Where Did it Start?

It all started on a Fool’s Day. That right there should say it all. My mother was carrying late, a few days past her due date for her first-born. My father was in the Army at the time, so it was only logical she would travel to the base for her appointments. She was twenty-four, my father twenty-eight. Young, no more than high school degrees, barely able to take care of themselves, let alone the storm of energy and chaos about to come their way. The Army doctor, barely out of medical school himself, told my mother that her baby would have to be induced, that something was strange about its placement and that she should get her husband there immediately. It took three doctors getting onto the phone to convince my father this wasn’t an April Fool’s joke.

I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. Barely breathing, grossly underweight, my mother didn’t get to hold her baby for the first few hours of its life. But this doesn’t end the story… not by a long shot. For you see, this baby was a fighter, a warrior from day one, and there’s one thing that can be said about warriors… they don’t know when to quit.

Within no time at all I was off like a shot, barely able to be contained. My father has said that I learned how to walk one day, then I was running the next, and I haven’t stopped since. I had a pretty happy childhood. My father, a victim of abuse in his own childhood, wanted nothing but the most secure and safest home for his kids he could muster. My mother, an independent woman by every definition of the phrase, was a mother bear with her cubs; stern when needed, warm and welcoming anytime. My parents made many sacrifices for my sister and me growing up, more than I realized at the time. They kept up with our endless energy. I was always doing more than one thing at a time growing up: School, Boy Scouts, Band, Drama. My parents taught us independence, to question everything, to never stop learning, and to respect everyone and everything. It was a wonderful way to grow up… almost too wonderful.

The drawback of having a sheltered childhood, is that someday those walls have to come down, and mine came crashing down on September 11, 2001. I was in my junior year of High School. I was wondering who I would take to the Winterfest dance in a month. I was worried about an upcoming Biology test (mostly because I hadn’t studied for it one bit). I was worried about petty, selfish things. Then I watched those towers come down. I watched those people die. The news played it over, and over, and over again. I realized, very harshly, that the world was about more than just myself. The world had some really horrible people in it, who were willing and able to do horrible things. But, I also watched the after effects of that day. I watched people come together unlike ever before. I watched rescuers scour through rubble to find anyone they could. I watched celebrities, politicians, musicians… Americans; grieve, and rage, and mourn… together. I knew then how my life was going to be spent. I would spend it honoring others, serving others, trying to make up for the massive hole left by those thousands of people who were stripped from us.

At the time, I was mostly angry. I vowed to join the military, like my father before me, and I would personally put a bullet through Bin Laden’s head. (I was still pretty naive as you can see). I joined the Army as soon as I was able, on September 14th, 2002. At the time, I had to be “signed” over to the army by my parents because I wasn’t of legal age to make my own decisions. My mother was not very willing, but knew her son was the type who would not be deterred once he put his mind to something. My father only signed on two conditions: 1. That I attend college as soon as I was able, and 2. That someday I achieve a rank where if he had still been serving, he’d have to salute me. Both promises I would someday achieve.

I would never see the mountains of Afghanistan. The Iraq Conflict began in 2003, shortly before I graduated high school. By December of that year I was in Baghdad. We were shot down as we came into the country, a sort of “welcome to the war” gift from the insurgency. The Grim Reaper and I would run into each other a lot over the next few years. Things like that stay with you. There’s a part that never seems to recover, and a piece of you remains behind while a dark hole takes its place. I came back from my first tour a different person I think. Maybe not fully grown, maybe not yet a man, but definitely no longer a boy.

I was somewhat cavalier after I returned. I was convinced at the time that I was not going to survive into my thirties. With two wars going on and I in a prime position to redeploy at any time, it was easier just to assume the worst and then prepare myself and my family for it. I did want to fulfill my promises to my father first however so I applied and went to college at a small Baptist university near home and enrolled in their ROTC program. I found that I did exceedingly well at “acting” like a leader. I didn’t wholeheartedly enjoy the burden of responsibility, but I did enjoy getting results. I have always liked being a problem solver. When something was wrong, I would usually take the initiative to fix it. Being in a leadership role, seeing a problem, sending my teams on a mission to fix it, that’s what I excelled at I think. I genuinely cared for my troops, took care of them, sheltered them, developed them. I knew that taking care of those under my command would result in their loyalty and would make them work harder for me than for anyone else. I had been in their shoes, I knew what kinds of leaders I wanted, and I was very talented at acting like one of those leaders.

