Oh God I lost my marbles and created a whole new universe with Brandon Hennis part 01

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome or welcome back everybody to another exciting episode of
Aaron's Opinion, the podcast for blind people where we speak
about critical issues in the blindness community and all other
issues from across the universe and galaxy. My name is
Aaron Richmond, and there's so many great ways to get
in touch with the show, and we'll get to that
in a moment. One two four zero six eight one
nine eight six nine one two four zero six eight

(00:23):
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(01:58):
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a very subtle thing. Okay, to the.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Guests we go.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
This is a guest who has been a sort of
the way that I can explain this is this is
somebody who has been a discreete listener of the podcast
for a long time. He's been a longtime listener in
the audience, and some things sort of came up should

(04:12):
we say at the podcast here that he wanted me
to be aware of. And so he, along with some
other people, contacted me about some stuff and we were
talking about various podcast things, and then I was saying,
Brandon Hennis is the guest. So I was saying, Brandon,
you know you have all these great ideas, You've had

(04:32):
a fascinating life journey so far. Why don't you come
to the show and talk about your life and tell
us what's going on.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
And things like that. So he decided to do just that.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Brandon has basically just overcome an enormous amount in his life.
All sorts of crazy stories will be heard today. And
basically Brandon is now a broadcaster. I and he also
had as his own podcasts, and I wish he would
I wish he would send me his own commercial so

(05:04):
that we can play an intro for you so that
you can learn about his podcast. I think that would
be very very good. But at any rate, I'm sure
he can help you to find the podcast if you're
so inclined to listen to it and things like that.
So yeah, and basically, Brandon's story was so complex that
we had to split the conversation into three different interviews, right,

(05:27):
So I generally wouldn't do this, but I think that
I'm actually going to release all three of them all
at once. So we're going to have part one, Part two,
Part three, and you'll just have to look at the
labels and read the titles of each episode to know
exactly which one comes first. Brandon is going to be
speaking about many serious topics. He's going to be speaking

(05:49):
about a lot of different issues and a lot of
hard stuff, and we had a lot of laughs along
the way either way, though, Brandon does an incredible job
at portraying his story, a story of resilience and a
story of strength and all of that. So he just
does a great job. And I hope that you the
listener will be the next listener to his podcast too.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
So here we go.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, I mean, let me know, you can let me
know what you think about this, but I think I
am going to release all three of these episodes all
at once and just let you kind of download them
as you do and listen as you want, listen as
you go type of thing. I think this would be
a very appropriate concept considering that we have three major episodes.
I don't really see a point in me giving a

(06:32):
outro until we reach the end of the journey, and
I think Brandon will really like that.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
So here we go.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
I'm just going to tell you what the episode is
going to be called, and then there's going to be
three installments, you know, on either the podcast player of
your choice or on YouTube, either way, and there will
be a playlist that Brandon will send out that will
include all of these episodes.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
So are you ready, because here we go.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
You're listening to the Aaron's Opinion Podcast Aaron Richmund, and
now let's get ready for a three episode marathon, A
three episode, a three part special here basically a series
with Brandon Hennes, which means that, of course, something that
Brandon said that I found to be very endearing was

(07:19):
he said, oh god, I think so, why don't we
call these episodes today? And remember to know what order
to play the man, just look for the part zero one,
zero two, zero three. I hope that is clear. And
so you were listening to the Aaron's Opinion Podcast. My
name is Aaron Richmond, and now let's have a beautiful

(07:39):
conversation with Brandon Hennis. These episodes will be called Oh God,
I Lost my marbles and created a whole new universe
with Brandon Hennes. Welcome or welcome back, everybody to another
exciting episode of Aaron's Opinion, the podcast blind People, where

(08:00):
we speak about critical issues in the blindness community and
all other issues from across the universe and galaxy. We're
joined by somebody who claims that this episode will be
a train wreck, who claims that if he's not lost
his marbles already, we'll see exactly how he's lost his marbles.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
So who on earth is this person?

Speaker 1 (08:21):
He has been somebody who's been very kind to us
here at Aaron's Opinion, giving us advice about about people
and things like that. And he's been giving a lot
of interesting advice, and he's just been a very interesting
person around the blindness community, and we want to get
to know him right now. So Brandon Hennis, welcome aboard.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Who is thank you?

