"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Dwight D. Eisenhower, from a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953 One Must Recognize just WHERE they have been, Before You Can Glimpe Just HOW FAR You Have Come! ~Thomas Prebis (Me!) Well, the most interesting facet of my life, the experience which sets me apart somewhat from the norm, would have to be the Harrowing tale of SURVIVING my Very Own MADMAN STUFF: when I was just a junior in high school (16), & driving back to my high school to run the lights for a musical, I slipped on black ice, & met up w a tree at about 40 mph or so... I was then found (MIRACLE #1) by accident, by two older couples who were on their way to an Easter Passion Play, but suddenly realized they forgot to feed their dogs, and being responsible & loyal pet owners, they reversed course, fed them, left again, THEN stumbled upon my wreck seconds after it happened (crucial development, because I was Quite Literally in The Middle of Nowhere (rural Medina, Ohio), they called in the cavalry (911), AND then took the Altogether Unprecedented step (in this day & age), of getting out to keep me warm & awake & everything until help arrived... then, TWO of the local area Fire Departments responded to the distress call (MIRACLE #2), & since it was too windy at this time for LifeFlight to come to the scene, I was taken by ambulance to my local Medina General Hospital; at MGH, My Stars must have Aligned, because I passed through the ER at Shift Change (MIRACLE #3), somehow compelling BOTH docs to stay...my father, (a Pediatric Nephrologist himself), tells me that I wouldn't be here without this singular event.. but I was only at Medina for mb 20 minutes, before I was Gripped by the whims of my FOURTH MIRACLE, which Lifeflighted me to Cleveland's Metrohealth Medical Center, even though the choppers had been grounded all day because of the shitty weather. I was an inpatient at Metro for four months; two more in a 'rehab center' (a glorified nursing home)... but I eventually returned home to finish high school (albeit w a couple extra years tagged on [who wouldn't want to relive their senior year of high school?]), & am a junior in college...all this even though I sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury in my wreck (yes, OF COURSE I was buckled up, & NOT speeding!) "So many of our DREAMS at first seem Impossible, then they seem Improbable, and then we Summon the Will, they soon become Inevitable.” ~Christopher Reeve "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -Albert Einstein (1879-1955)