Chapter 1: To Make You Feel My Love

Tuscaloosa, Alabama

February 14, 2003

My 40 years of life weren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it sure couldn’t be compared to something the cat dragged in the house. I was a twice divorced, childless, a legal immigrant from London, Ontario, Canada working as a Kinesiology professor at the University of Alabama, “Roll Tide Roll!” I took pretty good care of myself, ate well and followed a tried and true cardio and weight-training program. I was very active, playing competitive softball several days per week and traveled to Pelham, AL to play pickup hockey 2 nights per week. I still got a kick out of beating most of my undergraduate kinesiology students in the sport skills I had to teach them. It was always nice to be able to back up a verbal claim in the classroom regarding my younger days with physical actions out on the playing fields. I thought and my students usually commented that it nice to see someone walking the walk versus just talking it.

I certainly wasn’t anywhere near the national level 400m and 800m runner I was at eighteen to twenty-three-years of age, but I definitely wasn’t your typical middle-aged couch potato professional. I worked hard to maintain my five-foot-nine-inch, 175 pound body. One of my graduate school friends, who is currently a professor at UNLV stopped by Alabama on his way to a conference at Florida State University, he mentioned to a group of my current students that my nickname was “Iron Mike”. While in graduate school at the University of South Carolina, we had a good number of guys and girls who loved old school professional wrestling. Unfortunately for me, ‘Iron Mike Sharpe’, Canada’s greatest athlete as he called himself, was one of the lesser known wrestlers at that time. Thus, ‘Iron Mike’ or simply ‘Iron’ became my calling card to my friends. Some of my current students loved the WWF (now the WWE), and enjoyed the ‘Iron Mike’ stories we shared with them. It wasn’t a surprise when a few of my current students grabbed that semi-old nickname and ran with it. Thus, I became “Dr. Iron” instead of Dr. Mike to most of the kinesiology students at the University of Alabama.

The other physical characteristic that my students would often comment on was my hair, or more truthfully, my lack thereof. I found out in my mid-twenties that having a great head of hair wasn’t in the cards for me. I all too soon knew about a bald spot on the crown of my head, and my brown hair color was turning to grey more and more each day. I gained that ‘distinguished look’ moniker, which my students seemed to enjoy commenting on, at times more than I cared to hear. I even had several of my graduate students try to convince me to shave my head, while maintaining a mean ‘goatee’. I eventually learned to save money on haircuts by using a set of clippers to keep what few hair follicles I had at about a quarter inch length. I was and never will be a ‘hair comb over’ guy, like several other faculty at Alabama foolishly employed.

Even back in my high school days, I had always been a one lady at a time man. Unfortunately for me, both of my ex-wives didn’t seem to think that being a one man at a time lady was a requirement for them. Needless to say, when I shared my proof of their infidelities, they agreed it was best to divorce me in without the major hassles some many others experience. Both my exes probably got more than they deserved in the divorce agreements but I was happy to be rid of them. My main goal with those ‘Big Ds’ was to maintain my main investments and my Alabama State Retirement Plan account (one of the few good financial aspects to be found working here in Alabama).

After my second divorce became final in 1998, I dated several young ladies. I definitely wasn’t a sex-hound, who chased after anything in a short skirt. Even though I was considered a ‘prime catch’ based on my job, my ‘distinguished looks’, and lifestyle at one of the leading party schools in the country, I just never felt like taking advantage of situations that were presented to me at work. Young coeds at Alabama were known for hitting on faculty, and I knew several male and female colleagues that took full advantage of these girls’ desires to earn a grade by spreading their legs.

About a year after my second divorce, I thought I had found the one true love of my life. Ms. Debbie Carden was a beautiful strawberry blonde-auburn haired graduate student in the Educational Statistics program at Alabama. She was a graduate assistant for Dr. Richard Lomack, my best friend. Debbie and I first met and hit it off at a crawfish boil that Richard held at his house. Before things became too serious between us, I went to the Dean of the College of Education, my boss to make sure it was alright for Debbie and me to date. Without tenure, I wanted to make sure all was good with my dating a graduate student from another department within our college. There was nothing like covering your ass when you have a job you really enjoy, and don’t want to ‘literally’ screw your way out of it.

Debbie was a twenty-seven-year-old single mother, who was doing her best to advance her station in life by earning a Ph.D. in research design and statistics (Bless her Heart! – it’s a southern thing this Canadian rarely uses, but it definitely is appropriate here with Debbie). We were together for about a year and half, and things were going wonderfully well for us. We enjoyed taking her 4-year-old son to Six Flags in Atlanta, and to hockey games up in Nashville to see the expansion Predators. Her son loved nothing better than to come over to my apartment complex to go swimming. I loved nothing better than to cover Debbie’s very pale, creamy white body in SPF 60 sunscreen lotion in order to keep her from becoming as red as our favorite Crimson Tide sweatshirts.

Debbie’s parents were great about keeping her son when we went on dates, or took adult-only ‘out-of-town’ trips. Our second best trip was over to Turner Field in Atlanta where we saw Garth Brooks put on a fabulous show. I was never much into country music but it’s amazing how love causes you to do things you normally didn’t care to do. Debbie and I danced in the aisle on the outfield grass to Garth’s To Make You Feel My Love, and that just somehow became our song. If my best friend, Paul McGregory back in London knew I was now ‘semi-into’ country music, he would have had a heart attack on the spot. However, living down in the sunny south, it was hard not to listen to Garth, Brooks and Dunn, Clint Black, Lorrie Morgan and that Canadian country-rock chick, Shania Twain.

However, as I’ve seen in many sporting situations, Debbie and I were thrown the proverbial ‘changeup’ when we were expecting a fastball down the pipe. We swung and missed badly, or more correctly, sadly on making our love connection work long term. We were away on our absolutely best weekend trip to Memphis for another faculty colleague’s wedding. That evening ended with us dancing to, To Make You Feel My Love, which Debbie requested from the DJ. We followed that dance with an awesome ‘night’ of passion, which turned in our eventual ‘long-term’ tragedy.

Debbie became pregnant that very night but she didn’t tell me when she found out about it two months later. At that time, I had already planned a week and a half long trip up to London to visit my parents and siblings. Debbie later told me that she didn’t want to either prevent that trip or ruin it for me by telling me about her pregnancy. While I was up in Canada, she went and had an abortion of our two month old fetus.

When I returned home to Tuscaloosa, I was very excited to see Debbie and her son. However, I could tell right away something was wrong with her, with us. After trying for several hours to figure out what was troubling her, Debbie finally told me what she did and why she made that decision. She didn’t want me to feel like she was ‘trapping’ me into a long term relationship or commitment by having a child out of wedlock. She already had an awful relationship with her son’s scumbag father. Additionally, we both had major league goals. I was busting my hump teaching and completing the research needed to earn tenure and promotion. Debbie really was focused on getting her Ph.D. She reasoned that with her being pregnant and then both of us raising another infant wasn’t conducive to achieving any of our career goals.