I was brought up on what some in America’s Midwest refer to as a “dirt farm,” so named because there were no industrial fertilizers used on the land to grow crops—only manure from the farm animals. Grandpa and Grandma (my mother’s parents) immigrated to America in the late-1910s after World War I was over. Grandpa came first and then Grandma a couple of years later, along with two of my aunts—all of them from Slovakia. Grandpa was a farmer before he was conscripted into the German Army. He was conscripted because he had metalworking skills; and because of those skills, he was not assigned to combat. Before he was mustered out, Grandpa was simply permitted to wear his uniform (with the medals that he had earned) for a photograph—a photograph that still hangs on a wall of our home today.

Also because of Grandpa’s metalworking skills, he was permitted to petition to immigrate to the United States. He was sponsored by his brother-in-law, who had immigrated to America before World War I began. As Grandpa described it (in Slovak, of course, while I helped him with various tasks and chores around the farm over the years), he worked all of the metalworking jobs that he could find in Flint, Michigan, after he arrived and while spending his first couple of months living with his brother-in-law. Grandpa proudly described that, because of the shortage of available metalworkers—a shortage caused by deaths resulting both from the war and from the 1918 flu pandemic—he was able to work hard enough to save up and buy the 18 acres that he acquired about 5 miles east of Flint. He then commenced farming after Grandma joined him.

Eventually, there were stalls for four milk cows in the barn that he commissioned to be built out of wood cut from the 18 acres. Cutting the trees rendered the land suitable for crops as well as a two-story farmhouse with a basement, a chicken house with a free-range yard next to it, a corn crib, a shed for the tractor, and another shed for his car—all on about three acres. Of course, Grandpa engaged Slovakian men for all the work. The farm grew field corn in the summer, and there was always one-third of it left fallow for the cows to munch on the grass while providing natural fertilizer. On the other five acres, Grandpa planted winter wheat in the fall, which then sprang up the following spring and was harvested during the summer. Harvested wheat and field corn were hauled in a trailer to Davison to be ground into feed for the animals. That was a “dirt farm.”

I grew up on that farm with my grandparents because Dad was compliant with Mom’s request for me to not live with them after I was about three or four years old. In later years, when Mom felt that I could understand, she explained that she felt that my “hyperactivity” and penchant for taking things apart (but a frequent inability to put those things back together) were better suited to farm life with Grandpa than the three-bedroom house that Dad and his father had built (with the help of an uncle who had married into the family after Dad’s brother died while still a young man). Dad’s father, “Grandpa Nolley,” was a contractor who had escaped the Choctaw Indian Reservation with what was left of his family, including Dad.

Grandma Nolley had 14 kids, only four of whom lived past infancy and into adulthood, which was apparently a frequent and expected occurrence for American Indians of the period. In his later years and after my Grandma Nolley had died (maybe from exhaustion after 14 births?), I remember standing next to Grandpa Nolley and helping him remain upright while he held his hands under warm water in the bathroom until his fingers could sign the receipt for the weekly mortgage payment. Dad paid Grandpa for the mortgage that Grandpa Nolley held as his retirement savings, and Dad accomplished maintenance on Grandpa Nolley’s home and yard while I was with Grandpa in the bathroom.

While I helped hold him up in front of the sink, Grandpa Nolley told me stories of living on the reservations, including the fact that he was athletic enough to escape being dragged to the local stream by entities bent upon “doing God’s work” to baptize the presumably heathen tribe members. Grandma had been caught because she had had to remain with their infant children; so when it was advantageous to her situation to say so, she described herself to be a “Pentecostal.” Grandpa Nolley had described to me that Grandma had to make that declaration because the Indians who refused to “declare for Christ” were held under the water until, eventually, they floated downstream, face down! Now, I seriously doubt the veracity of Grandpa Nolley’s description; but he was proud of describing the “natural” ways that he had been brought up, living among the trees and the animals and the land “before the White Man came!”

