CHAPTER ONE
A few weeks past my sixteenth birthday, my dad threw me off a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I had to find my own way after that.
As for my father, he had been thrown out at age sixteen by his father, too. I suppose the best way to make sense out of my story is to start with his.
Jack Webb grew up in Toronto, Canada. He was short, strong, and stocky. A talented hockey player and drummer, he was always a bit of a wild man. Jack grew his hair long and also had a full black beard as soon as he was old enough to grow one. His father threatened to kick Jack out if he didn't shave the beard off and cut his long hair. My father refused, and out he went.
Suddenly on his own, Jack made his way from Toronto to Malibu, California, where he managed to get landscaping jobs. Soon he had his own company. Driving home from a job one day, he picked up three hitchhikers. One of them, named Lynn, became his wife-and, eventually, my mother.
After they got married, my parents moved up to British Columbia, Canada, to a little ski town called Kimberley. There, my dad took a job as a guide at a hunting lodge, even though he knew absolutely nothing about hunting. The guy who hired him said, "Stay on the trail, and you'll be fine." He was. His first time out, he took a small group into the Canadian Rockies, where he pointed out all sorts of wildlife. When they got back, the group told my dad's boss he'd hired the greatest guide in the world. They didn't know he was just winging it.
Soon Jack was working construction. He taught himself everything there was to know about building houses. In those days, if you were a builder you did it all-pouring foundation, framing, wiring, installing drywall, plumbing, roofing, everything from A to Z. Jack had never graduated high school, but he had a big appetite for learning. He quickly became an accomplished builder with his own company.
This is when I came into the picture. I was born on June 12, 1974, screaming at the top of my tiny lungs. According to my mom, I screamed for weeks. For the next ten months I apparently stayed awake every night yelling my head off until seven in the morning. At that point, I would sleep blissfully through the day while my mom recovered from a sleepless night. My parents did everything they could to keep me awake during the day so I would sleep at night, but it didn't happen.
According to my mom, I was as wild as the Canadian landscape. I started crawling at six months-and crawled everywhere. My mom had heard of a study where they put babies on a glass counter to see how far they would crawl. Nearly all the babies stopped when they got close to the edge-about one percent went crawling off into thin air. "That one percent?" she tells people. "That was Brandon."
I started walking at nine months, and, after that, there was not a gate or door that could hold me. My mom bought every childproof lock she could find. However, "childproof" did not mean "Brandon-proof." She had doorknobs that she couldn't open, but I could. She would strap me into my high chair, but if she turned her back for just a moment, I'd be gone.
By eighteen months I had discovered the joys of climbing. I could climb up, over, into, and out of pretty much anything. This ability, combined with my easy friendship with locks and my tendency to drink anything I could get my hands on, added up to quite a few visits to the emergency room. I needed to have my little toddler-sized stomach pumped many times after I sampled things I didn't know I shouldn't drink, like kerosene, bleach, and Avon honeysuckle after-bath splash. By the time I was three, the hospital emergency room staff and my mom knew each other on a first-name basis.
When my mom was pregnant with my sister, Maryke, my dad built a gated enclosure with a swing in it. To this day, my mom still doesn't know how I did it-since she was sitting right there reading a book-but I got out of the enclosure, scooted down a steep hill, and disappeared before she realized I was gone. My mother was wild with fear. Just the night before, she and my father had seen a pack of coyotes ranging around. Now, all she could think about was how her tiny son would make a tasty little coyote meal. She managed to spot me because I was wearing a red sweatshirt. Somehow she coaxed me back up the hill and under the fence. Then she grabbed me, crying hysterically.
My parents quickly figured out that while they couldn't control my wild energy, they could channel it. Once they saw how much I loved skiing, they knew they'd stumbled on a parenting strategy that would serve us all well for years to come. To try to keep me out of trouble, they would get me involved in every sports activity possible. It worked, too-at least for a while.
By age five I was on a ski team. Some of my earliest memories are of the crisp cold air in my face and the schuss sound of the snow under my skis as I flew down a 2,500-foot hill. Every day during ski season, my mom would pick me up from kindergarten and drive to the slopes. We had a season skiing pass, and we used it to the max.
At the time, this hill seemed to be an enormous mountain in an endless world of snow and adventure. I can clearly remember spending countless afternoons on my bright, yellow Mickey Mouse K2 skis, exploring every trail and out-of-the-way patch.
My best friend at the time was a kid named Justin. We spent every afternoon we could exploring that hill together. Justin and I got into ski racing and joined a team. By the time we were in first grade, our team was competing in tournaments. My mom still has some first-place ribbons I took at the age of six.
By age seven I had also piled wrestling, football, baseball, swimming, and track onto my athletic schedule.
While all these sports kept me occupied, I still found time to get into trouble. My dad was usually in charge of my punishment. I was not exactly scared of him, but I knew my dad was in charge. He was not afraid to whip out his belt and get after me when he thought I needed it. Over the years, my backside and my dad's leather belt really got to know each other. Now that I'm a parent myself, I believe in discipline just as much as my dad did. But instead of getting a spanking, my kids do push-ups. My son can knock out more push-ups than most adults I know.
Although my dad was very strict, he was also not afraid to hug me and tell me he loved me. He was a good father, and I have a lot of happy memories of him from those early years.
When my dad went out to a construction job site, he often took me with him. I loved it. It always felt like an adventure, just me and my dad going to these serious grown-up work sites. My dad was also captain of his hockey team, and I would go with him when they would play. These games were typically pretty late at night, because the players all had full-time jobs.
Even though I was only five, no matter how late it was, I never got tired at my dad's hockey games. I would go through the place and look for lost pucks. I'd look for quarters, too, so I could play the big, brand-new Atari Asteroids video game they had there. Crawling around, exploring every inch of the place, it felt a lot like being up on the mountain. In a way this was even better, though, because I got to be with my dad. After practice we hung out in the locker room. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, being surrounded by sweaty hockey players who were cursing, laughing, and cracking beers. I could tell my dad really enjoyed having me there too.
I looked up to Dad. In many ways, he was my hero. Then, about the time I turned six, our lives changed.
Copyright © 2015 by Brandon Webb and John David Mann
Foreword copyright © 2015 by Marcus Luttrell
