Post: A Most Inpiring True Story for Our Students

Posted by Herman Neuman on 12/12/03

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Idaho author will address audiences about his extremely
unusual life. The following is the beginning of his speech,
and you may learn more through the herobooks link above:

Herman Neuman’s Speech to Young Audiences
(Approx. 7,200 words)
© 2002 Herman Neuman

I would like to thank my kind hosts for letting me share my
story. I also thank my parents and their merry band of
lawyers for making my life so exiting that could write and
talk about it. And most of all, I humbly thank the master
of our universe for giving me the strength to endure, to
dig myself out of mountains of manure, and even thrive
beyond all expectations to the contrary.

Since words cannot even begin to describe what I’m about
tell you, try to imagine yourself living through each one
of the following:
War: You hide in underground bunkers because the fireworks
around you explode out of control.
Killer illnesses: Like an infection eats your ear, grows
wild meat, proud flesh, in the process and destroys your
hearing.
Starvation: Your mom makes you scavenge for delicious pig’s
guts from a manure pile. And makes you eat them. Then you
upchuck them again and she feeds these chuckings to your
starving chickens.
Homelessness: You squat for one year in an attic without
the owner’s permission and you keep searching for places to
pee.
Floggings: Your mother zaps a wire strap across your bare-
naked behind because loves you.
School failure: Like adios amigo, you stupid idiot, get
outta here.
Judicial injustice: Like “this can never be possible.”
Exile: Your parents send you on a six-thousand mile journey
into the unknown, while telling you that you’ll never see
them again.
Slavery: You have to work at a dairy without pay and are
allowed only one bath a year to “manage the nutrient” which
covers your whole body.
Social isolation: You are stuck in mud with geoducks and
clams, and you still keep wondering where you should pee.

Do you know anyone who might have lived all of this
diversity?

Yup! Such were my experiences. By the time I was nineteen
years old. When I was still wet in one ear and still picked
my nose in public.

Can anyone guess what happened to me after all of this?

I became “weird.”

I began drinking, stealing and taking revenge on everybody.
I became a hardened criminal to get a lot of free publicity
and help me qualify to be a popular inspirational speaker.

Far from it!

Contrary to popular and expert expectations that I would
become a gangster, I instinctively I did not add to my
overwhelming problems. Most of them had been exclusively
caused by other people. People who were supposed to love or
protect me, exploited and even threatened to kill me. But
this only made me stronger. I never even considered myself
to be a victim. Probably because nobody ever told me that I
was one, and I didn’t think of it.

In spite of my involuntary way-cool life, I refused to
buckle under. And that makes me really, really weird. And
here’s is why:

When I was about twenty years old, I slowly gained enough
confidence to start breaking my invisible chains of culture
shock and slavery. I choose an alternative life-style,
taking the “toughest job in town,” which I had heard about.
I worked in a lumber mill, stacking tons of rough-sawn
green lumber five nights a week. By the end of each shift,
I felt like I had wrestled with hundreds of dead, rigid
porcupines and alligators. By doing a lot of this kind of
work, this lonely soul wrestled his way through college and
before this Washington State Cougar started his fifth year,
the extra year required for an architectural engineering
degree, he married his wife. After thirty-eight years we’re
still married. And amazingly to each other.

Now comes the most exiting part of my story. And as I said
before, since words cannot even begin to describe what I’m
tell you next, try to imagine yourself living the greatest
adventure of a lifetime:

You travel around the world to roam around in old European
castles, dine with Geisha girls in Japan, and watch bare-
chested men roll around in broken glass in Bermuda. You
fall asleep on a high-speed train and end up hundreds of
miles from where you wanted to go and end up in Paris in
the middle of the night.

That’s what we did, my dear wife and I. Within eighteen
months after we graduated, we both earned and saved enough
to travel around the world. For six months. Think about
this. To work and save for only a year and a half to
experience a half-year-long adventure of a lifetime. And
I’ll talk a little about our travels later on.

As you can see, after two decades of hell, I quickly I
zoomed towards heaven. Almost unheard-of-totally-weird.

Mine is a true story, but please keep in mind that I
sometimes speak with tongue in cheek, so I can tell it with
some humor.

Because of my experiences, I am convinced that you too can
accomplish almost anything that you desire. I’m not all
that smart, but I supplemented what I was lacking in brains
with stubborn persistence. For this you need patience, self-
discipline, to train your mind and to read a lot in order
to learn a lot. Nowadays you have to know a lot just to
prevent having to stew in your own juices, let alone in the
many other juices in which other people want to cook you.
But that is another subject. I hope that by the time I
finish my visit here, you will be convinced that it is
possible for you to reach your highest goals. So be
curious, investigate, let your mind soar and wander and
then persist to take actions to achieve your desires.

I grew up not in a dysfunctional family but was a shrapnel
of an exploded family....

Heroes from the Attic: A Gripping True Story of Triumph

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A Most Inpiring True Story for Our Students, 12/12/03, by Herman Neuman.