Okay. What did I believe about myself? What did you believe about yourself that helped
to become successful and deal with hard times?
Well, I always believed that I could outlast anybody on anything. That I could work the
longest, work the hardest, and I could outlast anybody on anything. That's what I really,
that was my bottom line belief that I could do it. So getting this cancer has been hard
because it doesn't tie into that belief. And I always believed that Heavenly Father had blessed
me with great health, but I still believe that's the case because I've been rarely
sit my whole life. But I always believed that I could do, if somebody could do A, I could do A
plus B, but I could always outlast them. I could just outlast anybody on anything. I just had that
bottom line belief that no matter what it took, I could do it. I could just reach down and do it.
I could endure it. I know when your mom got sick, when we lived in Kerns and she got sick and we
didn't know what it was. And it was hard being for her because she was kind of, she was bedridden,
and that was hard on the marriage and everything. And we had some difficult times, marital times.
During that period, I always believed that we could make it. We could just, you know, I always
thought then to myself, I didn't get married to get divorced. And it was pretty hard. It was very
difficult at that time, in my mind anyway. And I think in hers too. And so I just determined that
I would do whatever it took and that I could do whatever it took. That was the bottom line.
If it meant I'd like to support my family, if it meant I had to go out and do manual physical labor,
dig ditches, I would do it. I just would do whatever it took to meet the obligations that I had.
I just knew in my core, in my being, that I could do that.
I had the same thing when I went back to college and finally got a degree. You know, mom and I were
living in an apartment in Ogden. There was this Pepper and Sid was the only two kids we had then.
Pepper was three and Sid was two. I went back to school, quit my job.
I think that's when I quit being a water man or anything and went back to
Weber. Weber is a full-time student and then I worked part-time on campus
as a graphic artist. And we had scholarships, got scholarships and grants to make it.
And your mom worked
graveyards and then she would come home and she would stay up for a little bit and then she'd go
to sleep and then I would go to school. Yeah, and she would be sleeping on the couch with the two kids
and she didn't get much sleep, obviously. And that was a hard time for us. And then I would have
classes, like a couple of my senior classes were, like I had told you before, where I had to do a
40 to 50 long page typewritten paper every week. And so I would stay up for two and a half days,
literally there was no sleep. I would go 24 hours and 24 hours plus some and then I'd finally
finish the paper and finish the work and then I could come home and sleep and crash.
But I knew I could do that, see. I just knew within my, that's just a belief I had on myself
that I could do it. No matter what it took, I could do that. Didn't say that would be easy,
but I just had that belief that I could do it.
Like, where do you think that you got that?
Like, do you think that came from your parents, like partially or was that just part of you?
I think it might have come from my parents, especially
my dad, because my dad was, that's what he did. You know, he was, I always thought my dad was a
workaholic. They'd send him to the places where, but they'd send him to the places where it was
the worst. Yeah, and then he'd make it to the best. And he, I always remember, in my opinion,
that he did what it took to support the family.
And he was always successful. And I can remember when I was younger and working with my dad in the
car wash in the service station. You know, we had a car wash. Then we had a separate location in
Klamath Falls that was a service station. And I can remember growing up in high school and grade
school, junior high, and working with my dad on the car wash, it was, I could give my absolute best
and there would be something that he would, it just never seemed to satisfy him, you know.
Um, and that was an irritant and it was also a source of inspiration too, I guess.
Because I always felt like I had to please him. You know, I felt like it was impossible to please
him. Not that he was, you know, in the medium of that, you wouldn't, you wouldn't come across that
way at all. But that's just how I perceived it.
And I just felt like I never quite could measure up to what he wanted.
And so, I guess, to prove to myself and to him I would just, whatever it took, I could do it.
So I think that was part of it. Part of it was because of my dad.
Yeah, like you'd give everything and then he would say,
there's still more. Yeah.
And then you, yeah, maybe you thought, oh, even when you think it's all,
when you think you're done, you can still have more, like in a good way.
Yeah, yeah. But that was, you know, that was, that's probably where it came from because it
was all, I always felt like I never was good enough for what his standards were.