Anyway, I grew into many chores as I grew older and stronger on the farm that belonged to my mother’s parents. Beginning in my single-digit years, I was detailed to sneak the eggs gently from under the hens, and Grandma had clientele who stopped by to pay her cash for what I provided from the hens. Still in single digits, I pulled weeds and hoed the vegetable garden while working chicken excrement into the soil—excrement that, eventually, I was also required to remove from the henhouse in the first place. I also picked up fallen fruit from the apple, pear, and plum trees in the fall (“fall”—get it?) for Grandma’s pies and for sale to some of the same customers who bought the eggs. Wild raspberries grew down near the creek, and what I picked of those was also for sale. Grandma made jam and jelly when the fruit was ready, and that’s what went on my peanut-butter sandwiches that I took in my bag lunch for school beginning in first grade. Grandpa had a grapevine that crawled over a trellis that was anchored to the chicken house, and he made wine which he shared with his Slovak buddies. Anyway, I got so good at hoeing rows and picking fruit that my services became available for cash in the neighborhood. And because I was (and still am) frugal, that money was saved up for my first car when I turned 16.

By the time I was nearing double-digit age, Grandpa had trained me in tool use. So, when some or other farm equipment broke down while he and I were tending to the land (e.g., the hay rake that I sat upon so I could pull the handle and deposit rows of hay that had been dried by the sun), I was detailed to run back to the walls of the tractor shed to return with what Grandpa required for the repairs. This was when I began my distance-running career—when I was about middle-school aged—because Grandpa expected me to run to the shed and return quickly with the needed tools.

Now, in my later 70s, I’m still a distance runner… umm, but “jogger” would be a more accurate label these days, as I am turning in times closer to 12 minutes/mile rather than the sub-7-minute times that made me competitive on the cross-country team in the fall and the track team in the spring. I only had to show up on Saturday mornings for cross-country meets in the fall and then Saturday mornings for track in the spring—having completed my chores before leaving for the competition, of course. Those eggs had to be removed from the nests, for example, and I was to provide a bucket of wood for Grandma’s stove so that I could enjoy the products of her cooking sometime after I returned from competition.

Where did the chopped wood come from that Grandma cooked with on her wood stove? Well, from me, of course. Grandpa was always able to find some house or garage that was being torn down to be replaced by a new one, and then he and I would show up while the structure was being dismantled, with the same two-wheel trailer drawn behind his tractor as was used to take corn and wheat to be ground into feed. Wearing thick gloves, Grandpa handled the heavier pieces of wood that would otherwise have been thrown away, and I handled the smaller stuff. Then it was up to me to render all of the wood into pieces appropriately sized for Grandma’s wood stove. When I was younger, I was provided a long ax and a short ax with which to split the wood that Grandpa sawed. When I aged into the double-digits, I sawed the wood on a table saw that sat next to the wood pile. The saw was driven by an AC outlet just inside the henhouse. I worked all summer, every summer, while growing up, sawing and then chopping the wood. I put the product into the spaces between the studs of the unheated back porch such that, by late fall, that chopped wood became the “insulation” for that two-story area that also led down to the basement from the approximately 3’ x 8’ ledge that led to the stairs from the kitchen door. There was a wooden cooler next to the steps that led to the basement. The cooler was built into the ground next to the basement wall, and it held pretty much the same temperature—in the 50s—year round. That cellar was used to store our food as well as the milk that Grandma got, by hand, from the cows, twice daily.

Under those stairs and that ledge, my box of marbles was always handy for me, stored with some other stuff. Oh, yeah, I was a marble player. But rather than the conventional way of ejecting a marble using the thumb, somehow I had acquired the “skill” of pinching my shooter between my thumb and index finger, a skill measured by the accuracy of the shots. So, I acquired quite a quantity of marbles that I won from the other guys in our neighborhood. Two to five of us would play around a circle drawn in the dirt driveway of the house of whichever boy had been voted to be the host. Sometimes, I even drew a crowd of onlookers! Now, 65 years later, I still have a callus on the inside of my index finger from marble-playing those many years ago!

