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When my kids were little, they wanted to eat chocolate cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When I was a kid, I got in trouble for climbing onto the roof of the house and jumping off. My parents stopped me because they knew something that, as a child, I didn’t. I stopped my kids for the same reason. I could foresee the likely results of their actions, and used my own wisdom and experience to stop and discipline them. Had I simply said, “Don’t do that,” and walked away, I guarantee you my children would have eaten the cake anyhow. I would have jumped from the roof again as soon as my parents weren’t watching. Punishment is required to drive that point home.

It’s the same thing as a society. As adults, we have a responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves- children, for example. For that reason, we have laws preventing children from engaging in sexual intercourse with adults. The excuse pedophiles frequently give: “the child was a willing participant” is immaterial. There are consequences to the actions the child is engaging in, and they don’t yet have the maturity to fully understand those consequences, and therefore are incapable of making a fully informed decision of risk versus benefit.

Robert Heinlein stated this principle rather eloquently in his novel Starship Troopers:

duty is an adult virtue—indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a ‘juvenile delinquent.’ But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents—people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail

How many times have we seen a story about a female (usually a teacher) who had sexual intercourse with a 15 or 16 year old boy, a child? If the teacher happens to be physically attractive, there is always some moron who will come around and say “There was no victim here. Had this woman wanted to sex me up, I would gladly have done so. Therefore, no harm, no foul. There was no victim here.”

However, let that exact situation occur and let the adult teacher be a fat, unattractive woman or a male PE teacher, and those cries disappear, replaced by calls to prosecute. Why? Those people are substituting their own desires to have sex with that teacher for adult responsibility and common sense.

Again, I will regale you with a story from my past. I was once part of a case where a woman was selling her children to adults for the purposes of sexual relations. So, are there victims here? Were the kids harmed? They split the money with their mother, so they probably wanted to, right? Of course not. That woman deserved to lose those kids, and the cops rightfully arrested that woman and her kids. Sometimes, parents don’t make wise decisions in raising their kids.

Our societal responsibility towards children is the reason why we don’t have children working in coal mines any longer. The child doesn’t know any better, so we as a society have put rules in place to protect them until they are old enough to assume that duty we all have as adults. If an adult wants to do any of the above: jump from the roof, have cake for dinner, work in a coal mine, or have sex with attractive teachers, they can do so, because they have the ability to understand the consequences of their choices and will have to live with the consequences.

So let’s apply that principle to the idea of children riding motorcycles. My post from the other day had me being told I sound like a “boomer.” First, I don’t see why so-called boomers and their ideas are automatically bad, except for the immature notion that because they are old, they are somehow out of touch. That is a poor argument and just makes you sound like a spoiled child who is never allowed to do anything because mom and dad just don’t understand that things are different nowadays, and your outdated ideas are stupid. That’s why you don’t believe in the Constitution because it was written by out of touch old men who owned slaves, and …

I was told how wrong I was because there was no victim to a child riding a motorcycle on a road. After all, he was just going down the street to fish. The story of “I ride my lawnmower 4 miles down the road all the time.” Does that mower go 50 miles per hour? Are you 11 years old, or are you an adult who is capable of deciding for yourself?

Then there are those who claim the kid was on the easement or the ditch next to the road. Here is a screengrab from the officer’s bodycam. Where is the ditch or easement?

All sorts of excuses. Let’s just stop enforcing any rules for children. After all, they can and should be permitted to have sex with adults if they want, have chocolate cake of they want, transition sexes if they want, well, you know, DO whatever they want. After all, children aren’t immature, they are just little adults.

Or you could just think to yourself what it would feel like to hold a dead child, or tell a parent that their child was killed when he got in an accident when he hit a car while riding that electric motorcycle at 50 mph.

Then we pass laws that say a child can’t ride vehicles that are designed for roadway use. In order to be considered off road only, it has to meet certain criteria. Some of those are the vehicle can’t be capable of speeds over 28 mph, and in the case of mopeds or electric bikes, they have to have pedals and a few other criteria:

• Riders under 16 must have adult supervision
• an approved safety-course certificate
• wear an approved helmet, eye protection, and over-the-ankle boots.
• Riding must be permitted at that location
• public-road use is generally prohibited, subject to specific exceptions

In order for Cade’s vehicle to be considered legal for him to operate, Florida requires fully operable pedals, a motor of less than 750 watts, and compliance with one of the three e-bike classifications. The reported bike failed both the pedal and power requirements, so it did not receive the e-bike exemption from licensing and registration laws. §§316.003(23), 316.20655(2).

