Chapter 1

Who I Am

I am going to talk about who I am by first explaining who I was; because a great change has occurred within me to make me who I am now. A problem that I had for a number of years was little to no self-esteem; and looking back on it, I can see a couple of things that made me that way.

The first factor was my weight. Being born at over 9 pounds, I was always bigger than the other kids. This didn’t really count against me that much until third grade, however. I believe that this grade was significant because that is where social circles first emerged; though I never found myself in one. I tried to make up for this by befriending my teachers, but even that proved rather inadequate as time went on. I figured out how things worked really quickly. You see, the other kids, they could make fun of me to boost up their own self esteem. They could get away with it too, because I was different than everybody else, everyone could trash on me. One experience I still remember vividly happened on the way home from school. I walked home the same way a lot of kids did. On this particular day, I was being followed by a group of four or five boys in my grade. They came up on me fast and proceeded to hit, kick, and spit on me, all the while calling me names like "Fat Boy John". Sure I tried to get away, but with weight generally comes a lack of speed, so it was some time before they actually gave up the chase. I ran home screaming and crying. This event went through my mind every day for six years, over, and over, and over. Can you imagine the impact this would have on the self esteem of and eight year old boy? This is what I dealt with every day of my life, and I never did a thing about it, because that was just the way things were. I had never known any different, so it must have been the same everywhere, right?

The other factor working against me was moving. Between kindergarten and seventh grade I moved nine times. This made it difficult for me to learn to interact with kids my own age, because during the short time I was in most places, I didn’t have enough time to make friends and set myself up on the social scene; and it would be a long time before I actually would learn to use my people skills. Always moving, I could never count on keeping a friend for any length of time, so I kept none. It wasn’t worth it to find one person who cared, because I knew that in a short while, I’d be gone, and so it was.

During this time period I could have been described as something to this effect: shy, soft spoken, reclusive, no self esteem. It is a grim picture I have just painted, but it has a better ending. You see, since 1989, I have spent at least one week of each summer at YMCA Camp Wapsie. This never had a major impact until the summer of 1996, which I’ll get to in a moment. It did, however, provide an escape from reality, which no one else offered, because there, I was accepted. I was accepted for who I was, and I wasn’t made fun of. Now on to 1996. Each week there are two campfires which the entire camp goes to. At these fires, songs are sung, and fellowship is strong. Out of respect for one of these fires, I stood as I sung, though I was the only one. Soon one of the counselors came up to me and said "You’re cool, you know that?" This statement really caught me off guard. It was possibly the first time I’d ever been called cool, but definitely the first time I’d been called cool for being me. I always thought I had to act like everyone else, wear the same clothes, have the same friends. Then I’d be cool. It never occurred to me that I could be who I wanted to be. From that day on however, things changed. I was no longer going to be made of what other people wanted me to be, I was going to be who I wanted to be, and nothing else. It didn’t matter if I was doing the popular thing, or my own thing, and they could mock me all they wanted, but I knew that someone somewhere, and even if it was just me, someone knew I was cool, just being me. And so my life was changed. I went from being shy and reclusive to being open and outgoing. I cared about myself. I knew that I was important. I had friends. Can you imagine one compliment changing your life forever? This one chance, singular event, not lasting five seconds, coupled with a sudden stop in moves five years ago, changed my life forever.

Now, I was Jeremy Kidd, and that is all I’m ever going to be, because there is not one reason why anyone is any better than anyone else, and I know that I am cool, because one counselor, at the end of a long summer, took five seconds out of her day, to impact my life forever.