Spencer's Story

On Thursday, our grade 9 class had a spectacular experience that I would like to share with everyone. On Thursday, a motivational speaker with the name of Spencer Beach came to talk to us. For everyone who doesn't know Spencer, he worked in the trades until he got into a terrible fire which would change his life forever.

Spencer's story began when he was in grade 9. He was a straight A student in Junior high with not that many friends. When he went into high school, he wanted to fit in with everyone so just like everyone, he did drugs and liquor everyday. We went from a straight A student to barley graduating high school because of the bad friend choices he made.

In order to get away from these drugs, Spencer moved from St. Albert to Edmonton without telling anyone. In Edmonton Spencer went into trades as a floor installer. Eventually he got promoted to the person who fixes the mistakes over other floor installers.

One day, Spencer had to take out the whole floor because the floor installers put in the wrong colour. His boss had come up with a way of how to take up the floor in a matter of seconds. He didn't like this tactic and he knew it was dangerous but he ignored his gut feeling anyway. However this involves splashing very dangerous chemicals on the hardwood floor. He has to take many precautions such as turning the temperature right down and keeping the doors open at all time.

Now we skip ahead in time to when Spencer was just finishing, with one square meter left. There was a draft outside that kept shutting the doors and he had to keep opening them. Since he was on the last little bit, he decided he didn't have to open the door. When the “soon to be home owner” left the house and closed the door behind him air rushed into the house to balance the temperature.

The last little bit of the chemicals exploded into flames and Spencer tried to get out but he couldn’t. The pressure was to tight between the doors that it wouldn’t open. He then braced himself for death and was ready to die but one thing kept him going. It wasn't the fact that he would die, it was more the fact that his wife and child cared for him and he wouldn't just let them down. So one last time he grabbed the glowing red handle of the door and gave it all he got and finally got it open.

This fire was latterly burning the skin right off of his body, burning at 1500 degrees C. It took 14 minutes till the ambulance arrived to bring him to the hospital. In the hospital the doctor gave him a choice. Do you want to die or do you want to live. Of course Spencer picked live and then the doctor told him he had a 5% chance of living with third degree burn all over his body and fourth degree burns in some places.

He spent 14 months in the hospital getting many surgeries and many different doctors working on him. Now he is perfectly fine and doesn't have to take any pain medication or anything. However, he can't run, pick up balls, hold water bottles because he hands are so different now. With his inability to use his hands he couldn't continue as a floor installer so now he is a motivational speaker.

The moral of his story is that don't limit yourself and never ignore your gut feeling. Always listen to yourself and never give up. It doesn't matter if your late for a meeting, as long as you're getting home tonight, that is what really is important.


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