Every man has been influenced by somebody or something at one time or another. Most everybody aspires to make something of themselves, whether they decide to act on it or not, and at some point along the way it takes a little nudge from inspiration to keep moving in the right direction. A man is only as good as his role models, the people he looks up to and respects; the people he learns from. This, in my personal opinion, is one of the main platforms of our personal psychologies. And of course my statement is in some way supported by the fact that I acquired this belief from one of my own role models: my dad. You can already begin to see how the power of influence works and I haven’t even got into my story yet! But rather than stop here and spare you the trouble of reading a whole narrative filled with dry humor, I’m going to tell it anyways. Instead of telling you a boring story about myself, I’m going to tell you how a came to be myself; because without this story, there would be no stories about me (and because there is nothing exciting enough about my life to tell). One of the biggest reasons that I am who I am is my dad. And the reason he is who he is, and was able to influence me the way he has, is the circumstances he came up in and the people who were around to be there for him. And now that I am becoming a man myself, I’m beginning to understand how blessed I am for this. In a strange way, I’m lucky that my parents were not as fortunate as I have been in my youth. Growing up in Johnson County, an area where fortune is fairly common, being raised by parents who have been thrown out into the big bad world and come out alive has given me somewhat of an advantage, not only in perspective, but also in understanding what it takes to be a man not to be cocky or anything. Now that I’ve lulled you to near sleep with my lecturing, I’m on to the story of my dad. James McLaughlin Jr. was the second child of Kathy and James