He was riding what the law considers to be a motorcycle on a public roadway. You might as well let him drive a Camaro. However, when that kid makes a driving error and smears himself all over the hood of someone’s F150, I imagine no one here will be saying, “Welp, shit happens. FAFO.”

The police, had they just “given him a warning” would have been wasting their breath. The kid would have rolled his eyes, waited until the cop was out of sight, and gone right back out on that motorcycle. Perhaps this was the case this time. Maybe a cop DID already warn him. Maybe not.

I will die on this hill: There are certain things that we cannot allow children to do. Driving on a motorcycle at 11 years old is one of them. I would even go a step further and say the parents should be arrested as well, for letting him buy and drive a motorcycle on a public roadway.

In 2016, a sheriff’s deputy arrested Patrick Lawrence, a 22 year old white male, who was fornicating with a pumpkin in the middle of a field at night.

The next day, at the Gwinnett County (Georgia) courthouse, Lawrence was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, public indecency and public intoxication.

The suspect explained he was passing a pumpkin patch on his way home from a drinking session when he decided to stop. “You know how a pumpkin is soft and squishy inside, and there was no one around for miles, or at least I thought there was no one around,” he stated.

Lawrence went on to say that he pulled over to the side of the road, picked out a pumpkin that he felt was appropriate to his purpose, cut a hole in it, and proceeded to satisfy his pressing need. “Guess I was really into it, y’know?” he commented with evident embarrassment.

In the process of doing the deed, Lawrence failed to notice an approaching sheriff’s car and was unaware of his audience until Deputy Brenda Taylor approached him. “It was an unusual situation, that’s for sure,” said Deputy Taylor. “I walked up to Lawrence and he’s just humping away at this pumpkin.”

Deputy Taylor went on to describe what happened when she approached Lawrence. “I said: ‘Excuse me sir, but do you realize that you’re having sex with a pumpkin?”

He froze and was clearly very surprised that I was there, and then he looked me straight in the face and said: “A pumpkin? Shit …is it midnight already?”

The start of Autumn is defined as the transitional season of the year, occurring between summer and winter. It features an equal number of daylight hours and an end to the hot days of summer. I also know that autumn begins on the autumnal equinox (which was September 22 this year) and ends on the winter solstice. However, I don’t think most of us look at it that way.

It’s the cooler days that mark the end of summer, and in Florida our summers are long, hot, and feature afternoon thunderstorms. Autumn sees an end to that. Here in Florida, the weather is still what we would call warm, and most of the rest of the nation would call hot and humid, but at least it is punctuated by the occasional cold front, or at least what we call a cold front but is mostly just a brief respite from summer’s heat. You can usually tell late autumn because the color changes to the license plates.

For those reasons, I have my own definition of the beginning of autumn. Here in Sector Ocho, autumn is marked by the first time two consecutive days following the summer solstice where the temperature drops below 70 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s 24c to those of you in countries using the metric system).

I have a personal weather station in my backyard that I use as my official measuring station because I don’t believe Florida’s numbers. My weather station is one of these. It’s located in my backyard in the middle of a clearing with the nearest block to wind (a tree) being at least 50 feet away. The low this morning was 61, the day before was 68. Autumn is upon us.

Anyway, the first day of autumn has arrived, and it was this morning, Saturday September 26.

What really marks the end of summer is the lower humidity. You see, the low temperature can’t go any lower than the dew point, a measure of humidity. At that point, any further energy lost from the atmosphere is spent condensing water vapor, not reducing the temperature. Cold fronts that make it this far south serve to bring in cooler, less humid air, which permits the temperature to drop down to the now lower dewpoint. If you have ever been in Central Florida during the summer, you know that the air is so humid down here, it feels like you can cut it with a knife. It actually feels THICK as you inhale it, like you are breathing in air made of jello.

