Charles (Colby) Lewis:  

Hey I'm currently living in Las Vegas, NV. I've been fortunate enough to be able to travel thanks to my family and the military. Recently returning home from a stay in Japan and I have to honestly say that one doesn't really know who he is until he has nothing. Being so far from home and the things that were familiar to me has given me a new perspective in my life and I value every little thing, moment and situation I am given. Now rewind... I was born in Virginia. Went to Butts Road Primary school for a few years, but went by my nickname "Colby",.. then to Crestwood Elementary for a few years. Everywhere I went, I was known as the "class clown". I was promoted to "School Clown" at Crestwood and had the best time of my life there. In school I had a deep passion for Science and history. I had a good group of friends that I kicked it with in and out of school. I stayed in trouble because I had a problem with keeping comments to myself but I was a kid. What do you expect? Some of my favorite teachers were Mr. and Mrs. Benson, Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Callahan(boy she was fiooooone!). I rolled with a lot of people, like my cousin Justin Cuffee, Diante and Donnell Walton, Sheena Parker, Brandy Norwood, Gregory Major, Gerome Taylor, Justin Powell, April Hines, Toccorra Perry, Diana Mulvahill, Lynn Franchesky, Charity Wilder....and a lot of others. We left Virginia after the 1992 school year(5th grade) and I started my career as a military brat. From 1992, new start, new state I made the best of my situation by studying really hard and learning my environment. I started taking computer classes, joining social debate groups and started taking art classes. I was coached for 2 years by Ms. Foxx at Hand Middle school back in 1993-1995 who instilled in me that we can be whatever we want to be if we allow ourselves to dream and to see it to the end. And with her support and mine, I won the Columbia South Carolina Art Award for our school in 1994 and even had two of my pieces shown in an art museum downtown. It was awesome. After she helped pull my God given talents out, I started making friends and it was smooth sailing from there. I did really well in school, got a computing applications certificate, everything was fine....until I met that school's "school clown". Kaji Belle. From the moment we laid on eyes on eachother, we knew we'd be good friends in and out of school. We'd make our classes laugh, make our teachers laugh(when they weren't annoyed at our outbursts and joking on other classmates), even eachother with the jokes we played. I even caught the attention of a girl Michelle Bethea, aka, Black Sally, and we hooked up for a while. The girl had jokes like you wouldn't believe. Got into my first fight with Manny, a senior(while I was a sophomore);, but it was broken up(thanks to my boy Vance Vorhees at the time). Then another fight because the "school bully" at that time (Mel Wise), was seeing a girl that was also seeing me. I didn't care cuz she was fine, but word got out that we were kickin it and we ended up face to face infront of the school at the end of the day one day. Of course the whole school was out there. I was 5'5, barely 100 pounds and at the time he was like 6'1, 200 pounds....or seemed to be. He threw his punch, I ducked then it was broken up(boy those Karate lessons came in handy). Yea, those were the days. The military then sent us to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Father's Day, 1996. From 1996, we settled down at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the moved near Raeford Road, the street that ran parallel to Seventy-First High School. This was probably one of the most difficult moves for me because the next 4 years of your life count, and a lot. I didn't know anyone, was stuck in-between my parents divorce, my little sister and I not getting along, it was a very trying time period for me and I dealt with it the best way I knew how. Upon starting 9th grade I did the best I could to make good grades and just be a good son to my mom. It was just me, her and my little sister. I started taking advanced classes, track and Spanish (with Mr. Turner). I don't know if he was actually Hispanic or not, but he had it way of making the class easy, and difficult at times. I was so consumed with doing the right thing that I didn't reach out to make friends. I guess I didn't care. Close to the end of the year I finally did...Expand for more