This episode is a series of 3 stories that take place during my first year at Culver-Stockton College. As human beings, we experience a lot of pressure to remain in the familiar worlds in which we grow up. Sometimes those forces come from within and other times we experience extreme pushback from those in the new worlds we try to enter. As human beings, we tend to respond in two possible ways, 1. with laughter and acceptance and friendship or 2. with fear and hatred and anger. These three stories attempt to capture my first real experience of being the first in my family to be accepted to four-year college. So much of what I learned that first year in college about how people act when we encounter someone or something different then the person we are or the culture we come from, compels me to listen and learn from my new neighbors.

This story is about a the first moment I learned the power of saying hello and goodbye to another person. This universal human experience occurs over and over in our lives between friends, parents/children and potential life mates. Her name was Elizabeth and she was my first real love and the person whom I was sure I was going to spend the rest of my life. In the end we needed to say goodbye but I am forever thankful the ways she made my life better in this world.

Through a series of conversations about death and dying my college roommate taught me some of the best lessons of life. His name was Greg and he was just one of those people who seemed to know that his time on this earth was limited and getting the most out of it as quickly as one could was important. We talked about our faith and what we thought might happen after it was over BUT mostly we just had some of the most soul giving conversations as friends. WARNING: This story obviously deals with grief and the struggle to understand the deep and often painful whys of suffering in this world. You may cry or relive some of your own difficult and disorienting moments. Listen with caution but my hope is this story of my conversations with Greg are more about the hope that can happen between friends when being OK in this world is not always possible.

This is a story about my family's secret and its impact upon my life as a storyteller. My grandparents kept secrets on the farm as an act of pure love. One family secret nearly destroyed our family and was the reason I was raised in town (Ottumwa Iowa) rather than on the family farm. Through some humor and childhood adventures I attempt to share a word of hope that arose from one of the most difficult moments in in my mothers life.

This episode begins the story of the first time the Dunning family left Iowa and how it expanded the author's understanding of the wider world as well as his beliefs around being a perfect human being. Perfection and being OK in this world are not the same thing.

One of the reasons I thought I must be from Mars when I was younger revolved around my struggle with reading. I learned eventually that I had a condition called Dyslexia. This story is about finding a way through this difficulty with the help of many great teachers from Ottumwa Iowa. This is a great listen if you or someone you know is struggling with Dyslexia or other learning difference or just need a little encouragement to believe that the unique person you are is critical to change the world for the better.