My name is Jeff Landry. I was born on August 9, 1990 to my mother Lucie Bertrand. I was known as a miracle child at birth due to my disability which is Cerebral Palsy. I was born prematurely at only six months and was supposed to be born in November instead of August. Due to the severity of my illness, the doctor said I may never be able to walk, talk, or even sit up straight and that I would likely be confined to a wheelchair for my whole life and would need round the clock care. Little did everybody know I would do more than my fair share of defying those odds as I got older.

At a very young age, I taught myself how to spell and write on a computer. My memory was much better than expected as I was able to remember things such as phone numbers and I remember astonishing most people by being able to spell words that they were not able to spell themselves. In school, I would defy expectations by writing longer and more elaborate stories than what was expected and I qualified for two spelling bees in my life so far, both of which I came up short in winning due to a buildup of nerves from the pressure.

In middle school, I found my passion which was writing children’s stories. The story that stood out most was called “Please don’t squeeze me” about the life of ketchup from it’s perspective and the things it must go through during the course of a day, (being squeezed out and eaten and placed in little packets,) etc. The story was an instant hit among all of the teachers in school as well as my mother who was very proud of me.

Things were different for me as I got older as I began to lose my knack for writing children’s stores and instead would focus my attention more towards tv shows such as Wrestling etc which my mother thought was a waste of my abilities.

One thing I had a hard time doing as I got older was establishing and maintaining friendship with children my own age. Despite my best intentions in making friends, most of the children who I tried to make friends with usually ended up teasing me or had no interest in being friends with me. Those closest to me at the time attributed this to those children not being able to understand my disability. This made it really hard for me when I hit my teenage years as I knew that it was a foregone conclusion that if you weren’t popular, you got nowhere in high school. Those were the type of children that got picked on. A mixture of this with the fact that I felt I wasn’t ready for high school made me upset as I had gotten used to being a kid and I wasn’t sure if I would fit in with the kids in high school. Having said all of this, my ultimate goal was to have a girlfriend.

On my first day of high school, I met a kid named Chris in gym class following an altercation he had with the teacher and we became fast friends. Though he wasn’t a girlfriend, I knew he was what I needed to get me through high school. We did everything together, ate lunch together, spent time together outside of class and even got in trouble together at times. All of the teachers thought we were inseparable despite this. We are still going strong after 20 years of friendship. We talk everyday and I was the best man at his wedding. Most people would likely believe that we are as close as brothers. Well, guess what? Through some unfortunate events, something good came out of this and we are now step brothers. Another thing I gained from this was a father figure as my real one simply was not around like a real father should be. As my mother is now married to Chris’ father, he has taken me under his wing and given me something I feel as though I’ve never had, a proper father and I thank him endlessly for his efforts in making that possible.

As far as girlfriends are concerned, I had one in my teenage years after we moved away to be closer to my uncle. While I do not feel comfortable getting into detail about the problems we had as a couple, I will say that it only lasted from December 2008 to May 2009 and when it finally ended, it took me about 5 years to fully get over her absence to say the least. To this point, I have not had a girlfriend since then and as I write this, I’m 33 years old and going on 34 and I’m still waiting to meet one.

In December 2018, all of the doctor’s claims and predictions that I would never walk or talk and be completely incapable of living a proper life were proven wrong when I landed a job working in data entry for the government. However, the long hours as well as how long it took me to get home every night created a situation where this only lasted 10 months. Also, to say the least, I was not what one would call a person who likes to do their job. I would constantly show up late, find every excuse to leave early and sometimes just sit at my desk and even fall asleep. If I’m being honest, it’s amazing that I didn’t get fired and just opted to quit my job.

From there, I took on movie blogs after acquiring an online presence through wordpress.com where I would blog about certain movies I’ve seen as well as just writing about things that happen in my everyday life.

I have to give major thanks to my wonderful mother for all of my achievements throughout life. I can easily say that all of the succes I have had is attributed to her performance as a mother. I couldn’t have done it without her.