EXTRA **** -- "Walking to the Impossible" by Andrew Justvig

We join Andrew in BYU Radio Studio 7, a medium-small rectangular room with wooden floors. A mic in the center is surrounded by a semicircle of a dozen or so chairs occupied by Sam Payne, Jacob Pierce, and a group of Andrew’s friends and loved ones, invited by Andrew to join the performance. Andrew stands and we check the levels on the microphone. His voice and body are both animated and he instantly draws the audience in by his warm presence and kind gaze. He begins: How long can you hold your breath? Thirty Seconds? A Minute? What about eight hours? That’s my record. The Umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck three times when I was born. My brother in law said I was bungee jumping from the womb. “I’m sorry to tell you, but your boy has cerebral palsy. He may not walk, talk- do not expect him to live a normal life.“ How would you like it if a doctor said that about your baby boy? And from the first few years, he was prophetic. I couldn’t walk. Good luck understanding me. But the one thing everyone knew about me was I loved Disney! Whenever we went to Disneyland I would sob when we would leave because I believed I was home. In fact, the only reason I knew how to crawl was so I could press the rewind button on the VCR so I could watch “Disneyland fun” over again. Now my grandpa, “Papa John,” he saw this and he was fed up. He saw me in therapy for hours- physical, speech, and occupational. And for what? To have his grandson lay on the floor and watch mickey mouse all day? Uh uh. Not his grandson. So he pulled out his bribery techniques he used on my uncles.  “Andrewski- you listen to papa. You walk one step without any help, and papa will buy you any video of Disney you want.”  “Okay!”  So he picked me up. My feet were turned in. My knees were bent. I didn’t have good balance. But I wanted that disney video. So I held my breath and took a step. And I got it. And then it was two steps a video, five steps, ten, twenty, one hundred steps!  My Grandma had to shut off the ponzi scheme because she was los