The dew point temperature is the temperature at which the air can no longer hold all of its water vapor, and some of the water vapor must condense into liquid water. At 100% relative humidity, the dew point temperature and the air temperature are the same, and clouds or fog can begin to form, and you find everything outside is covered in dew. While relative humidity is a relative measure of how humid it is, the dew point temperature is an absolute measure of how much water vapor is in the air (how humid it is). In very warm, humid conditions, the dew point temperature can reach 75 to 77 degrees F, but rarely exceeds 80 degrees. Except here. There were more than a few days this summer where our dewpoint was over 80 degreesF. The highest I saw this summer was a dewpoint of 84 degrees. This morning’s dew point was 60.9 degrees.

Autumn in Florida is when dewpoints get below 70 for longer and longer periods of time, making the air FEEL cooler, even if the thermometer doesn’t show it. Dew point is the best indicator of comfort in a hot climate. Once the dew point of the air exceeds 66 degrees Fahrenheit or so, the air begins to feel hot and uncomfortably stuffy. The reason for this is that your perspiration cannot evaporate to cool you off.

Here in Florida, there are 4 seasons:

Hot: March through May
F’ing Hot (Also known as Hurricane season, and in Orlando, tourist season): June through mid September
Still Hot: Mid September through Mid November
Snow Bird: Mid November through February

Autumn is, and always has been, my favorite season. Mostly because it marks an end to the insanely high temperatures of summer. You can finally go outside and do things. On the down side, that means I am going to have to clean the garage this weekend.

I still remember watching my mother put up those expanding paper fall decorations as the cooler breezes of fall pushed through the house.

The remainder of this year will be warm to hot, with occasional short cooler spells where the mercury ‘only’ makes it to 80 degrees or so. They are forecasting a late, but colder than normal winter. Let’s see how accurate that is.

For those of you who say vote R no matter what, and not voting is the same as voting D.

This is by far the most frustrating thing to me.

Republicans are in the majority RIGHT NOW.

Don’t tell us we need to vote for you so you can do certain things. Just do them now and people would be happy to vote for you. https://t.co/4DWQuQD8KI pic.twitter.com/NwFC4UYK7o

— Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) September 23, 2026

So what will electing Republicans do this time? What will make 2027 and different than now? I’ve said time and time again: just because Democrats are your enemy doesn’t make Republicans your friend.

I guess one of the things that bothered me about the guy who claimed to be a SEAL working on the pile at ground zero was due to the sound in this video: (watch it with the sound on)

Every firefighter wears an alarm that alerts those nearby that a firefighter has been motionless for 30 seconds. The alarm is called a PASS device and emits a loud noise to facilitate finding a downed rescuer. We jokingly referred to it as the “lazy man” alarm. Once you have been motionless for 30 seconds, it emits a soft beeping noise. On fire scenes, you will hear one device chirp, and every firefighter on scene will wiggle to reset the alarm.

The sound in that video is the sound of 343 PASS devices sounding their cry for help, all at the same time. Each of those noises is emanating from a PASS device that it attached to a dead firefighter. That noise gives me chills to this day. Those rescuers each entered the building, knowing that they may not come out. In fact, some of the firefighters who went into the north tower had already seen the south tower collapse, and knew what was going to happen.

They went in anyway.

There are people out there who claim the buildings were downed in a controlled demolition. There are people who claim to have worked the pile, but were never there. They can all kiss my entire ass.

Then, not one of the dozens of rescuers, investigators, or other workers at ground zero would see a thing, or you would have to believe that the ones who noticed were willing to keep it a secret even though many of the dead firefighters were related to those same investigators.

I know people who were both at the towers and at the Pentagon. I was at the Pentagon site afterwards.

Explain to me how:

• a demolition crew of at least several dozen people could spend several weeks in a building where 50,000 people worked every day and 150,000 people used the building as a transit station, place several thousand pounds of explosives, several hundred feet of det cord, wire all of it for demo, all while having not single person notice and wonder what those guys were doing,
• Either none of the thousands of rescuers who were there noticed anything, or still marched into the building knowing it was wired to explode. One of them was a Battalion Chief who ordered his own brother into the building. Can you imagine giving your brother an order that resulted in his death? Now tell me why he would then keep it a secret when the government did something like this.
• nor would anyone of the people involved say a word about what really happened.

In order for this conspiracy to work, thousands of people would have to be in on it. Some of the people who were in on it lost close relatives.

The FDNY’s deployment included:

• 121 engine companies
• 62 ladder companies
• All 5 rescue companies
• 6 squad companies
• 27 chief officers

Over 1,000 personnel in all, and more than a third of them perished.