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Who is Brandon Hennis?

Speaker 1 (08:40):
And of course I'm going to mute my microphone and
sit back and listen to your life story. You have
the microphone, So who's Brandon Hennis?

Speaker 4 (08:46):
Go Well, ladies and gentlemen, First of all, thank you
for letting me be here. Aaron especially, you great to
be a part of the program.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
Well. I was born December seventh of the year nineteen
eighty six.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
The doctors were very concerned at birth because in the
first trimester of my mom's pregnancy there was a near miscarriage.
They gave her a medicine called the breathene, whose generic
name is tributeline, which has varying degrees of side effects,
causing a lot of issues with under development. That includes

(09:21):
such things as brain separation, the two hemispheres of the
brain not connecting. Now, for anybody who's curious, I want
you to take an orange, and if you have one,
split it apart, have nothing between it. Don't put any
stem pieces or anything. Just separate the two halves of

(09:43):
the orange. Now, let's pretend one half of the orange
is sour, then the other half isn't. That's my brain.
One side works properly, the other side does not. This
also means a lot of things like autism, ADHD, sensory
processing issues. And let's not forget I was born totally blind,

(10:09):
since of course I do have limited light perception, which
has actually been extremely you know, decreasing over the years,
and the light perception is is very was limited to
begin with, to such a degree that if you really
want me to see the light, your light better be

(10:31):
about as bright as a hologen on a pickup truck.
So that kind of gives you a little background into
the the kind of the birth of Brandon Hennas.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Now let's take you a little.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
Bit deeper into the childhood of Brandon Hennis. How do
we get to the childhood and talk about the challenges
that were faced. My mother, her name is Tammy, was very,
very difficult, had a very difficult time really at first
knowing what was going to happen.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
There was a lot of unpredictability.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
As a matter of fact, that an interview that was
done with her when the last River Run flight was
done for flights to and from Lincoln, Nebraska, when I
was attending the School for the Blind, she even said
that at birth there were many questions that needed to
be answered. How did I get where I was and
how was I going to get where I needed to go?
But those were questions she was willing to answer very quickly.

(11:26):
So throughout my childhood she took courses through Hadley's School
for the Blind and other places for that matter, on
brail learning, braille learning, how to label things, learning, how
to make things accessible. One of the biggest challenges that
we ran into at during my childhood was the schools
were very difficult. A lot of the public school districts

(11:49):
back then had the mentality they had the shape of, well,
we don't have the funding to provide this the necessary
means for him to attend our school because we really
just can't provide the funding. We don't have the people,
we don't have the equipment, we don't have the money.

(12:11):
And this was an ongoing battle for years because I
personally wanted to be a part of the public school system,
but that did not.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Occur my dad.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
Shall I point out, by the way, a little backstory here,
because my dad factors into this, but not in a
good way.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
He left us when I was two years old.

Speaker 4 (12:30):
Now I want to go backwards. I forgot to mention
one piece that's very important here. In nineteen eighty seven,
a newspaper article was done. My grandmother actually brought this
paper over here just this past a couple of weeks,
right or coup about a month or so ago, prior
to the podcast that we're doing tonight. So if you

(12:50):
note today is this is April of twenty twenty five,
so anybody listening late, you'll you'll understand what I say.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
A couple of months.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
February, uh, she brought over a newspaper article and it
had a point about that they had actually diagnosed me
with SIDS and the doctor's flat out didn't think I
was going to make it because of the heart murmurs
and other like I said, I was basically born underdeveloped.

(13:23):
If you want a very simple word for me, complex
medical case, and I want you to I want you
to think about that throughout. In case, uh, we go
deeper into certain things, and of course if Aaron has
any questions, he'll he'll chime back in in the in
the in the uh in the producer's chair, and he'll
give you some uh, you know, the questions he wants

(13:43):
to know, and you'll get Aaron's opinion.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Of course.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
The title of this podcast as as so as so
named for its title. Now we want to let's let's
dive back into that schooling subject that I went to earlier,
because clearly the question that many people are going to
ask us, well, how did you get at least your
first ten years of school going. Well, we're going to

