortable any way I could just to get a laugh from whoever was listening or around. I had taken the negative in my world from what I went through and turned that into making someone else feel just as bad as I did. I also wouldn't stand up for anyone if they were getting bullied. I stayed quiet because either they had bullied me and they were getting what they deserved, or I'd walk by and hope they didn't turn on to me.

If I could go back, I would grab my 19-year-old self and smack myself upside the head SEVERAL TIMES for not sticking up for those that can't or won't because there will be several times you will have to make that choice - whether to stay quiet or stand up for a stranger. I would also grab myself and the bro that introduced me to some of my favorite music of all time and say this:

Look, in 2014 you will be interviewing Rob Zombie because you are a radio DJ and you will tell Rob Zombie how you used to see a bro in high school that had White Zombie written on his back pack and that is how you first heard of the band. That right there was yet another door opening to show you another world of heavy music. Give him props and start up a conversation because if you act like this in 15 years you won't get very far in the career that you have always wanted.

That is a true story, and I did tell Zombie the first time I ever heard of White Zombie. A month later is when he posted the statement.

It will be 15 years on May 22, 2015 that I walked out of Decorah High School. In those 15 years, I still wear my C.T.I. brace (not as much as I should). It has a custom paint job which resembles Dimebag Darrell's "From Hell" Dean guitar.

I still have a few knee surgeries to go. Hopefully my next one will be a full-on knee replacement, but I am still a little young for that for now.

I have been divorced twice, retired early with 10 years in with TxDOT (I stayed invested by not taking out any money, but saying "retired" sounds better). I took my shot at radio in 2008 and I ran with the opportunity to be able to bring music to the people and be on the radio.

I have twin sons -- Zeke and Gabe -- that live in Wisconsin with their mom and step dad. I get to see them every Christmas and the entire summer, which works for us and that is all that matters.

I found my partner in life, someone that supports me no matter what as I chase this crazy rock and roll dream. She is right there even when she has to take a back seat to what I have going on. It all sounds awesome when you read it like that, but getting to this point in my life has been tough.

It is hard enough to make friends when we were growing up and it doesn't get any easier as we get older to make friends. Looking at my 18-year-old self today, I'd say this: stand up for those that can't and be a voice for them; don't ever pass up an opportunity to shake someone's hand; and always say 'hi.' You could end up missing out on more than just a hand shake.