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Jeffrey Reilley


Jeffrey Reilley

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I'll provide one more detail, as it sums up a lot about what I am trying to do over the course of the next couple of years.

 

    I had flown to Los Angeles for Christmas to see my family. My trips out west had decreased immensely after breaking up with a woman I had dated since high school. Let me be clear though, my family and ex-girlfriend all moved out to California within a few months of each other, and due to an acute hatred of that state, I was still in Florida, reluctant to take any steps in a westward direction.

It was a great trip. I got to see my sister's beautiful children, both growing faster than I had realized was possible. I had to run from a police officer because of an open container violation after I walked my mom home from my sister's house on Christmas night. That was fun. Other things happened as well. Onward we shall march.

I flew home on the 27th, refreshed from seeing loved ones and a late night, fast-paced jog through neighborhoods of Burbank. I was ready to go back to work and play golf. I will admit, I am a man of leisurely pursuits. Soon after returning to Florida, I started coughing like crazy.

Around New Year's Eve, I started to become worried about my situation. My temperature was higher than what is considered good, and I was struggling to breath at an acceptable rate. I was determined to kill the virus. I sucked down an obscene amount of Kettle One, and then killed a piranha. Our friendly commune of fellow people interested in leisurely pursuits had received a piranha from an individual that was "going hiking" in a forest called Penitentiary. Well, five years after receiving said fish, and many attempts on said fish's life via purchased "aggressive" fish, our commune decided to dig a coy pond and throw it in there. That was that. Three years after the coy pond construction, commune captain, we'll call her Sharon, and I decided to see if there was a living piranha in the coy pond. We found nothing but a puffer fish, the kind you buy at a pet store for a couple bucks. There the little puffer was swimming around and doing what fish do. No piranha. So, on this New Year's Eve, while I coughed up half a lung and slammed Kettle One with grapefruit juice while walking past one of our dogs drinking from the coy pond, I didn't think anything of it. Then I noticed sudden movement from the dog.

It took a couple moments to register everything, but soon enough I realized that a rather large piranha was dangling from my dog's mouth. Long story short, Ruthie ended up missing some of her tongue and we fed the piranha, minus the head, to our cat. Of course, we shot it, chopped it, and lit it on fire first, before pouring salt on it and saying a prayer. The next morning, Sharon forced me to the hospital.

I woke up around Valentine's Day. I had apparently, according to medical pros, caught H1N1, which in turn shut down my lungs, kidneys, and heart. I had been in a coma for almost six weeks. This is very weird news to take in when you are slowly realizing that you are paralyzed at the current moment. It took several months of insanely obsessive work to get back to being on my own two feet again. After I decided to zone out every doctor or specialist that told me I was never going to be normal again, I started to heal fairly quickly.

This happened in 2014. Since then, I have done some really cool things. I have gone much further than, "you may be able to play golf again one day, but don't expect to ever play the way you did", which I was told daily. I have broken my record and shot 64. I have traversed the Scottish Highlands. I have mountain climbed. I have white water kayaked. I have done things I had never envisioned I would ever do. This leads me to my point of joining this site.

I need to study more. I know my grammatical prowess is not what it once was, but I would like to one day be a published writer. I'm not looking to get rich with it or anything, just to add a new notch to the belt, but in a way that is not dependent on physical prowess, amiable personality, or strikingly good looks. I want to do this for my mind! I hope you, dear reader, have a wonderful day!

 

-Jeff

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