Don’t even claim it was crisis actors. There is no way to get a hundred imposters into a group where everyone knows someone who knows you. Fire Departments are a close knit community. Once you go up in rank, you know people. There are classes, seminars, conferences, etc. Firefighting is a family business. There are brothers, sons, fathers, cousins, and even wives and daughters who work in that community. To think that 343 people would die in a building collapse, all of whom were friends and relatives of those in the fire service still living, and not one of the living would say a word? That’s simply unbelievable.

That battalion chief I talked about earlier? Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer, the first FDNY chief at the World Trade Center. He survived. The firefighter killed was his brother, Lieutenant Kevin J. Pfeifer of Engine 33. You can see him here in the white shirt and hat in the only known video of the first plane striking the towers:

Engine 33 was only 1.5 miles away from the towers and was one of the first to arrive. Joseph ordered Kevin’s company into the North Tower to help evacuate occupants; Kevin died when it collapsed. Here he is in the National Geographic documentary on those first responders. Watch this and imagine your pain in sending your own brother in to die:

Now picture a building wired with demolitions. Every firefighter there would have know- you can’t secretly wire a building that large for demo without it being obvious.

One wall in my game room is filled with department patches and pictures of people who I know in the fire service. Even today, my wife is amazed at how we will go some random place and some firefighter will walk up to me and say hi. I’ve been retired for more than 15 years, yet I still know and talk to people who work in the fire department- including from New York, Maryland, Virginia, and I live in Florida. In fact, I know people in departments all over the east coast and beyond. We were in Fairbanks, Alaska in 2017, and ran into a firefighter I knew from Maryland.

There is no way that you could pull something like this off without at least one firefighter saying something.

Sorry, dude. I trust people that I have known for decades more than some Internet rando doing a pseudo analysis of a youtube video who then sets up a webpage where he claims to have solved the crime of the century. Any engineer or architect who tells you they can prove it was a controlled demo from watching a video is full of shit. If this were the case, why wouldn’t that same government simply have eliminated whoever it was? A government that killed 3,000 people in front of the entire world would be too squeamish to eliminate the guy running that website and destroy his “evidence?”

This is the same government that couldn’t even keep it a secret when a President got a blowjob in the Oval office. Anyone who seriously believes this hasn’t thought it through.

It’s easier for me to believe one of the following than it is a controlled demolition:

• The government was completely inept and just dropped the ball by not knowing what was coming
• the government knew something was afoot and screwed up by allowing it to happen, like they did in OKC
• the government knew what was going to happen, but allowed it to happen for some unknown reason

If you believe this bullshit about a controlled demo, you are a moron and are spitting on the graves of people I knew and respected. There is just no other way to put it. Not everything that happens is a government conspiracy. Don’t dishonor dead people who gave their lives to save others by calling them liars.

EDITED TO ADD:

I’ve shown my work here. Going forward, please refer to rule 6 of this blog:

If you demand that anyone provide evidence for an assertion that they are making, then you must hold yourself to the same standard when making a counterargument. It takes time and effort to research sources, and replying with “Nuh, uh, I refuse to believe that” while not providing sources of your own to refute them is how an 8 year old debates. If you demand that the person with whom you are disagreeing show their work, so do you.

When the mayor of New York City signed executive orders designating the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks a citywide day of remembrance, the ceremonial pen he used was given as a gift.

To an Al Qaeda lawyer and relative of one of the hijackers.

I was still working for the fire department on that day. There was so much support for us, for the citizens of New York, and an upwelling of support.

For the voters of New York City to support this shit just saddens me. I have no words. The Global War on Terror was fought, and the terrorists won. All of the lives lost that day and since were wasted.

I recently posted that parents whose kids miss too much school should be fined. There were those who were incensed- why should THEY be fined because their little angels had an unavoidable series of absences?

A week ago, I posted that EBT is a travesty because it isn’t my responsibility to pay for someone else’s bad decisions. Nearly everyone who commented was in complete agreement.

Both topics are the same problem, couched in two different ways. The average cost for public school in the US is about $16,000 per year, per child. Since school is 180 days, it costs about $90 per day to send your kids to school. For a child to attend school from K through 12th grade costs about $200,000 in today’s money. Fining a parent $1,000 because their kid missed ten days of school is merely a refund of the money that was wasted on schooling a child whose parents couldn’t be bothered to make them attend.

