Who Was I?

Or History of Jack Mileur Part 1

I was born on January 16, 1979 in Garfield Hospital in Monterey Park, CA, to Glenn and Joanne Mileur. My sister Kate was born ten months afterwards, on November 21, 1979. Life for the first few years was a blur, to say the least. I can't remember a thing about my life before 4 or 5. But my parents tell me that I had a severe speaking problem that kept me from speaking until I was over 3 years old. I had to go to a special school to learn how to speak. I know it worked, because nowadays, I can't shut up. At the special school I also discovered that I was a gifted child. About the same time that I learned to speak, I also learned how to read, write and do arithmetic. In 1984 (or thereabouts), my family moved from the L.A. area to Oak Hills, up in the mountains of the Mojave Desert. Life there was tough, but my family managed. I spent kindergarten through 3rd grade in Mesa Grande and Cottonwood Schools in Hesperia. When I was in 4th grade (1987-88), my parents moved us to Rancho Cucamonga, CA, which is in the Inland Empire. It felt so good to be in civilization again. I had so many good friends there and I had so much fun in the GATE (Gifted and Talented Ed.) program. I also learned my love of computers there. But there was trouble in paradise, so we had to move again, this time to Hesperia in 1988-89. In Hesperia we lived in this rat-infested gang-polluted slum of an apartment complex, and I didn't have much fun there at all. At school I was always harassed by bullies because of my weight and because I pretended to be an alien most of the time. However, when one of the local bullies threatened to shoot my mother with a gun, we got the hell out of there. We moved in 1989 to Lucerne Valley, a small desert town in the middle of nowhere. There I spent the next seven years in semi-isolation, trying my best to get good grades and fit in with the local crowd. However, when the opportunity came to leave, I took it. In 1996 I was accepted to UCR in the Computer Science program. Things were rocky to start, but I eventually managed. In early 1997 I met my friends Alex, Beau, Jackie and Eric from the prayer group, and on March 5, 1997, I accepted Jesus as my savior. God has pulled me through so many obstacles to get to this date, and I thank Him for keeping me here so far. Well, that's my history in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed living it (hehe).