Note that most of us boys were offspring of farmers, and there was some distance between our homes. So, we made arrangements on Fridays, before school was out, as to who was to host the weekend marble-playing. All the families knew each other, and so, quite often, the moms would provide some lemonade and snacks to enrich our competition. My parents also often hosted the marble-playing, as they lived only a couple of blocks “kitty-corner” away from Grandpa and Grandma’s farm. I even slept over at my parents’ place occasionally, to keep in touch.

I started with the baritone (sometimes called the euphonium) during elementary school, with a steel, very used (“banged-up” would be a better description) instrument from what the school owned and provided to me. The band instructor picked the baritone for me to play because—perhaps due to the fitness I had gained by doing all those farm chores—he thought that I could carry it around when need be. And carry it around, I did. Eventually, when I got to high school, we band members would take to the football field on Friday nights at halftime to strut and play and accomplish what had been choreographed and practiced during band sessions the previous week. Yup, I was able to carry that baritone while we marched and positioned ourselves for our halftime entertainment.

My high school was a small one, tucked away way out in “the boonies” of the agricultural area that our families farmed. My high school graduation class was composed of only 34 graduates! As a result, everybody had responsibilities. If you were in the band, then you couldn’t play football or basketball because the band members were responsible for the Friday-evening entertainment. Of course, since both cross-country and track were on Saturday mornings, there was no conflict for me. I was class vice-president in both my junior as well as my senior years, to some extent, because everybody else had already been conscripted for other duties. Even Eddie, who was born with an ambulation disability, was appointed team manager for the football team, the basketball team, the softball team, the baseball team, and track and cross-country! To this day, I feel a responsibility to my culture and my country because of the tremendous advantages that are afforded all citizens of this country who’re willing to partner up with the opportunities that are available to all citizens as a result of a Constitution (as amended) in a representative democracy. Yup, we Americans really do have it made! Am I a patriot? You bet; and I acquired that identity while in high school.

Dad worked day shift while my mother worked evening shift at the General Motors AC spark-plug factory at the eastern edge of Flint, Michigan. So, as time went on, I also drew chores at their place in addition to my farm chores. My sister came along four years after I did, and my brother eight years after that. So, even during elementary school, I was “conscripted” to watch over my younger siblings after I got out of school every day. Mom had to drive to her shift on time, which was a couple of hours before Dad came home from working the day shift. Since the cross-country and track meets were always on Saturdays, I had my weekdays open after school in order to change my little brother’s diapers when needed and watch over the dinner that my mother had started before she drove to the factory to begin work on her evening shift at the assembly line. (My recollection is that she worked on the fuel-pump line.) Dinner was to be ready by the time Dad came home at about 5:30, and the four of us ate together before I was to scamper back to the farm for my evening chores. After that, I did my homework.

I slept in a single bed in the basement of the farmhouse, always awakened by Grandma in the mornings while she put on coffee for the three of us. The water for coffee and everything else in the farmhouse was hand-pumped by me from a well just outside the back door—in winter, spring, summer, and fall. I was to always make sure there was water ready for Grandma’s use in the kitchen, as well as for baths on Saturday nights, and so this was among my evening chores every day. Showers were available just near the gymnasium every school day, of course, following every day’s physical education classes. In addition to my bag lunch, I packed a change of clothing every school day in the mornings so that I wouldn’t stigmatize myself as having body odor. I always tried to negotiate my PE class to be the first one of the day so that I could present clean and fresh during the remainder of the school day. Grandma washed all of our clothing by hand, in the basement; and on weekends of good weather, I hung it out to dry on clotheslines in the backyard between the farm house and Grandpa’s garage.

I was never a breakfast-eater and still am not, despite the considerable urging by various healthcare sources. But I surely had to have my caffeine, and I still do—upwards of four cups a day, which constitutes a considerable portion of what AARP recommends for daily fluid intake. But, of course, I took in water throughout the warm days in between working on the farm chores and activities and, of course, after my distance runs in the sunnier months of spring, summer, and fall. I didn’t need a gym membership to be fit.

