Seeing Light with Darkness

By Shane Crown

My life is filled with interesting stories from first grade all the way to present-day 2017like how I lived with twenty-twenty vision until I was seventeen and that age I was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration also known as Stargardt. I write about the person I was with vision, and I write stories about how I was after my visual disability. This also includes the struggles I endured and how I overcame them. The stories I wrote are important to who I have become now. I had to become a bad person to become a good person. The rainbow high section of the book changed my perspective for the LGBT community. Seeing blindly has different meanings to me. What does it mean to you?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543463071

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Shane Crown.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2017916874

ISBN:                  Hardcover                  978-1-5434-6305-7

                            Softcover                     978-1-5434-6306-4

                            eBook                          978-1-5434-6307-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/02/2017

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Contents

The Second Grade

Third Grade

Third Grade

Fourth Grade

Fifth Grade

Junior High

Sixth Grade

Rainbow High

Dark years

I’ll be writing this book as if you were right next to me. Like a casual conversation, or how I like to say, bar talk. All the stories I will be writing about are one hundred percent true. Ninety percent of the names will be changed for obvious reasons. Don’t worry, people, those who know me, I will not throw you under the bus (unless I don’t like you, haha!)

If you weren’t there for the story physically, you won’t know who was really in it. I will elaborate as much as possible and give you the most detailed stories I can give you. It will go in segments: first with elementary school, junior high, Rainbow High (high school), my dark twenties, and the present. It’s basically about my life and experiences. Some are good, some are funny, and some are very sad. I hope you enjoy.

First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Shane Crown. I was born on November 4, 1981. I’m a proud Scorpio, six foot even, and about 215 pounds. Right now, 2017, I’m planning to get on a diet, haha! I can think on the fly for jokes. I’m a very social person. I can go to a bar by myself and come out there with five friends, and 90 percent of the time, that happens. People always tell me their problems, to which I always give them advice, and they always take it. I see them down the road in life in which their life has turned out better than it was before (their life), but see, that’s me and my kind heart. I love to help people, I’ve been told many times, Tienes bueno sagre. In Spanish, this means I got the good blood. Everywhere I go, I always get random people talking to me about their problems and I’m okay with it. If I can help them out, I will.

I have many philosophies. One of them is that I give my time and money to the people who deserve and need them. I’m nice when I want to be and rough when I have to be. I’m the type that will give my last five bucks to children, especially the ones with single parents, whether they have one father or one mother, I want them to know there are people out there who care. So I will get down on one knee, take out my wallet, and say, Here you go. Tell your mommy to get you some ice cream or something, and take care of her, she loves you a lot, and don’t forget you’re going to college, right? Haha, and they always say yes.

I also help out the parents, whether they’re separated or having problems in their relationships. I tell them, if you can’t make up or stop fighting in front of your kids, it’s going to damage them later, try to be friends at least and get along for your kids. I tell them that once you had your first child, it’s not about you anymore, your priorities change, it’s your child, you got to teach your child how to love. I always tell them you’re better than that. I also tell them try not to curse in front of your kids, little things like that. And I don’t tell them how to raise their kids; that’s not my place. I tell them because I love them so they can better themselves. I feel like once you better yourself as a person you’ll better your world. Once you’re happy with yourself, your world will be happy.

To me at this point of my life, I know people got problems. But if they have the solution to the problems, there is no problem, but here’s the problem: if people just have common sense, they can prosper more. To make the right decisions, to better themselves in life, I can’t stress that enough.

I just wish people weren’t so damn stubborn, so they can realize how better they can become for themselves, their family, and friends for that matter. Oh well, I can only do so much. I can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves.

That’s just a little summary about me. The following stories will be more of who I am in detail. Now I am going to go back, waaaaaaaay back as much as I can remember and start from elementary. Now these stories are not in order but are in the same time period. My age during elementary was from six to eleven years old. So let’s begin, shall we?

It was 1986 to 1987, my school years at Wilson Elementary in the Rio Grande Valley in a small border town called McAllen, Texas, ten miles north of the Mexico border. I was about six years old and in the first grade. I actually still got a picture of my teacher, Ms. Science. She gave a picture to her students at the end of the school year. She was a very pretty teacher, who happened to get married that summer. I also remember she gave us all a kiss on the cheek on the last day of school and a big hug.

The thing that I remember most from her personally is when the class got rowdy or wouldn’t listen, she would fake her headaches. She would be like Ahh Ahh! Ahhhh! My head hurts. Why can’t you all just calm down! I told y’all three times to quiet down. Then the tears came too. You all make my head hurt when you all don’t listen! and then sobbing while she walked back to her chair.