(14:07):
go year by year and how it occurred. And this
is not a law. This is kind of lengthy, but
to some extent not now. I'd say that because unlike
other podcasts you may have listened to, they may have
short details, this one kind of has a lot of
backstory in kindergarten. It took a lot of fighting, but

(14:29):
we were able to get me into a public school,
but it was not easy. There were advocacy groups involved,
there were attorneys involved, There was the NFB. I think
my mom had mentioned that at one point. She had gotten
the National Federation of the Blind involved at that time,
and they were very instrumental in making sure to say, look,

(14:51):
you know, he can do as much as a person
who was blind, as anybody who was fully cited. And
in some cases, I don't want to say better than,
because that's the wording some of them used, but I
don't like to use that term better than. I like
to say in a modified way because since I don't see,

(15:15):
for those who are fully cited, you're gonna appreciate this.
Since I don't see with my eyes, I see other ways.
That's my policies. I still see just not the way
you do. I look at life as a challenge, as
a crossword puzzle. Every day we get up, we go.
We don't know what we're going to do that day.
Each piece is scattered on the table and it's for
us for put together. That's the way it was in

(15:37):
the schooling districts. First grade year ended up at a
public school, the same public school that I ended up
at in kindergarten.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
Preschool was very difficult.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
In fact, we ended up doing a lot kind of
moving a lot over the years due to housing issues
that were uh, you know, cited and my mom was
a big safety person.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
If it didn't look we didn't stay very important.

Speaker 4 (16:04):
As we go to my second grade year and third
grade year, I spent those two years at Nebraska School
for the Visually Handicapped as it was called back in
those days. Now it's the Nebraska Learning Center for the
Education of People who are blind or visually impaired. As
I understand, the name has a wait, very long name.
Somebody please tell me why it was so long. Anyway,

(16:25):
they should have just kept at least NSV. I would
have made more sense to me anyway, But hey, I digress.
Grade four, I attended Benson West School in Omaha. Shout
out to anybody that maybe listening, who's cided, who is
listening in there that maybe went with me, or even
a few of my visually impaired counterparts friend of mine

(16:47):
named Ronnie, who went to school with me during that year.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
So shout out to you.

Speaker 4 (16:53):
Fourth grade year, Benson West Elementary School and that was easy.
Fifth grade Pinewood Elementary or Pinewood Elementary and Middle School
in Omaha, Nebraska. Now I point these out because you're
going to see a pattern here emerge. Fifth grade, fifth grade,
fifth grade, fifth grade. Now I say that because there

(17:15):
were years I was supposed to be going to sixth
and seventh earlier than I did. However, as we moved
due to circumstances outside of our control, well, some schools
just didn't feel like I had the credit to go
forward ahead, even though I was getting all a's in
most of my classes, a ho a roll several times.

(17:39):
So for example, my fifth grade year, my first fifth
grade year was Pinewood Elementary. I wrapped up that year
ninety seven ninety eight instead of going to sixth grade. However,
they kept me back in fifth grade. And Minnesota State
Academy for the Blind. Now there is a school with
a lot of good memories that I can share to

(18:00):
along with Nebraska City.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
I've got good memories of both schools for.

Speaker 4 (18:03):
The Blind, especially competing in track and field multiple times.
I met a couple of people I know very very
well who are very dear to my heart there at
those locations. We fast forward another fifth grade year. Why
because in nineteen ninety nine, after leaving Minnesota, actually at
the end of ninety eight and into ninety nine, we
attempted to get me back into school. Well, they sent

(18:24):
me back to Nebraska City. Why Again, public schools were
not willing to provide funding to allow me to go
to the public schools. Things start to look up in
that department for a little bit, in fact, for the
remainder of my schooling. Why advocacy groups like Protection and
Advocacy is in the state of Wyoming and several of

(18:47):
the Governor's office, the governor's offices in various states that
we were in. Yes, my mom was very very big
on go to the top. Would involve the governors, the senators. Hey,
if they would advocate, she would add them no matter what.
And that's exactly what she did. So we end up
with the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth grades all being

(19:12):
and those are the last years I did in school
due to serious abuse in the ninth or in the
tenth grade at the hands of my dad. That's what
ended my high school and unfortunately follished my chances of
finishing high school diploma. We were still working on issues,
resolving issues with services down here in the state of Iowa,

(19:33):
so I can finish up high set. I can't believe
I'm saying that at thirty eight years old. That's embarrassing. Anyway,
going back to that, in the eighth grade, I was
in Minnesota, or not Minnesota. Eighth grade was Wheatland, Wyoming.
Seventh grade was Guernsey, Wyoming, two very awesome schools.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
They were okay with.