Regarding homework, I was provided an unusual “advantage” during my public school years in the manner of “motivation” to engage with my homework. Grandpa and Grandma were old-country frugal in all the ways this might be measured. For example, table scraps were mixed with feed that was ground from the crops grown on the land, and that was mixed with hot water (from Grandma’s stove) for the pigs—and I was their server. Frankly, the pigs were probably my best buddies during my developmental years. Golly, but those pigs would cozy up to me when I arrived with their chow! Anyway, after I completed my chores in the evenings on school days, there was homework, of course. And, as I mentioned, Grandma and Grandpa were frugal.

Well, after they ate the dinner that Grandma had prepared for Grandpa, they headed off to bed (Grandpa to his room and Grandma to her room—I was never able to figure out the reasons why when I was young). This left me to the only light that was permitted to be lit after dark during the fall, winter, and spring months of school. The deal with Grandpa was that as long as I had homework to accomplish, I could leave on the study lamp at my desk while also listening (quietly) to WLS Chicago, which played the music of the time. So, the result was that instead of doing only every-other algebra problem, as assigned by the math teacher, I was honest and did all the problems, for as long as it took—sometimes way into the night while I wrestled with the quantitative challenges as well as how to word English-composition assignments, with a thesaurus at my elbow. It was maybe because of this experience that I acquired superior skills at math, which was also useful for physics, chemistry, and analytic geometry, etc. Also, I accepted “commissions” (for cash) for me to write the term papers of my school chums—I think because the products pretty generally received good grades. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!

Anyway, school seemed to come easily to me. I didn’t know why at the time, but I always did my homework. I always turned it in. I did as told on the days when my teachers encouraged classroom discussions of this and that. I had friends and pretty generally got along with all of my classmates. Grandpa and Dad taught me to respect my teachers; and, along with numerous other examples of me doing as I was told throughout pretty much all of my life, I evidenced respect for my teachers by studying for quizzes as well as studying for exams, all the while addressing them respectfully. Perhaps the result: I pretty consistently obtained good grades right through the completion of my doctoral studies. And I earned those good grades!

My subsequent academic successes led to a neuroscience PhD after a behavior analysis master’s degree. This was useful for what has composed an adult lifetime as a brain-injury-rehabilitation doctor. But was my success the result of an IQ that I had no responsibility for? Was it simply a result of sperm meeting egg? Or did I earn those successes? Other examples of doing as I was told include prescribing brain-injury-rehabilitation plans for hundreds of clients over the past 45+ years, based upon existent scientific literature. I stand on the shoulders of fine researchers as I implement these plans. So, is my success simply the result of an early instigation to “do all the problems” because that allowed me to listen to WLS while leaving my light on? This may be one of those nature vs. nurture issues.

There were plenty of opportunities to set up practical demonstrations of the principles of chemistry and physics around the farm, such as digging in the soil or damming up the creek so I could have a pond into which to put the small fish that I had caught and simply let go. This also encouraged frogs to nest, and the like. Sources of my education were rich, both inside and outside of the walls of the school. I still can’t measure the relative contributions of genetics/birth accident vs. formal and informal education. I was surprised to discover, when I applied for graduate school, that I had a measured IQ in the top 1%! By the way, the Miller Analogies test that I took as part of my master’s degree application was challenged by Educational Testing Service (ETS) because my score was so high that it was deemed to have been a result of cheating! So, I was required to take an alternative version of the Miller. I scored even higher, and so they then left me alone!

Grandpa died while I was still a schoolboy, and then Dad stepped in to dissolve the farm animals and equipment. Golly, did life change after that! My only idea of an adulthood had been to be a farmer. But only the land remained. What was I to do? Well, I felt myself to be inadequate for college when I graduated from high school. I tried a couple of summer classes at the local junior college, and that was sufficient evidence to me that I wasn’t “ready” for that. So, I enlisted in some adventures which eventually landed me in California, where I wound up in Berkeley (or “Buzzerkeley,” according to some “lights” of the time), where I sampled some academic experiences. More important, I began nosing around in regard to “political” matters. I volunteered to “person” (in today’s parlance) a Green Party table, making literature available to passersby. My table was right next to the Young Republicans, and we got along well, sometimes going out for a beer at the end of the day. However, “things happened,” and it turned out that the California Highway Patrol exhibited their own purposes—in response to requests from the UC Berkeley Chancellor and related to our activities—and I was “invited” to not return for classes later that fall of 1964. After promising the admissions director of San Francisco State College (now University) that I had matured as the result of my experiences across the Bay, I was permitted to enroll at SFSC and to complete my undergraduate degree there. Whew.