That’s free money to those who have kids- free money that is taken from people who either don’t have children, or whose children have long since grown up. I pay over $3,000 per year in local school district taxes. So every day that a kid isn’t in school is my money that has been wasted, yet the parents of that child have no more skin in the game than I, a complete stranger.

The point that I was making with those two posts is this- if it is a waste to give parents free money to purchase junk food, why is it not a waste to pay money for children to attend school, only to watch the educational dollars be wasted when the child doesn’t show up?

I have to pay taxes to feed and educate the children of some fat, lazy bitch who has never had a job, only to see that money squandered and used to produce more fat, lazy criminals who will also need my tax dollars to survive.

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Sixty percent of all jobs don’t require more than an 8th grade level of education. That is, they don’t require the worker to perform algebra, know world history, or be able to quote Shakespeare. The high school years are spent preparing the students to attend college, yet only about 61% of high school graduates go on to college, and the graduation rates for them are low.

• 52% of students seeking a Bachelor’s degree will graduate
• A quarter of them take longer than 4 years to do so
• 30% of those seeking Associate’s Degrees will graduate
• 87% of those who begin high school actually graduate

Overall, 32% of those who begin high school will graduate from college with ANY degree (two or four year). It’s a pure waste of money to use high school as a college prep system when they clearly aren’t benefiting.

Here is my proposal:

At the end of the 8th grade, there will be an entrance exam for high school. Those who are in the top half of the scores will be permitted to move on to “college prep” high school at public expense. If you become a discipline, attendance, or academic problem, then you get sent down to be with the lower half.

The bottom half will attend a 2 year vocational school. They can pick between various tracks: auto mechanics, carpentry, welding, or other useful jobs. Included in the common, general curriculum will be classes in personal finance, budgeting, cooking, cleaning, and general skills needed to be a functional adult. Again, at public expense. Once they are done with that, they can enter the workforce at 16.

Kids who don’t make the cut for “college prep” can still attend, but at their own expense. You think your kid can handle it even though he failed the exam? OK, he or she can attend, but we aren’t paying for it. It will cost you $10,000 per year in tuition. If your kid becomes disruptive of the learning of other students, they can be removed and sent over to the two year vo-tech track. Any student who drops out of either program (college track or votech) will be ineligible for any public assistance of any kind until they complete a GED style votech program at their own expense.

A study performed by the RAND corporation has been picked up by leftists on social media. The claim is for the number of households who have a firearm in the house. Read:

Household gun ownership across the U.S.

🇺🇸 Montana — 66.3%
🇺🇸 Wyoming — 66.2%
🇺🇸 Alaska — 64.5%
🇺🇸 Idaho — 60.1%
🇺🇸 West Virginia — 58.5%
🇺🇸 Arkansas — 57.2%
🇺🇸 Mississippi — 55.8%
🇺🇸 Alabama — 55.5%
🇺🇸 South Dakota — 55.3%
🇺🇸 North Dakota — 55.1%
🇺🇸 Oklahoma — 54.7%
🇺🇸 Kentucky…

— Infodex (@infodexx) September 1, 2026

I replied that I think these numbers are wildly inaccurate. For example, Florida has a claimed household firearms ownership rate of 35.3%. Florida has approximately 8,752,810 households, so the claim is just over 3 million households have a firearm in it. Here is why that number is demonstrably inaccurate:

• Florida does not require concealed weapons permits, yet 2.5 million people in the state have a CCW.
• Since the Brady Act begin requiring NICS checks in 1998, Florida has seen more than 30 million of them performed.

Those two data points alone point to more than 3 million households with a firearm. Still, I pointed out there is no way to be sure, because no one keeps a registry of firearms and their owners. The leftists made the the claim that the numbers were close to accurate because:

• It’s likely from firearms purchased through an FFL where data is collected through the 4473.
• The FBI does the background check. A transfer to you is in their database.
• It could be a household of five all with five firearms but it is still just one household with a firearm.

So to boil it down: The ATF has your data because they somehow have a record of your gun purchases because 4473. Even though that is illegal, and once a firearm is sold by a dealer, no one knows for sure who it was sold to, unless it somehow winds up being resold to a dealer. That’s why the left pushes so hard for universal background checks.

I pointed out the law in the second- the FBI doesn’t do NICS checks, the state police do. He replied how the FBI is better and more trustworthy with your data than the FDLE. Whatever, that still doesn’t validate the above state level data, which actually came from a RAND report created from summing up telephone surveys.

