The Journey is Just as Important as the Destination

By Shawn King

The title of my book is The Journey Is Just as Important as the Destination. It’s about a little boy in search of the truth on how to live and sustain happiness for life because I believe that everyone deserves to live a happy life. And once I found the truth, I was going to share it with everyone. I grew up in a small town, where we didn’t have a lot of heroes, and we struggled with hope. But along this journey, you walk with me through bad choices, pain, anger, heartache, fun, greatness, squander, adversity, inspiration, all the way to redemption; and I share my heart, my mindset, and the knowledge that I gain along the way. It’s a heck of a journey, and along the way, I cross paths with Shaquille O’Neal, Odell Beckham Sr., Kevin Greene, Peyton Manning, and John Jacobs and the Power Team. And while on that journey, I was introduced to a man that changed my life forever, and I believe what he did for me can change your life for the better also. This book is an inspiration on so many levels, and it has the power to captivate all generations because at some point, you will be able to relate to this journey, and it’s powerful and life-changing. It also teaches you to never give up and know that a brighter day is coming and to keep fighting the good fight. Love and do not hate because when it boils down to its simplest form, it’s just good versus evil. Whose side are you on?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662449376

Book preview

The Fam

I was born in 1972, an awesome year if I may say so myself. My parents are David and Brenda King. They were married not long after I was born. Both my parents were nineteen when they got married and started a family. At the time, they were both college students at the local university. Northeast Louisiana University was the name at that time. Now it’s the great ULM! My father was playing football there, and from the stories I’ve read and heard, he was quite the athlete. But now it was time to support a new wife and kid, so he had to give up his hopes and dreams of being an NFL player and find another career so that he could provide for his family. My parents had to drop out of school and find jobs to try and make it as a family. Back in the good ole ’70s, that’s what people did! Knowing what I know today, there’s no way my father was ready for this new level of commitment. So after two years of college and only nineteen, my father enlisted in the military, the Air Force to be exact. So we moved to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. I don’t remember much about that place except for pictures and stories. We moved back to West Monroe just before I started school. Both my parents were from here. It was a place where I had grandparents, uncles, and aunts, lots of them. There were kids everywhere. I didn’t have many cousins because my parents were the oldest kids in their families. My uncles and aunts were the best. I wanted to make a bunch of money so that I could take care of them as well as my parents and grandparents. I had an awesome family that always looked out for me.

It all started on the south side of town in a small shotgun house right next to the railroad tracks. It was a two-bedroom house with one bathroom, and it was infested with roaches. I can’t eat dig ’em Smacks cereal today because they resemble roaches. I guess you can say I’ve been traumatized. We had a small family of four; it was just my mother, father, and my little brother and me. My mother had a tall and thick stature; she stood about five feet nine. She was a tough lady who happened to be the oldest of seven, and she didn’t play. She would whoop your butt if you got out of line. It was all about respect 101 in her eyes. You knew how to act. But she was also one of the sweetest women I’ve ever known. My mom never met a stranger and had a heart the size of Texas. Everyone seemed to love BK! We would go to the grocery store, and it would take two hours to get out of there; by that time, we spoke to and chatted with half the store. Mom had a Christ-like spirit that ministered to people. She’s also one of the biggest believers in Jesus Christ that I’ve ever seen at that time. This lady loved the Lord! We would wake up on Sunday mornings to hear loud worship music while getting us ready for church every Sunday, and I do mean every Sunday. Pops never went to church with us. Now at that time, church to me was just another place to get in trouble because it was hard for any child to sit still for three hours. It was also a place where you went to hear how horrible you were in the eyes of the Lord, and the people who were not sinners dance and shouted, while the pastor talked about the rest of us. I just didn’t get it. You had people in the church that couldn’t stand other members. Everyone was sleeping with everyone’s man; it was no different than the hood. And right after church, we went right back to our ole selves, cursing, complaining, and gossiping. Enough about that place. Getting back to Mom, her motto was If you’re going to pray about it, there’s no need to worry. And if you’re going to worry about it, there’s no sense in praying. Nothing ever bothered this woman. I used to wonder how could she not be flipping out about certain things. But my mom found peace in the word of God and prayer! She used to always tell me that she’d given me to God. I was not going to worry her, and I used to think that she had given up on me. Come to find out, she was just doing what any good Christian should have done by giving it all to God!