While in California about this time, I fell in love with my first wife, and we were wed and began a life together. A good buddy of mine came up from Camp Pendleton to be my best man. My wife had had a child out of wedlock before meeting me. Because it was custom back in those days to deprive females of an education after they became pregnant, she completed her high school education after we were married, while I simultaneously tended to my undergraduate classes at college during the days and worked nights in order to pay the bills to raise a family. Recognizing my aspirations to “be the most that I could be,” she saw to the household and child-raising responsibilities while I completed the requirements for my PhD.

Then, saying words to the effect of, “Okay, Buster, now it’s my turn!” my wife went on to acquire a BS in math, winning the Phil Braun Prize in Math from the University of Michigan as a testimony to her considerable intelligence. This she did while I took my turn managing the household and raising our three sons. I became a Little League coach and a Scoutmaster during those years. I still remember, after taking over the troop from a fellow who wanted to get on with his life, looking around for a place for my two Scouts and my Cub Scout and the other boys—altogether about 40 in number—to meet on Friday afternoons/early evenings before the boys had sports responsibilities. We were offered a room at the local Presbyterian Church after their church services on Sundays, on condition that all the boys had to attend Sunday service! But there were kids from Jewish families, from Catholic families, from Baptist families, etc., in addition to my three “nones,” and I was pretty sure none of my “flock” was going to be permitted by their families to turn Presbyterian. Well, fortunately, the local school district made facilities available to us after school on Fridays while the school was being cleaned. Problem solved for the next four years.

My first wife and I were together for 16 years, and I ascribe our parting to the simple premise that we were youngsters when we were first starting to fool around with one another. But we eventually matured and, along the way, finally grew into who we were to become. That is, she became who she had come to be, and I grew into who I came to be; but we each came to be very different from who we were when we first met and fell in love. Close to 16 years into our married relationship, we—independently but at about the same time—had to admit that we had become very different people than the youngsters whose love had brought us to parent children. We were friends, but the romance had left our relationship.

So, my former wife enlisted consultation advice from a lawyer-friend of hers who schooled us in what to say to the judge when the time came to legally part. We stood together in front of the divorce judge and explained our wish to terminate our marriage. We also presented a detailed plan for accomplishing that. (I simply gave her everything.) The judge said words to the effect that, “Umm, you two seem to agree on about everything. Are you sure that you really want to divorce?” “Yes, Your Honor, that is our intention,” we answered. “Well, then, divorce granted,” she said. I am proud to relate that my former wife and I have remained “buddies” ever since, anyway. Furthermore, her man and my lady have done their best through the years to understand and support our friendship to the mutual benefit of all four of us. Her man, a minister in the Universal Life Church, even married my present wife and me in the backyard of my wife’s mother’s place!

My present wife is a neuropsychologist trained at the UCSF Medical Center. After trying public school teaching, then public school psychology, then licensed clinical social work, she finally enrolled in a doctoral program that prepared her for a career that became a collaboration for us. She actually liked neuropsychological testing, whereas I tended to avoid actually doing that kind of stuff. But I was eager for the products of her work so that I could see the best assessments of what was not expected to work for a patient; this allowed me to focus on the best options for patients and their supports/family. Anyway, my wife and I worked together as a team before she—at age 70-1/2—announced, “David, I’m retiring. You can do as you want, but I still want a life!” This was followed by my response—the best advice any husband should offer—which was, “Yes, Dear.” As a result, even though I can tell the difference at a distance between field corn and sweet corn and between wheat and rye, she commands the flower garden out in back of our home. I weed and spade where she tells me to, and I do leaf-litter duty, etc., as aspects of our grand and wonderful elder years together. A fitting line from an old song is, “The greatest thing you can ever do is to love and be loved in return.”