Interesting. But in some ways that served you well.
Yeah, in some ways, yeah, it served well. In some ways it was very difficult.
Yeah, but in some ways it definitely served me well on it. So, yeah, I always just had that belief
that I could, I could outlast anybody. I could outwork anybody. Whatever it took, I could do it.
And, you know, in the different things that where that occurred, I was able to do that. Same thing
that when I worked 9-1-1, I took that job to see, one, because it paid a lot, we needed money back
then. And two, it took it because I wanted to see if I could actually do it because I'd heard it was
tough and I wanted to see if I could do it. And I wanted training for it. I wanted to have that
background, that training. You know, and I think the bottom line that I learned is from that, and
is that if you can keep your cool when everybody else around you is losing it, then
you'll be fine. You know, you just, but that can be perceived negatively too,
because I can remember when we had the first baby, Pepper, and my mom said she kept waiting
for me to get excited and, you know, just kind of go crazy. And she said, I never did. I was just,
you know, we had a baby and she said, I just didn't seem to
get excited. Or she said, you're just too rational, too calm, too.
So it could be perceived as being without emotion. I can remember
I had a bunch of tests and an interview, long, long process with, when you entered,
when you were trying to get into Terminix's management training program, and they had
a guy, an out-of-state consultant that they used and he would travel. He'd been all over the world
and worked for different companies and given tests to determine intelligence and emotion and
aptitudes and all that. And then he would give the evaluations to the upper management
of these different companies. And again, the one that I ran into him was at Terminix
and to get into the management training program. And so he would write up and he'd
been a lot of places and everything and a lot of companies. And so he wrote out a report and
the regional manager would get the report. And he wasn't supposed to share it, but he shared it with
me. He let me read it and he said, I'll deny that I ever showed this to you for telling anyone, but
I can remember reading it. And it said, and I probably told you this before,
I told you this before. Steve's probably, he's probably, he's one of the five most intelligent
people I've ever met in the entire world in all my career. But he's not a very nurturing individual.
In fact, when I told this to your mom, Glenda, that became a running inside joke for us for the
rest of our lives. Steve's not a very nurturing individual because that would be a complaint of
hers that I didn't show a lot of emotion, wasn't demonstrative of my emotion. I can get it if you
want. Anyway, so I can remember reading that report. And then so my regional manager said,
you know, how well has he described me? I said, I'd say it was probably right on.
Because that's the way I perceive myself, not showing a whole lot of emotion. You know,
I was in control of my emotion and everything. When I was younger, there was a movie. In fact,
it was on here. I didn't record it, but I didn't watch it, I erased it. It was Paul Newman and he
was a half breed in the movie. It was called Ombre. In the movie, he was portrayed as being
emotionless and didn't get involved with other people. And the one time that he did get involved
in help people is when he got killed. And so I determined when I was younger, when I saw that
movie, to be like him. And that was in, I was probably, I was in high school at that time. We
moved to Vista, California. And I just determined to be like him. And so I wasn't very demonstrative
as far as emotions and being outgoing and that. And part of that I thought I got from my mom,
because my mom was an introvert. At least that's how I perceived her. My dad was an extrovert,
which everybody would agree with that. But it's interesting, both my parents were actually
pretty well read and I think very good individuals. You know, good people.
And we were active off and on throughout my years. Mostly off, but as far as the church is concerned.
The day I always perceived him as being good parents. You know, I never thought that I had
a horrible childhood or anything. The one thing that I did miss is that, like I said, I think my
dad made it to one baseball game. I played little league and minor league and all that kind of stuff
and I always missed that because he was always working. So I felt, so I made a determination
when I was, if I ever got married that I would be, go to all the games of all my kids, which I did
except for Peppler. And I don't, I don't know why that, you know, she played volleyball and all that.
But I did go to all the games of U3 Boys. I was always involved with that. And whether it was
being the coach of the baseball team, your mom and I, or being a soccer coach, or being a referee in
soccer, or just being part of that. That affected me.