Then there is the antigun trope of claiming just a small minority of people owning a large number of firearms creating an illusion of widespread firearm ownership. That’s simply not true. I have already blogged about that ridiculous claim:

the top twenty percent of all gun owners actually owned 55% of the guns. In terms of absolute figures, ten million people owned 105 million guns – for an average of ten guns per person, and the remaining 87 million guns were owned by 34 million people – for an average of 2.6 guns per person. The population of the U.S. was 263 million in 1994 – indicating that only 16.7% of Americans had actually owned a weapon.

I wrote about this in June of 2016, and I guessed at the time that there were somewhere between 400 and 500 million firearms in the US. Since that time, there have been another 310 million NICS checks.

Again, let’s look at Florida’s demographics- there are just over 8.7 million households in Florida, and those households contain 19 million adults. With over 2.5 million CCW permits, 200,000 known NFA items, and approximately 100,000 active law enforcement officers, there are just about 3 million people right there. That doesn’t account for people with granddad’s hunting rifle, criminals who have a firearm but aren’t going to tell some random survey caller, and others. On the other hand, there are households like my sister and her crotch fruit who don’t own any guns at all. Of course, none of them have a CCW, either.

Looking at the numbers, they seem to support a household ownership rate closer to 60% than to 35%. However, I also admit that my estimate is just as much guesswork as the RAND corporation’s report, because no one can know for sure.

Borepatch announced today his diagnosis of prostate cancer. I was going to comment over there, but my comment became lengthy, and I know he reads my blog, so here are my thoughts on this:

1 You will be inundated with people telling you to try this or try that. Don’t listen to Internet randos who claim to be cancer experts this week, but were experts on police procedures last week, Constitutional law the week before, experts in building construction last year, etc. Everyone has an opinion, and most of them are wrong, and in the case of cancer, fatally wrong for you. When my mother in law was diagnosed with breast cancer a decade ago, her sister sent her a book written by Suzanne Somers of all people. She advocated fighting off cancer with diet changes. I posed about it here, and retards came on here bleating “But COVID.” My MIL was going to take the advice and refuse treatment in favor of diet changes. I talked her out of that plan, and she is still alive and as cheap as ever. Oh, and cancer free for about 8 years now.

1a Look guys, Ivermectin isn’t the cure for everything. Jesus, I see people advocating for Ivermectin as a cure for everything from heart disease to cancer. Just stop it with the snake oil. This is a real issue with real consequences for the person with the disease. Not everything is a conspiracy, and not every disease is treated by Ivermectin or special fad diets.

2 Cancer is a complex disease. It involves problems with a cell’s dna, and with the immune system that is supposed to catch cells that have “gone rogue” and destroy them. There are many different types of cancer with many different causes and treatments. My advice to you is this: do some research and find the facility that is the best at whatever cancer you have. Then seek them out. My brother was diagnosed with B cell lymphoma, and the form of cancer he had is fatal within 5 years in 85% of cases. His doctor (also neighbor and good friend for decades) told him that he could get chemo for it in the office, or could see a specialist. My brother called me for advice, and I told him there was a top 10 cancer facility right here in Orlando. I advised him to go there.

My brother didn’t take my advice. Instead, he told me top 10 wasn’t good enough, he wanted the best. That’s what he did- he found a cancer center 1000 miles away that specialized in his cancer. They put him in a study group, and he traveled to that center every 6 weeks for chemo for a year and a half, followed by follow-up visits every 3 months for another year. He also went to support groups to help him deal with it, and got more and more depressed as members of his support group died off. We went together to my father’s grave outside of New Orleans, and we stood over my father’s grave as he cried on my shoulder in fear of what was coming. It was as psychologically hard on him as it was medically, but we got through it.

He goes in every year to be tested for a return of the cancer. Yet here he is, 9 years later, still cancer free.

Not everyone beats cancer, but medicine is getting better and better at it every single year. Among males, age-adjusted cancer deaths per 100,000 population decreased from 210.9 in 2009 to 172.9 in 2019. It’s not the automatic death sentence people fear, but it does need to be respected. Contact the best cancer specialist you can, discuss your case with them, and make a joint decision between you, your family, and that specialist.

Good luck, my friend. Dealing with cancer is difficult, but it is a battle that can be won.