Steven Littlejohn:  

I never graduated... I had to quit school and go to work. I was kind of not liking school because I didn't really want people to know what I was going through at home, or homes. Mr. Theilman, the electronics teacher saw me sleeping in the park at Lake Elizabeth one morning (his dog licked my face and woke me up) and asked me if I'd be in class that day. I said no and never went back. Too embarrassed. Then I had two failed marriages, one in California when I was 18, and another in Tennessee at 25. That one lasted 9 months. We had a kid and she said that she'd make more from the government with me gone and she was right. But now I am married and have been for almost 24 years (May). I have 10 kids, 8 of them boys. The ages are from 20 to 2 years old. My oldest in in college at BGSU. My next oldest goes there next year. His GPA in high school is over 4 and the college kid is 3.71. Even if I had graduated from high school I would have had to stop helping them with the homework when they were in the 9th grade. He does calculus and I do calluses. Daniel, my 12 year old is the first to like baseball. Been waiting a long time for that to happen. Cheyanna, my daughter, like basketball and volleyball. She was 14 yesterday and is 5 foot 7. She tans easy like I do. It's the Native American in us. All in all it has been the tale of three lives for me. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Drinking, divorce, cussing, rejections...a country song. But now, for the last 14 years, it's been totally cool. Once you discover what love really is and your wife or husband becomes your friend, your BEST friend, it changes everything. And once the emotional ties develop more stronger, even the sexual activity totally puts the "younger days sex" to shame. So we have a cow that I have to get killed, but it outgrew the trailer I was going to take it to the butcher in. It's a 4 mile walk, but I don't think it would follow me even with a ice cream bucket full of corn (also known in this family as a vomit bucket). This is my biggest problem in my life. Not bad with this many kids. Lots of driving the 5 miles to the school for practices and games and all. I never did drugs. Just Jim Beam. I smoked until 1986. I quit because I was playing mud volleyball and my chest hurt so bad. That was on a Sunday. Then on Tuesday I burped really loud (it was like a quick chest massage) and the pain went away. So I lit up a smoke and took two hit off it, and then thought that if that was what lung cancer felt like, I didn't need it. So I spit on the end of the lit cigarette to put it out, and I still have that cigarette and the rest of that pack. Heck, they're worth a lot of money these days. To think I used to hunt coke bottles every morning before work in Tennessee just to buy a pack of them with the money at 3 cents a bottle. If I had any regrets in school, I think it was the way I treated Mrs. Nygren in the 7th or 8th grade math class...Expand for more