The Back Story Of Grooming Greatness On Sigourney Street

I hired a woman in Jamaica in 2000 to research my father. In 2000, I interviewed my mother. I wrote a draft of Rasta in 2001. I edited and published Rasta in 2013. Rasta was my family story. In 2024, I updated the book and renamed it Grooming Greatness.

How did two people with an eighth-grade education produce seven children with a college education? How did they groom their eighth child with severe cerebral palsy to obtain a doctorate?

I always thought my father was too arduous. He never gave me a break. He seemed not to know that I had cerebral palsy. My father would say do not watch that fucking idiot box. The idiot box was the TV. We have only three stations on the old tv. But my father does not want my mind to be corrupted by commercial nonsense.  My father must be rolling in his grave now that the idiot box is the mobile device. He wanted all his kids to read. Reading books was power to him. Reading was the way to get out of poverty to my father. Weakness was a disease to him. My father said that we had to speak correct English without using slang. My father said to only associate with intelligent friends. My father was rude and not compromising. He would tell me, Theodore Arthur, that I gave you that name from a great leader from Jamaica. I named the book Grooming Greatness because my father used the above grooming technique with fire to instill in us to be great. 

Due to my father, I like readers and people who do not give up when they face problems or do not want to do something. 

My father did not do the grooming by himself. My mother gave love and values to the grooming process. Also, my mother made me do everything on my own. My mother would say, Theodore Arthur, you are not disabled. You can do anything. 

My wife, Jennifer, had the same grooming process in the Philippines. We both grew up poor, but we were groomed to be great. 

This book is relevant because, after 1980, the grooming process for kids changed. The kids are not required to struggle; they get everything without doing anything. The idiot box my father hated is now the mobile phone. My father and mother groomed us to be strong and to work hard.