Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll

Sex, Drugs, and Rock and RollPart 1 of the You’ve Been Hanked Brain Surgery ProjectYou are listening to the initial installment in a special, You’ve Been Hanked series about life with Parkinson’s and Essential Tremor leading to brain surgery. This special series is not meant to steer the podcast in a different direction. Rather, story telling will remain the primary focus. I will, however, seek to tell a life long story of living with one then both of those two conditions from a very young age, eventually culminating in my personal experience with Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery.I’ll not lie, this is difficult to write, even to begin. If you will bear with me though, I’ll do my best.“You nervous boy?”“No sir.”“Have you been up to something?”“No sir.”“Why are your hands shaking that way?”“Don’t know. They just do.”I sat in my little wooden desk, writing answers to the questions of whatever third grade assignment I labored to complete. “Why are you even in here?” I wondered but dared not ask out loud. The man was our elementary school principal. He’d not been in the classroom before and it was unclear to me then and remains unclear to me now, why he was there on that occasion. Even less clear is why he towered over me watching me write while venturing questions and comments about the shaking evident in my seven year old hands.I recall multiple teacher evaluations over the years I attended school in Beautiful, East Texas. This particular memory had none of those elements. Our principal was neither sitting alone nor alongside some assistant or another at the back of the classroom observing. Instead, he was standing over me, watching me write, and discussing, in front of all my classmates, something that I would much prefer not be so publicly addressed and certainly not by the greatest authority figure to whom I was personally subject outside my home.The large man, wide of girth with gray streaked hair, did not move on to the other students to engage with them. He continued to stand there, just behind me and to my right, peering over my shoulder, watching me work. His comments continued as well.“I’ve never seen anyone’s hands shake like that unless they were sick, nervous, or had a guilty conscience.”As this was not addressed directly to me in the form of a question, I chose to remain silent but wished with all my inner self that my principal would go away. He did not.“Is something wrong with you boy? Are you sick?”“No sir.”“How do you know? You seen a doctor?”… This episode can be heard in its entirety in the audio link to the podcast above. Later this week look for a special recipe!Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hankgriffin.substack.com/subscribe