Speaker 4 (19:56):
Providing services and actually the state of Wyoming, the Montgomery
t Us Fund, had bought my first license for Jaws
for Windows. See now we're getting into the meat of
my computer knowledge, by the way, which did start before
I ever got a copy of Jaws. I must credit
Nebraska City School for the blind computer instructor at the time,

(20:17):
Richard Heywood, for his very very very very well taught
skills on not only how to teach a person how
to learn the keyboard, but how to use jaws and
how to get around the environment for which you were in,
which helped me out tremendously in my school years going
into the middle school, and so seventh and eighth grade

(20:45):
were definitely amazing. Now, eighth grade I ended up in
two different schools because we left Wyoming due to my
mom having to divorce her then ex husband, who was
actually not very good to us kids, sad to say,
consider that he was in the military. I mean, regardless,
I appreciate his service to our country, but I wished

(21:05):
he was a as good a stepfather as he was
a warrant officer, and quite frankly, a very good warrant
officer who I think everybody would have credited.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
But all of that aside.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
After we left Guernsey, Wyoming, we went to Beveridge. I
went to Beveridge Magnet School. Now, I know, that's kind
of an odd name for a school in Omaha, Bbraska.
Met some wonderful people. They're wonderful people. I wouldn't trade
them for anything in the world. The same is true
for Scott's Bluff High School. Now, I was born in
Scott's Bluff, Nebraska, at Regional West Medical Center, and doctor

(21:42):
Stephen Bosh, who was my doctor.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
Give him a lot of credit.

Speaker 4 (21:46):
And I know normally I don't like to mention a
lot of names on podcasts, but he gets the props
because every time another doctor said he's not going to
make it, doctor Bosh was the listen. I'm not going
to give up on him, and Brandon will survive. I
love doctor Bosh for that reason. So after Beverage Magnet,

(22:06):
ninth grade was Scott's pluified school. Great experience, minus a
little bit of trouble teacher's aides and getting something funded.
But we fought through it because I don't believe in
giving up. I have one policy, either try or sit down.
I could use other terminologies, but there may be little

(22:28):
ears listening on the podcast. We're going to keep it
ninety plus ten. At least I will because I don't
know how others feel, but I know how I feel,
and I like to keep it real. Tenth grade Carney
High School, again wonderful people.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Unfortunately that year was cut short.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
Because again abuse at the hands of my dad. Now
the story goes kind of similar like this. My dad
had not played a role in my life for many years,
and after the death of my Grandpa Chuck in two thousand,
he had tried to enter his way into our lives.
But as naturally, I didn't feel ready to talk to
him yet because I was still heard about the pain

(23:07):
of being left at age two and not knowing why
I didn't get birthday calls from him. The year two
thousand and two comes up, two thousand and two, I
have talked to him. He at the time was living
in Glenn's Falls, New York, or correction Mercett, California, and
then they moved out of Mercett, and he was moving
into Glens Falls, New York. Well, two thousand and three

(23:29):
he moved to Carney, Nebraska. In Carne, Nebraska, he actually, unfortunately,
he actually.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Began the abusive trail.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
That is to say, it started as every Cinderella story does, right.
The oh yeah, it was perfect, you see, the perfect life.
You know, the dad always doing silly stuff with you.
You got to remember, I come up with silly words.
Even my dad had joined up on the fund for
a while till after him and his wife got comfortable.

(24:04):
The step mother by the way, just happened to be
the very person he cheated on my mom with. I
know this sounds like wearing Jerry Springer here. I'm sorry, folks,
but to tell my life story means to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Still help
you God, And at this point we have proceeded to
pass through that now the abuse that very significant physical, mental, medical,

(24:27):
and otherwise, I will, for the sake of my own
mental health and emotions, I'm going to kind of stay
away from the specifics a little bit. If you guys
want to know more about what happened, I do have
a written text file, which I actually have a couple
written text files if anybody's interested one. If you want

(24:49):
to know a little bit more about the effects of
breathing and my under development specifically, we have a text file.
We did a lot of deep research to compile this
and put it together so that we would be able
to have all of that for you. I also have
a story that I wrote which details and documents a
lot of what happened to my dad.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
So I won't, for the sake of the length.