My dad, on the other hand, stood about six feet three and 220 pounds. Now he wasn’t a Christian, and he never went to church. To make things even worse, he was an alcoholic. I remember walking in Pops’s room in the mornings, and he would already have a cup of whiskey, like most people have their coffee. He could be a wild man at times. You never knew if he was going to be the happy drunk or the violent drunk. My dad believed in corporal punishment. I used to get my ass kicked for just about anything—not eating all my food, report cards, pretty much anything dealing with school, chores, sleeping too late, half doing stuff, etc. And no one was excluded from these butt kickings, not even moms. I felt like CJ on A Soldier’s Story and Pops was Sergeant Waters! You know, growing up in the ’70s and being the firstborn was hell on earth. I thought in those days everyone that had a father had a tough one. He didn’t play when it came to obedience. You were going to do what you were told bottom line. There was no question who was the captain of this ship. I guess the most hurtful thing was to see my dad jump on my mother. There would be times my brother and I would lie on the bed while hearing banging on the walls, fussing, dishes breaking, and my mother screaming for her life as we had to lie back there and do nothing about it. It was traumatizing, so sometimes I would fake asthma attacks so they would stop. Sometimes it would work; sometimes it wouldn’t. Seeing someone beat on your mom did something to a little kid. I resented my father for that. I judged him and said that I would never be like him. At times, I thought he was very mean and unfair, and the only love he ever displayed was tough love. He was just doing what was passed down to him by his father I suppose.

Last but not least, my little snotty-nosed brother. He’s almost six years younger than me, and over the years, we became best friends. We joke about it now, but we claim we grew up in POW camp together. He looks just like my dad and the rest of the Kings and has a spirit like Mom. I look just like my mother and act like my dad. We’ll get back to my little bro a little later. All jokes aside, I would have never made it to where I had to go if it wasn’t for my father because I was a knucklehead. I tried my best to become a product of my environment, but I happened to have a father that didn’t play that. You were going to school every day, and you were going to make good grades; when you graduate, you were moving out.

Growing Up Fast

I can remember when I was in the third grade and the teacher went around asking kids what they wanted to be. When she got to me, I said NFL or the NBA! She told me to pick something else because less than 2 percent make the NFL or the NBA. I was not even sure that I understood what she was trying to relay to me. I wasn’t making good grades at the time, and I was also a bit of a class clown from time to time. But I was a tough kid who hung with a tough crew. It seemed no one in my circle was doing right or worried about being fair. I had to be tough because being a mama’s boy wasn’t cool in this neighborhood. One day, I was pouting to my father that someone was being mean to me. This was exactly what he said while grabbing my shirt: You better toughen up, boy, because if you don’t, someone will come and take what you have worked hard for. And if someone hits you, you better hit them back. Now understand that my father’s words were very important to me. I was always looking for my father’s approval. I decided that day I wasn’t letting anyone take anything or mistreat me ever again. I used to get my fighting moves from karate shows. This was the ’70s; cut me some slack. I was tall, skinny, scary, and fast! After all that practicing in front of the TV, one day I got an opportunity to use my moves on someone real. It was my neighbor. It was a girl, but she was tall, mean, and about two years older. Mind you, I was only eight at time. She took my candy and wouldn’t give it back, and she just kept picking on me. So I took off running and karate-kicked her in the hip, and she fell down. I was amazed, then I took off running to the house. The fight was on now; this stuff worked.

As kids, we were always competing in everything and talking trash. You had to know how to talk smack and back it up. The neighborhood boys used to make me and this one guy race and compete in everything because we were close in age. I was always the young guy in the crew, but I was taller than most, so I fit in. One day, we were talking noise to one another, and he pushed me, so I decided to hit him with the karate move. This time, it didn’t go as well. The guy didn’t fall down, and I took off running toward my house with the guy hot on my trail. I made it to the front doorstep, and he caught me. He started hitting me in the head with his fist, and my mom came to the door after a couple of seconds. She pulled me in the house, whooped me with a belt, and told me to get back out there and fight. I went back outside crying, filled with anger, and put it on that cat. I couldn’t lose in front of Mom! She told me later that night that she was tired of seeing her son getting chased home every day, crying. So in my mind, I had to become something that I didn’t necessarily want to be. I had to become a lion to survive in this jungle because it seemed like the weak would always get picked on or disrespected. I just wanted to play sports as a youngster. I didn’t want to be a thug, but even on the courts and the field, you had to be tough because all the ball was being played in the neighborhood with guys of all ages. This neighborhood was wild and fast with kids of all ages.

