HOW A SIMPLE MAN FOUND A JOB.

Some people come and go in a person's life without leaving much of an impression. Like the wind, they create a stir and then disappear. Then there are those individuals that linger in one's memory for decades.

Larry was one such man in my life. I met him through a friend from Jericho Hill School for the Deaf and Blind. Because Larry was mentally impaired, he lived on his Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) pension.

One day, Larry called me with some exciting news. Since he had nothing much to do, he decided to tidy up the local 7-Eleven parking lot. He also asked the manager if there were other jobs that he could do. Soon enough, my friend was working all day at the store. He helped with sweeping the floor, carrying out boxes of goods from the store room, and other unskilled jobs.

One day, the manager called him aside. "Since you're doing such a good job for me, how about working as my employee?" Larry jumped at the chance to get off AISH, which gave him just enough to pay the rent and buy food, and start a real job.

This gave my friend more than just extra money. He felt like a valued member of society. Instead of lounging around on the public doll, he had a job that he could be proud of and a pay cheque with his name on it.

Though I lost track of this unique gentleman, I often think of him as the 7-Eleven man. His diligence was rewarded and he became self-sufficient. Though his IQ was lower than the average, his approach made a lot of sense. It just goes to prove that intelligence is good but wisdom is much better.

I wrote about Larry in my newly-published memoir, How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Please check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm.

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS.

Does mother always know best? It depends on the individual. My mom asked me to do something that I found to be not only distasteful but immoral. Though I wanted nothing to do with my brother, Roy, I also didn't want to go to prison.

From my How I Was Razed memoir, here's how Mom put me in an awkward moral position after my dad died and his common law wife distributed his estate money.

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Though I crossed that bridge, I wasn't free of every burden and obligation. Mom phoned me one evening in January of 1988. "Why don't you put Roy's inheritance money in your account?" she urged. "He's on welfare and he'll be cut off if the government discovers he's received the payment. If they ask you about it, say he never got it, all right?"

"I can't do that, Mom," I exclaimed. "That's fraud!"

"But you have to do it - he's your brother. The government will take it all if you don't hide it. Just give him little bits at a time."

"Why can't somebody else do it?"

"You mean you don't even want to help your own brother - your own flesh and blood?" she cried, her voice rising.

"I don't want to get in trouble and go to jail."

"I can't believe you'd let the government take Roy's inheritance," she grumbled. "It's bad enough that Shirley is divvying up the money. I didn't get anything and neither do I want any of his filthy estate, especially from that woman." Mom badgered on, trying to goad me into handling Roy's inheritance, but I held to my convictions.

Shirley assumed control of my brother's inheritance several weeks later. That solved the problem but not in a righteous way

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I wrote extensively about that house church in my newly-published memoir, How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Please check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm.