My name is Walt Bronson.
I am husband and father.
I own a small Investment/Insurance boutique near Houston, Texas specializing in the Small/Medium Business market.
As a subset of this, I also teach sales instruction to Insurance Agents and Investment Reps across the country.   To use the vernacular, I am often booked as "The Expert from Afar..."
Under a different name, I write both fiction and non-fiction.   (Ever the renaissance man.)

Additionally, I teach Insurance and Securities Licensing Classes (to those entering the profession) as an avocation.
I am, by all accounts, an incredibly gifted (if not modest) teacher.

In late September of 2009, I was teaching a class, when I was contacted by my youngest son's school. He was, at that time, in the 6th grade. He had been sent to the School Nurse's office with preliminary flu symptoms.
(You may recall that, during that particular autumn, the country was in the throes of a mania over the dread "Swine Flu.")
I explained my predicament to my school, arranged for a substitute, and rushed off to retrieve my son. (Incidentally, the next day, I was instructed not to return to the classroom until the illness had passed. Although it was left unstated, I strongly suspected that I would have had to wear a bell around my neck and cry "unclean!" for the next few weeks - such is the world of adult education).

True to form, my son was a victim of the notorious Pig Disease and remained ill for the better part of a week. Since my schedule is my own (as opposed to my wife's day job), I was tasked with my son's recovery.
Just as predictably, I became ill a number of days later with, what we all assumed was, my son's gift of the flu. I felt terrible.
However, my symptoms did not subside. My illness persevered for almost two weeks. I lurched in an out of extreme fever, didn't eat and looked like hell.
(It should be noted at this point that I am phobic. I loathe anything medical. It's not that I haven't had my fair share of encounters with the medical profession. On the contrary, I've been exposed to any number of emergency rooms; but, invariably, with wounds agape or bones protruding. My experience with medicine in general has been 1.) traumatic and 2.) entirely involuntary; I tend to arrive accompanied with flashing lights and sirens.)
Eventually, my wife (who, unlike me, will go to the doctor at the first signs of a bad-hair day), dragged me out of bed and rushed me, all but unconscious, to the local emergency room.

I behaved reprehensibly. I embarrassed my wife (..and myself). Yet, to do otherwise would have been impossible due to my phobias.

After hours of tests, needles, probes, x-rays, more needles and still more tests, the doctor came into my room and asked to speak (separately) with my wife. (While my experience with doctors is, admittedly, limited, I was relatively certain that this did not portend well.  ... I was right.)

It is my opinion that what happened next was designed to 1.) slap me into a cold realization of my predicament and 2.) to serve as medical payback for being such an ass.

The scene is etched in my mind; doctor enters, wife behind him (crying), he clears his throat and says, "Good news. You don't have the flu... Bad news; you have advanced throat cancer and may be dead within weeks."

This is NOT a blog about my journey to recovery!   Hell, there is no dearth of those on the web...   And Christopher Hitchens is (sadly) a better writer than I.

I share this merely as background to who I am; ...and as explanation to where I'm going.