You Better Straighten Up and Fly Right

When I was in my teens, my father used to always tell me, "You better straighten up and fly right, or you will be sorry later on." I found this to be accurate actually. I needed to go through lot of education and pray a lot to establish myself. My father used to also say, "God help you." I believe that God had to get personally involved in saving my life and getting me out of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY after I got married 20 years ago to save my life when my ex-wife abandoned me and I was left for dead.

My youthful transgressions almost cost me my life and I am lucky to be alive right now. Hopefully, all of my audience can learn from my example.

When I was in Taukomas Elementary School, in Wheatley Heights LI, all the juvenile delinquents that I went to school with impacted me. The bad boys ruled the roost.

My attitude soured when it came to my studies and to the idea of being righteous. All the pretty girls were going after the bad kids and they didn't want me so I made the mistake of thinking that my salvation would happen if I became a bad student and a derelict too. It didn't work out that way for me.

The Torah says, "God chastens who he loves." And it seems that God always wanted to make me to live up to my potential and go back to being good. It has been a long struggle but it is worth it to regain my soul.

Jesus said, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul?" I can tell you that all the riches in the world mean nothing compared to be right before God's throne.

You see, the difference between myself and the other people was that I really didn't want to be bad and the whole thing was based on a misconception that evil delivers those who practice it. It doesn't do that. And once again, hopefully, my audience will profit from my experiences, blunders, past evil and my efforts to pull myself up from my bootstraps.

I was on the wrestling team, took up weight lifting and also took lessons in Jui Jitsu. We always used to say on the wrestling team "the difference between the champ and the chump is the 'u'." On the wrestling team, my deficiencies showed up. I kept picking people who outweighed me by about 20 pounds for my adversaries. I bit off more than I could chew.

And also, I kept coming in overweight but in defense of myself, that was due to the fact that I was lifting weights to get bigger and stronger muscles. I didn't want to stay a 95-pound shrimp forever. The coaches didn't understand.

My final problem was that I couldn't figure out the more complicated moves when they were demonstrated. So I left the team 2 years in a row after being on it for a while.

One of the coaches insulted me saying, that I only was on the team to get the food we would get for being undefeated that year. I think the coaches weren't fair to me in essence. What do you think?

Weightlifting agreed with me and I did that for many years until I sustained injuries and I don't lift anymore. I entered a bench press contest in '92 and did 370 pounds. I won uncontested. I had the injuries before the competition and I really am lucky that didn't' hurt myself anymore than I did.

Also, I stopped studying the martial arts for several reasons. It seems that my reflexes aren't really good enough for me to be a good karateka. Also, my father paid for my original training in Jui Jitsu, but he picked a fight with me and I reacted so he discontinued the lessons.

By the time I was 14, I sought salvation in the Hands of the Man from Galilee. My father gave a Christian tract to me by Jack T. Chick called "This Was Your Life." It portrayed a person who thought he had a lot of time left and he also thought that he was a good person bound for heaven, but he was wrong on both accounts. The message took root. But my first church developed a problem and I had to leave it. In addition, I didn't watch my behavior well enough and I really didn't straighten out.

I rejoined the Jewish community and stayed in Israel for a while and also went to college there. I worked very hard at getting my act together.

I hooked up with a local rabbi on LI and we used to spend time together. He and I are both big fans of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's music and we used to listen to his records and sing his songs, especially, when I used to stay over the rabbis house for Shabbat.

Eventually, I stopped coming to him and I lost my connection to Shlomo. A lot of things happened after that including a bad marriage.

Unfortunately, I sabotaged myself by getting in playing rock and roll music and leaving my love of Jewish music to the wayside. I know what caused my slide downward.

I wound up in a fight with someone in the dorms at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, in Be'er Sheba Israel back in '85 and my whole life was thrown into a tizzy I was once a staunch Zionist, but over the years and after my first extended stay in that country between May of '78 and October of '79, my attitude towards it changed.

Every IQ test and psychometric test I take tells me that I should be a world-beater. But the reality is that I have been disabled for 13 years and I could only find work as a computer programmer when my Master of Science in Management degree gave me training to become a manager. I was never able to put my education to use in my field of study.

Right now, I am a struggling freelance writer. I hope my career takes off and I have been getting some pay. I know that it's God's will that will be done and not mine. I will keep all of you posted on my progress.