I have helped all kinds of people who were the recipients of my brain-injury-rehabilitation practice: all skin colors, many countries of origin, many English-as-a-second-language speakers, short and tall, male and female (self-identified). What’s important is that the men (umm, women less frequently get themselves into the kind of situations that get their brains scrambled, likely due to their considerably better judgment) who are presented to me for my prescriptions for their rehabilitation from brain insult must take seriously my prescriptions for their improvements. Those who actually continue to do what I’ve taught them (and their supports) to do actually demonstrate the validity of the research that has established the reality of brain plasticity.

It has been mostly young men who’ve gotten themselves into situations where they’ve injured their brains—e.g., from motorcycle and vehicle accidents, attempting new tricks with a skateboard or a bicycle, etc. But it is this younger population who has a better probability of training the parts of the brains that were spared injury to do stuff that the injured aspects of the brains aren’t ever going to accept responsibility for again. Brain plasticity is less so as humans age. In each case, the issue for me is to find what part of the brain is left intact from the injuries that the patient and I can build on through rehabilitation exercises. I need to find what is left for brain plasticity to build upon so as to make this human the best that he can be.

Everything underneath the skin is the same for all of us guys. So, skin color is irrelevant in the application of the principles of behavior that are used to shape acceptable replacement repertoires to compensate for skills and habits that the injuries handicap. My work is driven by the fine neuropsychological test results that my colleagues—diverse across skin color, country of national origin, languages spoken, self-identified gender, etc.—point my attention to. And my colleagues in this effort span across physicians, speech pathologists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists as well as family and paid supports provided by public agencies for the patients. My colleagues and I work as teams of human beings who are helping other human beings. I think that there are “lessons” here.

Many of the recipients of my services compensate me from some or another financial judgment that their lawyers achieved on their behalf if their brain injuries were someone else’s fault—e.g., the insurer for a drunk driver who was responsible for a head-on crash. But many of my clientele over the past 47 years have been individuals whose injuries occurred during their developmental years, before they turned 21 years of age. For some of them, the California Regional Center System provided habilitation suited to the condition of all California citizens whose disabilities originated before they turned 22 years of age. Many of my brain-injured clientele received their injuries while they were youngsters, and so they’ve been aspects of my practice since I began here in California in the spring of 1988. (I was at Michigan for 10 years previous to that.) Perhaps, interestingly, their programs of “rehabilitation” share many similarities with others whose impaired brain function resulted not from identifiable trauma and whose treatment is focused upon “habilitation.” The science of “habilitation” for persons with cognitive and/or developmental disabilities has much to offer my brain-injured patients, and I do as told in these cases by liberally consulting that habilitation literature on behalf of my traumatically brain-injured clientele.

Of course, the “public rate” of pay is what it is, and it has become well known that practitioners here in the San Francisco Bay Area can’t pay their bills on that compensation. But my lifetime of having been taught frugality and of being comfortable with simple needs well into my elder years permits me to accept the “public rate” of pay so as to bring about services that are suited to the condition of my patients. I still drive a 1983 Mercedes SL that I bought used many years ago. It turned one-half of a million miles this past June and is still chugging—just like its owner. And, like its owner, it shows “signs” of aging; we make a good pair. I also had to give up my 650 Yamaha because my inner-ear balance mechanisms aren’t what they used to be. I gave it to my nephew. Anyway, those of us who’ve benefitted well from the opportunities that America offers all of its citizenry owe back! As the result, over my 47-year career, I have approximated a “tithe” of my time every week as my effort to “pay back” how this culture invested in me. Grandpa and Grandma and Dad (and maybe even Mom) would be proud of me!

