People are selfish; that's the only thing I ever truly learned from anyone. They act as if they care, but in reality they only care for themselves. My father was selfish and expressed it every day through the painful sounds of screaming when he smashed my back with a whip. I grew used to the beatings and according to my other 24 siblings the marks on my back made me look tougher, almost as if a train had run me over.
A few years ago I worked in a local cotton field for my father. Wasting my life away on things such as cotton never gave me the feeling of a life fulfillment and it made me realise I needed a distraction. My mother, Helen, had already left for St. Louis Missouri with a few of my siblings. At the time, it was difficult to understand why my mother had disappeared, but as I grew older it became obvious; my father's alcoholic and abusive behavior was not normal. I decided, after realizing how desperately I needed redemption, to leave him.
"Why didn't you clean up the garbage like I asked you to?" He spat at me.
"I am leaving, because the only thing you have ever given was good beating," I snapped back as the beer bottle came flying out of his hand missing me by inches.
"How could you do this? I have given you food, a job, and shelter. You will not leave Charles. You are a useless child with no respect for anyone. Nobody wants you Charles. You are an uneducated idiot." That was the first time I ever really wanted to kill someone. Not even a second later I smashed his head in with a left jab (which was later called by reporters the best left jab in boxing history). He was on the ground completely unconscious. My thoughts were of a very young person, so I thought I had killed him, and thankfully I was wrong. I had scared myself into running away from that man forever.
I cannot say that things became any easier when I arrived in St. Louis. I didn't go to school because the kids there were stupid. My mom was angry when she found out that I left the school in St. Louis, but I still brought hope with some cash from sporadic employment (including a few armed robberies). At that point I think I had become a bit of a celebrity for the local police. They even had a name for me; the yellow shirt bandit.
I think it was a bit of a blessing that I was eventually caught because it was how boxing became apart of my life. I cannot say whether boxing itself made me a better person, but it helped me make the real discovery of satisfaction. I needed to be satisfied with myself before I could move on with my life. I wanted my father's validation and satisfaction so badly that it almost drove me mad. Then I remembered that my father was never satisfied because he was a selfish person.