But yeah, I always had a bottom line belief. I can do whatever it takes. I can be
better than anybody. And so occasionally when you run into people that are,
when I ran into people that were more intelligent or just quicker than I was, it was like,
that was pretty hard for me to accept. Yeah, very hard. I think I got a little bit of that
in school. Like, because I felt like that was my part of my identity. It was like, I'm really good
at school, at least for a while. And then I think especially in college, it was like,
getting back from a mission, I'm like older than everybody. And so they all seemed, in some,
in some of the classes, it was like, wow, I am taking the longest on this assignment. Like,
that kid finished two hours ago and he aced it. And it'll take me a lot longer and I won't do
as well. And it's like, oh, this does not feel good. I don't like this. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Like, if you remember, when I went back to BYU, I'd been,
I hadn't been very, I hadn't been an extrovert or anything and
was very shy and hadn't dated or anything. And then I went back to BYU and
I decided at that point, nobody knew who I was before, except for my best friend.
And I thought, I can be anybody I want to be. I can be an outgoing person. They won't know
the difference. So that's why I started being. And that's how they perceived me.
And so when I eventually told them who, who I saw myself as and as I had been, they didn't believe
me. They just thought, oh, you're just joking. And they laughed about it. But I can remember
going around and one of the ladies that, one of the girls at BYU that I dated, one of the first
ones that I dated, we went on a date and she was brilliant. She was so far ahead of me mentally,
the way I saw it, it was like, it just blew me away. I didn't know how to react. She was just,
it was, and it was an eye opener to me. It was like, wow, wow, there's people that are
smarter than I am and that can do better than I can do. And that was an eye opener. Yeah.
That was like, how can that be? Yeah. Yeah. So that was good to learn some humility.
Yeah. And I think that's what happens. Heavenly Father has these different things that teach us
humility and to show us that, hey, you know, you need to, you need to realize that you're not
the greatest in the world. You know, you're not better than somebody else.
What you are, you're just different. I think that's, yeah. Everybody's different. Yeah.
Like, he humbles us, but then he also says, but you are special. Yeah. Like, you're still,
you don't have to be the best, whatever. You're like, you're still, you're still important and
even more important than you thought you were. He's like, you're even more important than that
to me, even now that you even see yourself in a more true light. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. This is, this, this, cancer's been hard because I,
I always thought I was indestructible. And that's what my dad thought. He had that same belief.
And so when he got sick and he had the heart problems and then he had his accident where
he was paralyzed, it was, I can't imagine how that was for him. I have some idea now, I think.
You know, you're going along and you think you're just totally indestructible and then all of a
sudden you find out you're not. And that's, it's just a huge adjustment. And I don't know that,
but I don't think I've adjusted to it yet. You know, it's very difficult.
It's like, how can I have cancer? Yeah. I don't understand that.
But that's, yeah, that's, it's hard. I mean,
because I've always viewed being sick as a weakness of people because I never got sick.
Yeah. And to realize that, no, it's not a weakness. It's just something that's human.
That's part of the human experience. But if you don't experience that much yourself, it's,
but again, it's that same thing. Like you just said,
we are, we all have our different weaknesses and strength and heavenly father shows us these
weaknesses and he can make them become strengths if we so choose.
But yeah, it humbles us, helps to keep us humble in that.
But yeah, when you're going along and you think you're indestructible,
I mean, it's good in some ways because it gets you through stuff. But then when,
when you have something like this happens, like it's a difficult adjustment.
Yeah. Yeah. It just, it doesn't compute. Yeah. Like you were saying, it's like,
I thought I could go, you know, go longer, do like, I can do whatever it takes. And it's like,
like, wait, I don't know. How come I can't apply that to this situation? Yeah. It's like,
I have the wrong tool now. Yeah. Yeah. It's very, yeah, it's very hard.
Yeah. And everything that you, that I've done, I thought
one of these things would eliminate the cancer, but it hasn't. So anyway.
Okay. Anything else?
That's it on that one. There's, there'll be another question, like the next one in the line.