Jud Sloan - Food for Thought: From the Diary of a Selfie

Juds First Life

This may sound strange, but at the age of forty-two, I had an addiction that had been with me for my entire life. That means I had that problem since birth. It is not something you would think of as an addiction, like drugs, alcohol, or smoking. It is something we were all born with because we acquired it from our original parents, Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve had it made: they were living in perfection until God told them they could not eat the fruit from this one particular tree in the middle of the garden, and that gave the devil an opening for Adam and Eve to start thinking about themselves instead of what God wanted. They thought, If I eat from that tree, I will know as much as God does. God told them if they eat from the tree that they will surely die. The devil told them that they werent going to die if they ate the fruit from the tree. It worked, and Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree, and that is how it all started. Now, we are born wrapped up in self, and now it is about what I want. If you think that is not true, when is the last time you had to train a child to stop thinking so much about others and concentrate on what he wants? That is you until you have a higher power in your life other than yourself. I, on the other hand, took being self-centered to a new level.

Actually, Eve was the one the devil chose to convince first to eat the fruit of the tree of life. It was not because she was a woman and easer to convince; it was because she did not hear it from God, not to eat from the tree. Adam told her what God said because when God told Adam, Eve had not been created yet. The devil just had to convince her that Adam was wrong when he told her the story, not God, and it made it easier, but Adam did go along with her.

For the first eighteen years of my life, I had help on my quest to being self-centered. I am not blaming my parents. My mother lost her first child at birth, and then they had me, and since I was the only child, I got all the attention and pretty much got everything I wanted.

My dad was from wealthy parents and spent his school years in a military school; my mothers parents were from Sylvania and did not speak English very well. There was never any affection shown in the home; the words I love you were never spoken to me or to each other, not even a hug. That was just their way. I am not saying that they did not love each other and me. It is just that they did not know how to show it. God was never mentioned in the home, but they sent me to Sunday school with the neighbors. It was about as moral a home as you can get, though. There was never a foul word, never a quarrel. Whenever we had company and they might tell an off-colored joke, they would make me leave the room. In my entire life as a child, I had one babysitter for an evening, and I got sick.

While in school, the moral part of my life stuck. I never really did anything wrong; all I did was school and sports. I did get into a few fights in grammar school when I did not get my own way. I stopped in high school when I could actually get hurt in a fight. I was self-centered, but I was not stupid.

My parents were ballroom dancers and won a few trophies in their later years. They wanted me to follow in their footsteps, so they had me go to Arthur Murrays dance studio to learn how to dance. The instructor told me that I had an unusual ability to move to the music. Later, I learned from my Black friends in the service it was called soul. If you do not know what I mean at the age of seventy-five, if you go to YouTube, I have a couple of dance videos there. Just put in Jud Sloan on YouTube, and they will come up.

I inherited a couple of things from my dad that werent bad things, but I made them bad and got into situations I would have rather not been in. One was my ability to dance, and another was my dad enjoyed being around women more than men. I am not talking about a sexual reason, but he just enjoyed the company of a woman more than a man. I never had one male friend after I got out of the service until God was in my life, almost twenty years later. I am not talking about family. I married Alma when I was twenty-nine years old, and she had a large family. I love all of them, but I had no friends outside of the family until I started going to church.

I graduated from high school and went into the air force and realized the benefit of being a good dancer and the enjoyment of the opposite sex. I had nothing to do with women in high school; all I wanted to do was play sports. I did still play basketball on the base team while I was in Okinawa. There were fourteen Black guys and me. That was not my main focus there, though; it was drinking and women, and that lasted for eighteen months.

When I was transferred to Tucson is when I entered the real world, and it was different. I was always self-centered but really didnt hurt anyone because of where I was until now. I was only involved with what you might call ladies of the night, but now it was different. These were normal women who had feelings and could be hurt. Of course, this is a reflection; at the time, I really did not really care.

After a year of running around, I met a woman that was very attractive. In her younger years, she was Miss Tucson, and it made me look good when I was with her, so I thought that was a good reason to marry her. Remember, I was incapable of loving anyone more than myself. I went to the squadron commander and asked if I could marry her, and he did not help at all. He said, Under normal circumstances, I would not tell you to marry someone ten years older than you, but I have seen her, so go ahead. He played basketball with me and always put his bag next to her during the game.

We took another couple and after a night of dancing, we went to Nogales, Mexico, at midnight and had a judge marry us. When we went out the back door to get into the car, five men in trench coats surrounded the car. As luck would have it, the man that was with us was a police officer, and when he showed him his badge, they left us alone. As I look back in those times, I think of the times God protected me because I could have been in a lot of trouble.

I believe that God has a hand in even protecting non-Christians at times because He knows in advance who is going to be a Christian and who is not, even in the mothers womb. That is not predestination; it means God knows the future and what is going to happen even before it happens. We have freedom of choice, and God just knows what our choice is going to be and when it will be.

Needless to say, the marriage did not even last long enough for me to even get out of the service. So when we got a divorce, I tried to commit suicide. I always had it in the back of my mind if things did not go my way, I could always kill myself. It did not work, obviously, and when I got out of the service, I went back to Sacramento. She called me up and wanted to marry me again, and I did it again. She came to Sacramento, and a couple of months later, she went back to Tucson. By this time, I was used to getting a divorce, so I did not try to kill myself again. Unfortunately, I did not hear the song Never Make a Pretty Woman Your Wife until later.

Now I was living on unemployment, going out dancing seven nights a week. I always went out by myself and never really dated anyone, unless you would call a one-night stand a date. If I went with anyone, I would be obligated to do what they wanted to do. One night, I was in a womans trailer, and her ex-husband broke a window, and they stated shooting at each other. She told me to hit the floor, and when it was over, I will say I was a little nervous.

That was exciting, so I continued to date her. She was a good dancer, and we were even offered a job to dance in an all-Black club. It was not a strip club; it was just because of our ability to dance. She put the word out that if anyone hurt me, she would kill them. She knew some bad people because of her upbringing, but she was not bad. She had a job with the state and was actually a good person. We ended up getting married, and a couple of years later, I did not want to be married anymore. One day, she went to work, and I packed my bags, walked to the bus, and traveled around the country for a while. There were no problems; we were not fighting or anything. I just wanted to travel around for a while. When you are as self-centered as I was, you think no one cares about you that much either, so if you leave, it is not that big a deal. Of course, I was wrong; she was devastated, I learned later. I did not only leave her without a word, I left my parents, and no one knew where I was. We got a divorce. One of her children just contacted me to see if I knew where her brother was. My ex had passed away, and earlier, she put all three of her children up for adoption.