The other event I spoke at was the Chemawa High School graduation. Chemawa is a federally run boarding school for Native American students from throughout the United States. Many of the students wore really beautiful and colorful native outfits. It was gratifying to see the pride and emotion of the students, staff and their parents.

I was inspired by the passion exhibited by the young Native American students and the elderly residents. Very cool events.

What a great country we live in!!

I have always been different and have been made aware of it since my earliest recollections. Each day the message is driven home: a person staring at me, a stranger on a plane feeling compelled to buckle my seat belt, someone asking “what happened?” I am never allowed to forget that I don’t have hands.

I am different in another way too—I am hyper competitive. I will race you to the car, try to be the first one to unlock the door, and see if I can kick a ball the farther than you. I can’t tell you whether I come by my competitiveness naturally or if it has been born of a desire to prove I can do things as well as anyone else, but it has shaped who I am. I didn’t want to be called handicapped, I didn’t want a handicapped parking pass, and I didn’t want to compete in the Special Olympics. It’s not that there is anything wrong with any of those things, but for me, I needed to ignore my problem and figure out ways to overcome my situation. If I was going to be the best, I wanted to be the best among everyone,without any conditions or caveats.

I became good at figuring things out. Soon it was no longer about just figuring out a way to do things I needed to survive, it was about discovering what I could figure out. When I turned sixteen, it wasn’t about learning to drive a car—that seemed too simple—I wanted to drive a manual transmission. And though I can’t tie my shoes, I saw no reason why it should stop me from climbing a mountain, or belaying someone as they rappel off a cliff. It is an ability that has served me well throughout my life. I wasn’t in search of an adrenaline rush; I just wanted to have a chance to do things “normal” people do, because in my mind, I was normal.

When I graduated from college, I was aware that having no hands was not a free pass. I had to find a job and make a living. So I looked for something I could do, confident that there was a career out there for an undersized linebacker who had spent his life creating a new definition for “manual dexterity.” Teaching and coaching interested me. Due to my time in front of those youth groups, I felt I would be good at it and, after a semester of student teaching and coaching, I found out I was right. Still, it wasn’t like anyone had explained to me how I might navigate a job interview given “my situation,” and there were no classes in my teaching program that addressed the various ways to introduce my handicap to a class of thirty-five. I finally came to the conclusion that teaching was like anything else—if you were confident and competent, people would trust you could do your job. So I would just ignore the fact that I held the chalk with two wrists and start teaching history. As long the students didn’t ask, I wasn’t going to tell. Eventually, like the kids who had been my friends in school, my students and colleagues figured out that it was a non-issue. And I had figured out that I was a teacher.

I was becoming older, wiser, and more mature and I came to realize a very important truth: people are really hungry for a good story. And whether I believed it or not, my story was a good one.

That brings me to the purpose of this blog. Why blog? To me, it always seemed a little presumptuous to write a book about my life (let alone a blog), but after each speech, people would ask, “Do you have a book?” and my answer was always no. Other times something funny, weird, or ridiculous would happen to me and my fellow coaches would joke, “Hey, that should go in the book!” I must admit, I have had a unique and blessed life. This blog will become an extension of my book. Like many people, I fight the same battle everyday—mine just happens to be living without hands. Like many people, I know what it is like to be counted out, stereotyped and discriminated against. Like many people, I know what it’s like to fight, claw, and scratch for every gain. I have worked with many of these people in a quest to build a successful team and my experiences have given me a deep appreciation about what is possible in life. It has given me an appreciation for the human spirit and our ability to do more than we ever thought possible. I have come to realize that success is defined at the level of the individual, but I also believe that each of us has unlimited potential. We have the opportunity to redefine success every time we achieve it.

So, this is my story and why it has been written. It is my hope that you will find something of value within this blog, and I pray that it will be useful in your life.

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