Beating The Odds First of all...I am NOT writing this because I'm looking for your pity. I have always, and will always have a great disdain for the pity-seekers of this world. This story that I'm about to tell is all about what the title proclaims in bold face...beating the odds. It's a tale about overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles and surviving. If this story gives one person that faces the same challenge a little hope for a brighter day to come...so be it! My job will be done. Forty years ago I started suffering from a rash of seemingly unexplainable bloody noses and black eyes. I was taken to a specialist after our family doctor admitted to being stumped as to what was causing these chronic symptoms to appear. After extensive tests, I was diagnosed as having an inoperable and malignant Smartassinoma growing in the left frontal lobe of my brain. It had, by this time, grown so large and was so invasive that the doctor told my parents that there was no real hope that I would live a long and productive life. He said that with the current state of affairs I would be extremely lucky to live through the next six months. I, of course, wanted a second opinion. I thought that if I had just six months left that I wanted to see as much of the world around me as possible. I started hitchhiking around the country. It just so happened that I was in the Deep South when I finally got my second opinion. I had a police officer that had a neck with such color that it would make a fire truck appear to be a shade of pink stop by the side of the road to check me out. He asked for I.D. which he called in over his radio for wants and warrants. While we waited for the results we had quite a little chat. I should think that it would come as no surprise that with my long hair and his red neck that our chat was a little on the combative side. His radio squawked an all clear on my name and he handed me back my I.D. His parting words were my long-awaited second opinion, "Boy...one o' these days yo' mouth is gonna gitchoo kilt!" The six months passed, not without the occasional return of usual symptoms, but they did pass. Then another six...then another, etc. So here I sit today, with that same and possibly even more malignant Smartassinoma crowding my brain, but still drawing breath. I'm not saying that this affliction will not be the reason for my demise...yesterday, when he cut me off, I flipped off the driver of a pick-up truck with a fully stocked rifle rack in his rear window. All I'm saying is that, so far, I've beaten the odds.