I’m still in practice, if only a couple of days per week. Now, in my elder years, I need closer to nine or ten hours of sleep a night, sometimes as much as eleven hours after every activity-filled day. I see patients in my San Francisco office on Tuesdays and in my Santa Clara, California, office on Wednesdays—therefore leaving Thursdays through Mondays available for camping trips in our “vintage” RV. We go down into the depths of Big Sur where there are no communication services, just the great out-of-doors. I keep both of those offices open because—as other brain-injury-rehab docs will tell you—as long as those guys and their supports/families stick to my prescriptions for teaching what remains of their brains to take over for what isn’t ever going to work anymore, they’ll call me up two, three, or four years later and say something like, “Hey, Doc, look at me now! I did everything that you said! So, like, what’s next?” I just can’t disappoint that motivation to become the most that they can be. “Okay, come on in here, and let’s scheme for where you can still go if you’re still willing to bust your butt to get there!” What a thrill, still after all these years! I’ll probably work until I “croak”!

Sundays aren’t special in any way, just filled with this and that of what I had planned the previous evening over a glass of wine with my wife, or what we had planned that morning (over coffee, of course). I’ve been an atheist since about age seven or so, always a seeker of parsimony. So, Sundays aren’t diminished by religious responsibilities, and, as a result, I don’t donate to the plates that are passed among parishioners. I don’t crow about this. I keep my absence of religious belief in such things as “spirits,” “gods,” “ghosts,” “a supreme being,” etc., to myself, unless I’m challenged to illuminate it. For example, I have lectures that I’m prepared to deliver for the occasional fanatic who winds up on my front porch with invitations for me to “cleanse my soul” at their church of choice. They don’t come back for another “sermon” from me—a sermon that generally relates, in some way or another, to the idea that, by definition, faith simply is absent any evidence for it. In any case, I have tithed my time to worthy causes in the manner of volunteering my specialty to cases that are brought to my attention by, e.g., the California Regional Center System over the course of my practice here in California. As a result, I think that I have “made a difference” for the species through actions, not words.

Grandpa and Grandma never obtained a television. Dad and Mom acquired one when I was about age 14, only because a TV station was finally built on the outskirts of Flint from which an aerial antenna could obtain signals. I was too busy with a very full life to pay any attention to it. For example, I was permitted to apply for a work permit when I turned 15½, which allowed me to apply for “real jobs.” Previous to this, for a couple of years, I had hitchhiked into Flint on Saturdays (after cross-country and track meets) and on Sundays so I could caddy at the Flint Golf & Country Club—in addition to hoeing rows and picking fruit. Then, I got a “real job” at an IGA Market about 5 miles away from home, and I worked there on weekends instead of caddying at the golf club. Typically, I’d bag groceries on Saturday afternoons. And because the owner of the store came to trust me (and he didn’t want to do this work himself), he gave me the keys to the place so that I could lock up after the store closed at 9 p.m., after which I washed and waxed the entire store, finishing up about 2 a.m. or so. So, even now, I don’t watch television, and I don’t read fiction. I remain astounded at the wonders that are available on the surface of the earth. I am just taken in by the wonders of the natural environment now in my later 70s, just as I was when I was in the single digits and living on the farm.

Perhaps, genetics—but, perhaps, also a product of following the better advice of the AARP regarding diet and exercise—has left me with a body mass index that pleases my cardiologist over at the UCSF Medical Center. Along with truly exceptional attention and care over at the San Francisco VA Hospital Clinics, those UCSF docs who examine and prescribe for me are a tribute to their various crafts! I’ve been knocking on their doors for so many years now that I have a collegial relationship with some of them, almost as collegial as with the various members of the teams of folks with whom I prescribe in order to get every person who comes into my office to become the most that he can be.

I am an American Citizen first and foremost, then I am a father and a dad, then I am a spouse, and only then am I a brain-injury-rehabilitation doc. Okay, so I am paid; and that’s how I have furnished our offspring with the education that they’ve sought while living in safe circumstances and being shielded from many of the adversities of life that I have been led to understand are out there in the world. Our offspring got a good start in life; and, in return, they’ve repaid my (oh, oh, I’d better say “our”) investments in their lives several-fold. We still all get along as family. What’s that line, again, in the song? “The greatest thing you can ever do is to love and be loved in return.”

What a long, strange trip it’s been. I’ve lived at least seven lives since I’ve been alive: farm, college, marriage #1 and kids, university, marriage #2, practitioner, now an elder. But I’m glad that life is a one-way pipe because I have no interest in living another one. This life has been quite fine, thank you.