Michael Green:
CLASS OF 1982
Middleborough High SchoolClass of 1982
Middleboro, MA
Gordon CollegeClass of 1986
Wenham, MA
Michael's Story
Some of you might remember that, in high school, I was a nerd/geek/whatever you wanted to call it. That hasn't changed much.
After high school I went to a small college north of Boston. I enjoyed what I was learning, even though my grades didn't show it. I also was learning a lot outside of classes. After three years, the college and I came to mutual decision: I wanted to learn what I wanted to learn, which didn't really work when trying to choose a major. Also, the college didn't like my GPA. So, that was that.
I went to work for Strawberry Records, as an assistant manager. The manager was cool. He worked as a DJ, and would order some dance track singles. Sometimes he would play them in the store. Then I went to work for a small bookstore called Readers Market. It was a division of, not Barnes & Noble, but the other big bookstore at the time. Readers Market was located inside of certain Kmart's.
In, I guess, 90, I went to San Francisco to visit friends. San Francisco was kind to me, and I enjoyed the atmosphere a lot. In spring of 91, I moved to SF. I stayed there for about a year, then got a job at a Barnes & Noble just south of San Rafael. I ended up moving to Greenbrae, which is just south of San Rafael. After a couple of years though, the manager and I had a disagreement and I left Barnes & Noble for a small independent bookstore, as a manager. The bookstore doubled as a postal annex, which was fun. Selling books at one register, and stamps at the other.
All this time, from 91 until 97, I was also working at the Northern California Renaissance Faire, RPFN for short. I was the assistant manager of a games booth. RPFN would start setting up booths towards the end of July; the Faire would start at the end of August or beginning of September and run for eight or nine weeks. In all, about 12 weeks on weekends. I also joined a small singing and acting group that worked small, one weekend faires around the state. I guess there were five that we went to.
At the beginning of April 1997, we had gone to one in Tulare, about an hour and a half south of Fresno, and about a 5 hour drive from the Bay Area. W...Expand for more
e were on our way back, and the driver of the van that I was in was changing the radio station, when someone apparently yelled that she was drifting into the grass median. She overcorrected, and the van either flipped or rolled four times.
The people in the driver's side were mostly okay. Scrapes and bruises for the most part, although the driver did break her arm. The passenger's side wasn't so lucky. The person in the front seat died instantly. The person in the middle seat ended up with some broken ribs, a punctured lung, and other miscellaneous broken bones, scrapes and bruises. He was in ICU for five days, and then another week on the regular floors. Two months later, he went skydiving for the first time
I wasn't so lucky. I only broke two bones, one in my right index finger, the other the fifth cervical vertebrae in my neck. Between hospitals and rehab, I spent 4 1/2 months learning how to breathe and move again.
I am a complete quadriplegic/tetraplegic. I have full sensation at my shoulders, down to nothing at my fingertips. From mid chest down, I can't feel anything. I'm lucky that I don't get sick very often, except for UTIs. Those I don't really notice until I'm hallucinating; I generally spend a couple of days in the hospital when that happens.
Just to keep my geek credentials, I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking for dictation and movement on the computer, and I started playing Dungeons & Dragons again about seven years ago
Since I moved out here, I've lived in San Francisco, Greenbrae, Alameda, San Leandro, and now Pleasanton. Most I've only lived in for two or three years at a time, although Pleasanton has been almost 13 years now (as of October 21).
I've made friends, and lost some; in the last three years, my three best friends have died – a coronary in the doctor's office (he had a DNR), one from metastasized colon cancer (get your: screenings done!), And one from an accidental drowning (it really was accidental – they wrung 20 pounds of water out of the 20 pound knit coat). Now we've got this novel coronavirus and Covid 19. A couple of my friends have it.
How has your life been going?
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