GENIUS
In
school, I flunked English every single year: 7th, 8th, 9th,
10th, 11th, and 12th. I’d flunk one semester
and have to make it up every year. So I always had two English classes—that’s
why I’m so good in English!
I had
grown up in and out of about 10 foster homes. My mom was an alcoholic and
married and divorced 7 times. When I was about to graduate from high school, my
mother and stepfather sat me down and said they expected me to join the Navy
and move out. They boxed up my clothes and set them out on the front porch the
day after graduation.
I bought
a 1935 Chrysler, believe it or not, for $15 dollars. I got in the car one
evening, not knowing where I was headed, just driving away from San Diego, my
hometown. I saw a golf course with a restaurant called the Royal Tahitian. So I
decided to park in the parking lot and go in and buy a candy bar and think
about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
I saw a
“help wanted” sign and so I asked the hostess what they were looking for. She said
a bus boy, and it paid $1.15 an hour, which was below minimum wage. I said, “Yeah,
I can do that.” Because I had no place to live and no place to go, I worked two
shifts, sixteen straight hours, and then I’d go out in the parking lot where my
car was and sleep. So that’s what I did for two weeks until I got paid and
could afford a hotel room.
In the
meantime, there was a big wrestling tournament that was coming up in Imperial
Valley and I knew that 99% of the kids would be college kids, from USC, UCLA,
and junior colleges. So I thought I’d like to wrestle some of these college
kids and see how I could do (I was captain of the wrestling team in high
school). I went out to the tournament, wrestled it and won.
When I
finished the last match I went over to get my gear together. This guy came up
to me and introduced himself as the wrestling coach from BYU. He asked me where
I was going to go to college and wrestle. I said I wasn’t going to college, and
he said, “Why?” and I said, “Well first of all you have to be a genius to get
into college, plus I don’t have the money.” And he said, “Well if I could give you
a full-ride scholarship, would you come to BYU up in Utah?” I said, “What’s a
full-ride scholarship?” He said, “It means the college would pay for your
tuition and books and a room for you to live in plus board—food every day.” I
thought, “Man!” and so I said, “Yeah,
you bet I would.”
So I gave
him my address and everything and went back up to where I was living near Pamona,
California. After, I kind of just blew it off and thought it was just a “pipe
dream.” But low and behold one day I came home from work and there was a letter
of admittance and another letter awarding the full-ride scholarship from BYU. So
I thought, “I’ll go up and see how I can do wrestling for a college and see a
little bit of the world. Then after they see how stupid I am and flunk me out,
I’ll go back to my normal life.”
So one
evening, I finished work at one o’clock in the morning and walked out to the
freeway, Route 66, and hitchhiked all the way to Provo, Utah. This was January,
and when I got into Utah a little past St. George, it had been snowing and it
was bitterly cold, and I just had on tennis shoes, and some Levis, a t-shirt
and a light windbreaker jacket and so I was just freezing. A farmer with no
windshield had dropped me off in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
As I
walked along it got colder and colder—my feet were numb, my hands were numb,
and my face was numb. I started becoming really worried about freezing to
death. I thought I heard a car coming up the highway, so I turned around and was
walking backwards looking for it, and I stumbled onto something. I looked down
at it, and saw it was a cow that was frozen stiff with its legs frozen straight
out, and that really scared me.
So for
the next couple of miles as I walked, I started thinking about what my friends
might think at my funeral if I froze to death. I had picked up a couple of
toothpicks at a diner I had stopped at, and so I decided I would put the
toothpicks inside my mouth in such a way as to force me to smile. I got kind of
a kick out of that, thinking that if I died with a smile on my face, it would
really be funny at the funeral.
But I was
able to make it all the way up to Provo. So that’s how I started college. I graduated
a few years later and went on to a graduate degree in Public Administration. I
married a beautiful girl I met at college, and we had six children. One of my
daughters had Cam Briner Evans, my namesake. As you can see, Cam is awesome and
really smart (and good looking), so my second chance
at getting a good education got my life started on the right foot.
Turns
out, I’m a genius.
And so
are you.
Thank
you!