Well, you know what? It worked, for the most part. We all got scared and especially quieted down. It worked every time. Good job, Ms. Science. Hahaha!

I have to write about this girl. Well, the best way to describe her is, well, have you ever seen those love story movies where a little boy and a little girl grow up together? Well, I had one. We will call her Ica.

We had class together till the second grade, and what was cool about her was that she had a sister. And her sister was friends with my sister. Best friends actually. So I saw Ica off and on my life. She was the girl I was in love with forever, haha, at least I thought. Whenever her name was mentioned, my heart got warm and fuzzy just thinking about her. She turned out to be very beautiful but, we will come back to her later.

When I was in Ms. Science’s class, I always wanted to be different. Individually different, not to be a follower. Doing what I wanted do. The word cliché wasn’t a big part of my life.

For example, we were coloring frogs, and of course, everyone colored their frogs green. Ms. Science looked at mine and said, Wow different, but unique, since I colored my frog rainbow. Yup rainbow, because I didn’t want to be cliché, even though I didn’t know what that word meant at that time. Now I value my opinion. If someone would tell me go eat there it’s good, I would tell them Hmmmm, we will see, I have to find out for myself.

The Second Grade

Ahhhhh, man. You know, just thinking about this just makes me stronger … well, emotional. Hmmm, well my teachers, I say it in plural because I had two of them. It was like a tag team, good cop and bad cop, Starsky and Hutch, Rambo and his trusty bow. You get what I’m saying. They were pretty old, like they took both of them out of retirement. I think because they had just built a new Wilson elementary school, which was two stories and needed more teachers at that time.

Well, they were strict; for example, they would hit my hands on the desk because I would talk too much.

In that class I got detention because I was late coming from lunch. Sigh. Man I remember I was frightened to tell my dad, that when I was with my teacher I even cried, so that he wouldn’t give me detention. But nope, that didn’t work, so I got it anyway. I went home that day, I didn’t even tell my mom. We were eating dinner and I told my dad. Oh man, when he saw the detention, my dad yelled at me and damn did I get an ass whooping that day.

See, what no one knew in that class but the classmates. I was getting picked on every day for that year. I never told anybody because I thought it was normal. I didn’t think it was bad. It was two guys named Daniel. We’ll call them The Daniel boys. One had blond hair and the other black hair. They would represent a gang and always made that same gang sign everywhere they could to whoever messed with them, because in elementary, it’s class versus class. So many times during lunch, the majority of the time the game we played with the guys was Get Shane. The point of the game was to chase him down, beat him, and kick him when he was on the floor. And guess who Jesse was every time we played? That’s right, ME! Because they picked on me, hit me, and when we played with students from other classes and we lost, the Daniels came to me and blamed me for the loss and hit me upside the head.

See, I didn’t know that was bullying. Like I said, it was the norm for me at that time of my life, that year was a bad year in my life. Those two kids could have traumatized me. I am so glad they didn’t and I still remember their faces. Now as an adult I wonder to myself how they were raised.

In between those years we lived on Beach Street, McAllen, Texas. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment, with a big living room. My parents went out a lot and left us there at the apartment. My sister is a year and a half older than I am, for that reason I call her big brother. So big brother would beat me up a lot, because I guess there was not much to do.

When our parents took us to the park, she would always be the one to spin. For instance, she told me, Shane, get on the merry-go-round, I’ll push you! with an evil grin on her face. So as a little brother I always listened to her. Mind you, I don’t know how to express how strong she was. And her hands were bigger than her body. When I would try to run away from our scuffles, she hit me on my back while I was trying to get away and she would leave a big handprint on my back, not to mention make me fly ten feet. So the merry-go-round. I’m on it because I trusted her with my life. She started pushing. I don’t know if you remember being on one, but damn I was holding on for dear life every time I went on I would tell her to stop, but she didn’t listen, and she didn’t stop till she felt like it and laughing at me like a wicked little girl, enjoying my agony every time spinning and spinning and laughing, and then the tire swing, same thing, but smaller. She told me, Get on Shane, I’ll push and I’d be like, okay I will. She would spin that tire till her heart’s content with me holding on for dear life. Maybe that’s why I don’t go on the teacups in the amusement park in San Antonio Texas, called Fiesta Texas. Those weren’t the only things she traumatized me on. I’ll get to those later.

Third Grade

The 1987–88 school year. I was about six and we had just moved out of the Beach Street apartment and moved to some apartments on Ware Road and Harvey. Of course that meant we had to also change schools. We went to McAuliffe Elementary. So new school, new friends.

So I guess I will start at the Ware Road apartments before I jump into the school stuff. Well, when we moved in, there was a hood full of kids at that time, I say about forty of us. We played football, baseball, and many