Much can change over forty years, a fact that was recently brought to my attention by a friend who has known me forever. It was exactly forty years ago when I left home for the first time. I moved into a trailer that was 12 feet wide and 60 feet long - 720 square feet. In the hot Mississippi Delta summers, the trailer easily soared above 110 degrees. The cockroaches were as long as my fingers and if I awakened during the night and turned on a light, I could see hundreds scurrying down the walls body-to-body like Pickett's Charge.
When publishers rejected my writing and one literary agent openly mocked it, I didn't give up. I believed in myself and I believed in a higher power. I didn't believe that it was meant for me to live out my life in a trailer park.
I was often marginalized; treated as if I wasn't a human being. I vowed then that I would always treat each person I met, no matter what their stature, social standing or the size of their wallet, exactly the same. It's a promise that I have kept throughout my life.
I lived in that trailer for nearly three years before moving out in search of a better life. It wasn't long before I was living out of my car. Just seven years later, I started the first of two successful computer companies without borrowing a dime.
I've been asked to write my autobiography. When I'm closer to knowing the ending, I just might do that.
Until then, I'll live each chapter as it unfolds.
