Autobiography Chapters

This paper was the very first paper I was asked to write at Ottawa University.  This was a writing excersize that was meant to be both informative and enlightening to the writer and the reader.  I found this assignment came to me in the right place, at the right time.  It lead to both healing and self-discovery.

The Life Story of Jeffrey Haynes
Chapter One: "Let’s Start at the Very Beginning” - This chapter describes my life growing up Northeastern Oklahoma and discusses the majority of my childhood. It will discuss my first vivid memory of the death of my grandmother when I was only one and half years. It will discuss my mother’s inability to ever fully get over the loss of her mother, and the problems it caused during my raising due to this handicap.  It discusses my early love of movies, specifically Superman, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Wizard of Oz, etc. My early love of theatre will also be discussed as after seeing a local children’s production of “The Wizard of Oz” there will be no other show I want to perform more.

Chapter Two: "Elementary, Dear Jeffrey" - This chapter discusses my elementary education including my apparent inability to pass the GT test. I was also a straight A student all the way to high school. It will also discuss my soccer career. I loved writing and being creative. The majority of my life at this time was spent at either school or at home for various reasons that if touched on briefly wouldn’t come off as whiney.

Chapter Three: "Growing Pains" - This chapter reviews my high school days as an award winning football player, but inability to secure a relationship with a girl, my falling head over heels for a girl, and her ultimate rejection of me. Also briefly it will touch on my finding god in the local Assembly of God church as well as my trip to New York to the World Trade Center, three months before 9/11. The chapter will mostly go over my near death experience as in the second round of the football playoffs the only play that would work was one that required me to move a 320 pound defensive tackle about 6 feet every play.  It was during one of these plays that I was cleated. Now while this may seem like a minor injury, over the course of the next week I progressively became sicker and sicker with flu like symptoms.  I was finally admitted to the hospital when I could no longer walk on my own.  I had to listen to my team lose the third round of the playoffs on the radio. My lungs were turning hard and were filling with fluid.  It came to the point where I could no longer breathe. The doctor in Miami refused to transfer me because I was “his” patient and my white blood cell count was going up.  He was perfectly willing to allow me to lay there and die from not being able to breathe, but with a high white blood cell count.  One night my mother says she heard a voice say to her, “Get him out now.”  She then took it upon herself to have me transferred to St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, OK. It was in this hospital that they identified that I had ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) which can be brought on by blunt force trauma (the giant football player/cleat).  I was placed on a ventilator and lost approximately 40 lbs. in about 2 weeks due to treatment.  One would think this was a blessing, but it was all of the muscle mass that I had acquired through the years of training.  I walked out of that hospital expecting that experience to be the most horrific experience of my life.  I was wrong.

Chapter Four: "The Return" - This chapter describes the hard work of regaining the muscle mass I had lost.  It was difficult but eventually I regained the weight I had lost; the only problem was that the medicine I was on made me an eating machine.  It will also discuss the emotional/psychological problems linked to ARDS survivors. Also I had prayed and prayed to god for me to find my other half before I graduated high school, and with three days left in my senior year I met the woman who would become my wife.
Chapter Five: "The College Years: Part I" - The chapter describes the furthering of my relationship with Kristy (my future wife), my taking a job at Wal-Mart, as well as the two years I spent at NEO, our local community college.  I spent two years at NEO studying to work in the movie/television industry and while I can pass every class I needed to, I was unable to pass a math class to finalize my degree.  I found myself bored and untested by the knowledge I was accumulating at NEO.  I made A’s and B’s for the first year and half, but for my final semester I became disenchanted and unmotivated in all things, mostly due to my personal/work life.  The management staff had made work life a living hell for most everyone on the evening shift, mostly due to the egos of the long time day associates that didn’t want to work and off loaded everything to the evening shift.  The evening shift could in no way do their job plus the day timers which obviously caused friction.  I decided to leave Wal-Mart and take a full time job at U.S. Cellular, while leaving college life behind me.