Speaker 4 (25:11):
Of time and what have you, will kind of bypass
the details about the abuse itself and talk about its
after effects.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
My mom was an over the road truck driver.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
Now I did get to spend some time on the
truck with my mom, but then I ended up back
up my dad's a second time, courtesy of a therapist
while receiving trauma therapy. His answer was, go back to
your dad's. You didn't give him a fair chance, even
though I went through abuse. Apparently one year was not enough. Well,
he wanted to go back. He wanted me to go

(25:44):
back so they could date my mom. Well, see, my
mom's a very very knowledgeable person about laws and about practice,
and well so knowledge that he isn't practicing and he
has no license.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
Bam bam boom.

Speaker 4 (26:03):
While I was in high school, the high school counselor
at Carney High called my mom and said, hey, we
don't normally recommend that we pull your son out of school,
but there is something serious going on and he's not
telling us, and when we try to call his dad,
they're always on the internet. Now, I need to point

(26:24):
out that back then, we're talking about dial up modems. Okay,
this is two thousand and three. We're talking about now, Aaron,
if you're with us on the mic. You'll you'll, you'll, you'll,
you'll you I don't know, Uh, you probably can think
back to those days, right, dial up modems. Of course
you got to push the button and the phone company
gets mad at you because you run up the phone
bill because apparently you dialed out.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
And yeah, of course, of course I remember those days, right, sure,
we all.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Those are we all remember?

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Those are the days? The days, my friend, Oh yeah,
the good old days.

Speaker 4 (26:57):
Actually, I think the good old I think were you
with the jud didn't have a song, Go ahead.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Right, I certainly remember. I've been certainly listening to you
the whole time, and you know, I gotta tell you, Brandon. Unfortunately,
and unfortunately, your story, as I knew it would be,
your story is really really fascinating. I mean, this is all,
of course, I believe you, this is all just one

(27:24):
big successful train brack.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Basically. Oh it is completely and I have a victorious
train wreck, a victorious train breck. Well, okay, then, well
that that certainly works.

Speaker 4 (27:37):
What I mean by that is is that even though
I went through this, I have a belief that look, okay,
I went through trauma. I'm still going through trauma as
we speak today with the onslaught of the online bullying
that has been actually ongoing.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
For twenty two solid years.

Speaker 4 (27:52):
Yet it just doesn't seem like you can kind of
like Alabama Radio's line.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
You can't keep a good man. So clearly that's uh,
you know, and I certainly remember.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
I believe it, and I certainly.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Remember those internet days. So I was, I'm about eleven
years younger than you. So I was born in ninety one. Ooh,
but I still how old did you think I was?

Speaker 4 (28:17):
So when I heard you, Yes, how funny you asked that,
I figured you you were close to my age. I
figured either eighties or nineties. I figured I was, I
was somewhere close. I was going to guess, probably about thirty.
I was going to say about thirty five maybe.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, So I'm thirty three, so pretty pretty close, right exactly?

Speaker 3 (28:37):
That was close?

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (28:39):
So, oh, you're thirty three, the same number of years
as the number of cars in the Indianapolis five hundred.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
How do you like them? Apples?

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Well, that's pretty interesting. Never knew that.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
No, I know the rest of the story.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
So, but the significance though, to those and I appreciate
the fact that you want to keep this episode very
serious but also very clean, and I think that's what
makes it meaningful. So certainly I understood what you meant.
And by the way, children are forbidden to listen to
this this is Aaron's opinion, is explicit and mark for
adults only, So children don't have access to this material.

Speaker 4 (29:13):
Then do not tune into their right right exactly, We're sorry,
but the cassette player that just played that clip busted.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
I e yes, I could do things like that with
my voice.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
I I I remember one time somebody asked me to like,
can you do that? You know, when you power off
the record, you know it's they flip the switch, but
for some stupid reason, that speaker's still on.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
You just you know, fu crumple.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Or right, absolutely, absolutely sorry, the records no longer problem.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
No problem. So so yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
So one thing that's very specific is that in the nineties,
when I was a little boy, and for those who
are my age or younger or in their twenties, they
won't really appreciate it. But if you if a school
is contacting parents of the nineteen nineties and they said,
we're trying to get in touch, but you guys are
on the Internet all the time. That would have been
very strange back then because the Internet was very hard

(30:13):
to use. Back then, you had to wait around.