I had a godbrother who was three years older and lived one house over, and he was raised by a single mother, who didn’t play either. I remember they used to have the cleanest house on the block, and they took care of their personal possessions quite well. I respected my godbrother a lot, like one of my uncles. He was good in sports, made good grades, and the girls liked him. The first time I had sex, we were together. I was in third grade. We were at a girl’s house, who lived directly across the street from us, and she had a friend that my godbrother was having sex with. No one was home, and us four had sex lying on the floor right beside one another, and I can remember his girl moaning and mine wasn’t, so I started pinching mine on the side. But I found out later what I was doing wrong because the girl my godbrother was with wanted to teach me some things also. She told me to come by one day, and her parents were not there, and she put on a sex tape, and they showed everything. Let’s just say I wasn’t a virgin anymore, man oh man. I don’t know who taught her those things, but I’m betting it was an older guy, just saying! This girl was my age, and she taught me everything—how to French-kiss and so on.—on more than one occasion. That’s why I’m not a big fan of older kids hanging with younger ones today because I know the corruption that goes on during idle time. Heck, at eight years of age, I was doing everything but selling drugs, drinking, and paying bills!

Moving On Up

After I finished third grade, we moved to a new house in a new neighborhood. Now this house was amazing. We were like the Jeffersons; we upgraded in a major way. This house was brick and had three bedrooms and two bathrooms and showers. I had never taken a shower before. It had a den with a pool table and a nice yard with apple and pear trees. We had a concreted driveway, and Pops put a basketball court in the yard. Our new house was only two blocks away from my new school and two blocks away from the hood. This was an all-white neighborhood at that time! I didn’t have many kids on my block, but across the street was a kid the same age as me. His name was Stan. I had white friends at the other school, but they lived in other neighborhoods. This was kind of different. We played every day together because my parents wouldn’t let me go down the street to the playground where all the black kids hung out mainly because I didn’t really know anyone from that hood and I was only nine. About a week later, my uncle Derrick came down to stay for the weekend. He’s my father’s youngest brother, and he’s only five years older than me, so he was my favorite. He’d let me hang with him sometimes and get into a little trouble from time to time (only with girls at that time). He was in junior high, and he was already a basketball phenom in our city. My uncle was a lefty, and he was in junior high dunking and scoring forty points in a few games. He was tough and knew how to fight, so people respected him, and he had three big brothers to back him up. So that afternoon, when the sun went down, he let me go down the block to the playground with him.

New Neighborhood

Now this neighborhood was off the chain. There were little green shotgun houses all over with tin roofs, and there were kids everywhere. There must have been twenty-five to thirty-five kids, and we were all around the same age. Wow, the playground was packed with people playing basketball, with girls watching. They had a young-adult court and a court for the little up-and-coming ballers. Everybody came to hoop or just hang out. This playground had a slide, a merry-go-round, and a field that the other little kids were playing football on. You had the dope boys parked all down the side of the street with music blaring while getting their drink and smoke on. It was quite an intimidating sight. It seemed as if everyone was staring at us. My uncle knew a couple of people already, and they hurried and picked him to play basketball. So I mingled with the other kids, and they saw that I was just like them. I knew how to curse and be mischievous; plus, I was good at sports. I was accepted. One of the older kids started cracking on me. He started calling me fire truck because I was tall and dark with a red Afro—not cool! That was normal for us King boys. All my light-skinned uncle’s hair or mustache would always turn red in the summer. I just happened to be the darkest King in the family still today. I used to want to be light-skinned so bad, but that’s a whole other story. I met a girlfriend the same day, a pretty light-skinned chic named Christine. She was a tough girl who grew up with some tough older brothers. She had a brother the same age as me also, and he was cool. He lived for basketball. We became good friends. Now I could go to the playground anytime as long as I was back before dark and I did my chores before I left.

I had like ten new friends now, cool kids with names like Snoop, Money Cat, Buckwheat, Coon, Rock, DO, S. C. Horn, Shawt Dawg, KK, Tic, etc. At nine years old, these kids had the coolest nicknames! I think that I was the only one who didn’t have one. Because there was no way I was answering to fire truck,