The problem came when my superiors didn’t seem to care as much for their people… they cared about results. About image. About themselves. When I graduated college, I was almost hindered from commissioning because a few hardcore instructors felt I couldn’t make the cut, and so sabotaged my final physical fitness test. I appealed for a second test and was granted one by other cadre from a different school to grade it. I walked away from ROTC a victor, but whose trust in their higher ranking official’s never recovered. I very quickly deployed again, this time with a platoon under my command, and was given the responsibility of protecting a Special Forces compound on the Iraq/Iran border. That tour was far worse than my first. Death was constantly looking over my shoulder, I waiting for the day he would decide it was time. We were rocketed constantly, danger around every corner. We lost some good soldiers on that trip. Brave young men who thought that dying for their cause would bring their country honor. That war somehow breeds heroes, when all it does is makes corpses and broken old men. I’m not sure how, but I made it through that entire tour without losing anyone under my direct command. Other platoons in my company weren’t so lucky.

When I returned from Iraq in 2012, I had a hard time securing the appropriate awards for my troops. I became mauled with paperwork and red tape. It became harder and harder for people to reply to my emails and phone calls. It was then I realized that the Army had failed me and my people. That the country and the army it seemed wanted to forget Iraq ever happened. That they just wanted it all to go away. That was the day I decided my career in the military was over.

Battling with a self-identity crisis when you’re also dealing with reincorporation into normal life is not something I would suggest to anyone. I was completely and utterly lost. The Army was all I had ever known, all I had ever wanted, and for so long I never thought I’d make it out alive. I met a girl who seemed to have her whole life together and was (much to my surprise) willing to spend time with me despite all my issues. The world made sense around her, the whispers of the past grew silent when I was looking at her face. She took care of me like no one but my family ever had. Maybe it was time to stop thinking about myself once again, maybe it was time to start living, rather than planning on dying.

Becca and I were married in July of 2014. Shortly before, I took a chance at an Emergency Medical Technician course and found that I excelled at it. The body, it turns out, is just one giant puzzle. I found that I was pretty good at fixing that puzzle whenever it started going out of wack. I found that I could stay calm in intense situations. I found that a little humor in the right place can make anyone feel better about their shitty day. I found EMS, and my time in the army could not have prepared me better for such a job. Finally, I felt like I was doing something again, solving problems, helping others, doing something meaningful, like I had felt when I was starting out in the army. So this is what I’m doing now.

As far as hobbies I like things where I can escape. Mostly I like writing. I started writing as far back as the third grade. I’ve always had an over-active imagination. I used to make believe I had my own TV channel when I was a kid, and every game I played was a show on that channel. As I grew older and I found more creative ways to spend my time (mostly getting into trouble), I could easily write down my little adventures like they were some mini-series or movie. My friends and I made our own movies growing up and I wrote scripts. In Drama class I’d write monologues, dialogues, I even wrote and directed my own one-act play. By the time I was close to graduating High School I was writing 50-60 page short stories while my peers were struggling with five paragraph essays. The inevitability in writing novels was apparent to everyone who knew me, only problem was… I sucked.

I had ideas, sure, but structure? Please. I knew nothing about plots or tropes or genres. I knew nothing about adding themes or building complex characters. Children’s tv shows had better plot lines than my stories. I never seriously thought about publishing until I was much… much better. That came when I was in college. Studying as a history major helped me immensely, I think. Seeing old civilizations, their governments, their heroes. Reading about the rise and fall of certain leaders and their cultures. It helped me see patterns to human civilization, helped me pick up on the pitfalls and triumphs of our species. I started to question ideas, started to question what ifs, started to wonder like my parents had always pushed me to do when I was young. I started putting these questions into my writings and viola… themes. It started getting out of hand really. I had so many ideas, some of which were possibly dangerous if the wrong person read them, that I decided a pen name was essential. B.C. Johnson was born… in a matter of speaking.

Reading so much for college, I was never much of a reader for recreation. My mother tried to get me interested in reading when I was young. She used to read stories to me before bed. We got up to chapter books before we stopped the practice. I took more enjoyment in spending time with her than in the books themselves. I actually got most of my entertainment growing up from movies. If it’s on film, I’ve probably seen it at least once. I’ll watch bad movies just to see what NOT to do story wise. I also LOVE animation; I’ve had a slight obsession with it while growing up. So, I probably am about 1/8th of Disney’s income at this point.

On par with the animation obsession, is my gaming obsession. I play a ton of video games, probably more than what is healthy. I’m more into solo ones, because of (what else) the story. I don’t play a lot of the games that don’t have story (i.e. racing, sports, shooters). I’d say I’ve learned the most about story telling from Video Games. I know how to balance spectacle with context. I know to focus a story on characters but also to build a vivid and living world. All these things I learned from the greatest video games.

Music, TV, woodworking (occasionally), and spending time with my animals and wife rounds out my time. I have five animals (I love animals, more so than humans I think). Three cats and two dogs I’ve raised since they were 5 weeks old. They make cameos in my writing.

Well that’s it I think. Well, not IT, hopefully I can keep trudging forward for many years to come. My wife and I are thinking about kids soon; I’m also planning on going to paramedic school within the next year or so. I’m still writing and probably will continue to do so until my fingers fall off. I just hope that they can get out there and people will enjoy them.