When I think of my education, it is incredible that I made at number 5 in the American Idol Season 4.
Sometimes it seems like a dream. Do I really get through putting in all cycles? Do I really spend months in Hollywood and respond Hall & Oates, Tony Orlando, and LL Cool J? Do I really toured the USA and to make hundreds of thousands of screaming fans shouting my name?
I know it is real, because American Idol is my life dream.
When I was young, I made many wrong choices. I was not exactly a bad child, but I was not a poster child for “Boy of the Year”, so be it. All I really wanted was my father to love myself and be proud of me . I wanted to be pretty good in his eyes. I have never blamed my father for the way it was, I knew he had a difficult childhood with his father and leave all.
What I regret most is that I hung out with friends instead of doing schoolwork. I note that many children who studied hard and went to university are now six figures, and children who do not pay attention to their classes are those serving hamburgers guys when they cruise the drive-through with their beautiful wheels.
I always figured I would be a hamburger flipper because, as long as I can remember, I was told that I would never amount to anything. After a while I started to believe it, and it really pulled me down.
When I was ten years, I loved Bon Jovi and put on his music and singing by myself in my room. It was my aunt Janet who encouraged me to sing with her to church. I loved to sing for the same reason, most singers do: make people happy. My father said I’d never be good enough to do more to sing in my room.
When I decided to audition for Idol in Cleveland, I did not tell anyone I was going. If I did not get through, I did not want to “I-told-you-so” thrown in my face.
Even if I knew I was not the type of type American Idol, I had nothing to lose. I just told myself that no one can stop living my dreams than I do. And in my deepest heart of hearts, I think it would happen to me one day. I did it during the first three rounds and headed to Hollywood.
Next thing I knew, I went to hundreds of Hollywood up 24 to final 12, and kept get voted back week after week. I was finally voted off at number 5 and went home for a few weeks between night and the finals.
The day I landed in Cleveland will remain in my mind forever. As I descended the plane and walked to the airport, I was met by hundreds of screaming fans - girls crying, people achieve Touch Me, and all these banners and posters, “Scotty, We Love You. “Of course, my mother was there too. She never stopped joy for me and stamped the negative effects of media - something all idols have to be addressed.
But what I saw was my father, sitting in a wheelchair because of his knee surgery at the end of the contest. I walked straight on him and tight. He cried and shook me hard. Then I heard the words that I had waited twenty-eight years: “I miss you, Scott. I love you, son. I’m really proud of you. ”
I would have perhaps lived all my life until my father passed, does nothing spectacular or him proud of me. But my father saw that I was someone people watched as a singer and admired as a model.
It might have taken twenty-eight years and millions of people voting for me week after week, but I said, “Better late than never.” If it took American Idol for that to happen, so be it. But I’ve done - I had one vote that means more to me than all others combined. I got my father’s vote, and my life dream.
(Reprinted with permission from Chicken Soup for the American Idol Soul: Stories from idols and their supporters that Open Your Heart and Make Your Soul Sing).