by Annette Hatton

Created on: June 29, 2010

Can't Never Could Do Anything

“Your son has absolutely no activity on the left side of his brain, only one side of his brain functions. He will never walk or talk. He'll be wheelchair bound, epileptic and a drooling vegetable all his life. There is nothing that can done.” This is what the neurologist at the Mayo Clinic told Davy's parents. Six months earlier, to help with Davy's birth the Florida doctor used forceps and too much determined force, which crushed his head leaving damage severe enough the infant, had absolutely no use of the limbs on the left side of his body and his face sagged.

Both his Redneck-farmer grandfathers thought Mayo Clinic doctors did not know what they were talking about. They decided Davy would not be a drooling vegetable that he would walk. They massaged and worked his arms and legs until he was strong enough to begin walking. They held his arms high above his head, feet barely touching the floor and in their hard graveling voices encourage Davy to, “Work them legs, boy.”

“Can’t,” Davy cried, tears running down his cheeks were his first words.

“Don't tell me you can't, Boy. Can't never could do anything, now move them legs,” his Grand-Papa Leon would growl. Davy took his first steps at age two. His mom bronzed the shoes.

Age ten found him wearing leg and hip braces unloading corn crates from field trucks onto the conveyer belts that took those sixty-pound crates to pre-cooler. This is how he gained twenty percent use of his left side. Twenty-percent use is a world of difference from the Mayo Clinic’s prognosis.

The cruelty of children is surpassed only by the brutality of family, cousins, siblings and parents. By twenty-eight he was the family embarrassment, the brunt of most of his cousin's pranks, the county joke and in a town of drunks he was the town drunk. Cousins and friends invited him to hang with them, when his wallet was packed. To this day there are a few who still use the degrading nickname they hung on him. His mother rejected him because she could not accept the fact she birthed a less than perfect child. Rejected, used and abused by all but his father and grandparents, his self-confidence atrophied. He grew into an introverted, unwanted, unloved adult who sought solace at the bottom of a bottle.

When the woman who would become his wife met his parents, his mother cut his steak, bibbed him, spoon fed him and

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