Chapter Six:  “A Life Less Ordinary” – This chapter describes my experience living on my own, getting married, and the birth of my first child.  I have never moved out of the first house I ever lived in.  My parents actually built a house when I was 21 and moved out, leaving me to rent the house I grew up in.  I proposed to my wife on the fourth anniversary of when we met at the very spot that we met.  One year later to the day we were married.  Two weeks after we were married we found out we were pregnant, and had become so on our wedding night.  The pregnancy was a rough one as Kristy developed preeclampsia and had to be off work for the final three months of her pregnancy.  The chapter will also discuss the emergency C-Section in which the cord was wrapped around my son Jayton’s neck.  It will also discuss the strain on my marriage as my wife’s lack of desire for intimacy ultimately forced me to seek out something to fill that gap.  That something was theatre. 

Chapter Seven: “Little Did I Know…” – This chapter will show how I joined our local community theatre, mostly to someday perform “The Wizard of Oz.” The first role I had was as Nazi #2 in “The Sound of Music.”  The next show I performed in was “The Miracle Worker.” I had the privilege of sharing a dressing room with David Froman, a television actor who had returned to Miami some years ago as he had become disenchanted with Hollywood life. We developed a friendship and it was David that gave me my first sense of legitimacy. He told me I wasn’t wasting my time, that I had a real talent, and could go places if chose to. Little did I know that my mentor, David, was dying.  He had developed colon cancer and while I didn’t expect it, he died 3 months later. Before David died he did get to see me win the role of Kenickie in “Grease” once again with our local theatre.  Also David had one last gift for me…”The Wizard of Oz”.

Chapter Eight: “Over the Rainbow” – This chapter will deal with my life during the production of “The Wizard of Oz”.  David, whom I replaced on the board of directors shortly after his death, had voted to approve production of “The Wizard of Oz”. I’ll never know if he did this with me in mind, but I’ll be forever thankful.  My wife and I began to bond once again and in January she became pregnant with our second child. In July I was cast as Zeke/The Cowardly Lion in the show.  The show became my life, as no expense or attention to detail was spared in the production.  My plan was to perform the show in September and then retire from acting for awhile to allow myself to help after the birth of my daughter Emmy in October.  On September 7^th 2010, I took my wife to her bi-weekly ultrasound.  The ultrasound came back abnormal and it was determined that Emmy had hydrops contracted in the first trimester due to exposure to parvo.  Kristy was rushed to Tulsa to St. Francis, the very spot where I thought I had seen my lowest point.  Emmy was taken that night in an emergency c-section and immediately placed in the NICU.  I was torn between being with my family and seeing my lifelong dream realized.  We had determined that I would spend days at the hospitals, drive home 100 plus miles and perform, and then return the next morning to be with my family until I had to repeat the process.  This went on for almost two weeks. The production was a resounding success and became the highest grossing production in the history of our theatre. After production wrapped on Sept. 19^th, I was forced to leave the land of my dreams and face my ultimate nightmare with no escape.  I prayed to god to give me the strength to give Emmy as many experiences as possible in what was sure to be a short life.  I specifically asked to sing my favorite song, “Over the Rainbow”, to her.  I had avoided it because I couldn’t find the right time where I could get through it.  On Sept. 22^nd I looked out the window of the hospital waiting room on a bright sunny clear day to find a rainbow arcing across the sky.  I knew I wouldn’t have much time if I didn’t hurry, so while alone with Emmy for a few moments I managed to sing “Over the Rainbow” to my baby girl.  Emmy died Sept. 23^rd.

Chapter Nine: “The College Years: Part II” – This chapter deals with life after the loss of a child, and how everything else seems to pale in comparison to the loss.  I decided to pick up the pieces of my life and keep going, finally arriving at the decision to go back to college and finish what I started: my communications degree.  Living Oklahoma, with my wife Kristy and son Jayton, going to college for communications, and working full time at U.S. Cellular; I know many challenges lie ahead.