Speaker 4 (30:15):
I remember, still strange today, why are you on the
internet instead of focusing on your child?

Speaker 3 (30:20):
But yes, back then it was very strange, but.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
It was even more It would have been even you
have a read flag back then and now it's like
no big deal back back in these days, you know,
so yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:30):
So basically bad if somebody's using dial up in twenty
twenty five.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
But hey, I digress. Probably still people I would can't
afford anything else.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
In certain parts of the world, you never know, you
never know, right, so more than likely, yes, that is if.

Speaker 4 (30:45):
You are shout out to you and if you're listening
to us on a dial up connection, listen, I give
you props.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
I am proud of you.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
So the point here, the point behind all this is
that back then it was very hard to get into
the Internet. So if you were on it, it meant
that you were should we say, well, let's let Brandon
tell more of the story.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
At that point. If at that point it means.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
You were not aware you were complicit, you were also
not aware of what was happening. That is, they knew
what they were doing, my dad and his wife, but
they knew that in order to get away from it.
The best way to get away from it is to
blockade any access to phone calls. Because the first method

(31:29):
they tried telling the school how bad Brandon is, how
bad he was at home. By the way, I remember
getting called to the counselor's office. I heard this happened
at home. Do you want to tell me what happened?
First of all? Home issues at school?

Speaker 3 (31:47):
Not me.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
I want to go to class and get a and
I want to pass my tests, and I want to
get somewhere so I can go to college and have
a successful life. I mean, I'm not talking about getting rich, Okay,
So for those of you thinking get rich quick schemes,
get out of here. Well, I'm thinking more on the
lines of, you know, I want to be successful and

(32:08):
do something with my life. I never imagined i'd be
at thirty eight years old still with no job experiences
as far as a paid job experience, you know, And
instead of me being on this podcast, you know, talking
about no job, I would have imagined myself if I
go back in time and rewind it and replay everything.

(32:29):
If I could live that part of my life over,
i'd i'd find some way to have been out of
my dad's way sooner so I could finish high school
and who knows good a job as a radio DJ.
And then here here Aaron going. This guy is a
famous radio DJ from Iowa or Nebraska or wherever I wanted
to be at that time. Nope, you know the cards
you get dealt a the ones you get played. And

(32:49):
my dad didn't want to answer his phone. And so
my mom, who was by the way and over the
road truck driver, as I stated earlier, she actually came
off the road. Now this is one of the two times.
The second story is actually even more shall I say,
blunt and honest the first, And I I must apologize
for the terminology that I'm going to use here in

(33:11):
a minute. But on the first, the first one not
so bad. There were issues that were happening. I was
not the only one affected by the abused hands of
my dad.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
My younger brother was.

Speaker 4 (33:23):
But I should spotlight the fact that he's fully cited,
and that this application only just goes to show that
we were both affected by my dad. My mom came
off the road, came to the school, said all right,
I'm going to come off the road, guys, and she
called the company and said, I have to take care
of my son. I just found out he's been being
abused by his father in Carney, and so I'm in

(33:46):
Carnee right now to go get him. So my truck
set the terminal and I'm going to We're gonna I'm
gonna have to take care of him. So this this
is February of four. By the way. Now mind you,
I had started going to my dad's three so you
understand where where this was. How long this begins, you know,
started to materialize. So February of four, I'm actually in

(34:11):
the process of, you know, going through the motions of
having just gotten out of my dad's and so you know, flashbackscalore,
the typical stuff. I'll save the mental health stuff for
the story. Like I said, I have a story that
will go into deeper detail and will you know, you
can understand the trauma from that.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Anybody that wants that please reached out to me.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
In fact, what I'll probably do is I'm going to
give my email at the very end of this so
that you can contact me. Anybody that has questions directly
for me if you are interested. Plus, I do have
a YouTube channel, and what I'll probably do is if
Aron is able when he links up on the podcast
to his YouTube, I'm going to have him send me

(34:57):
the link and then I'll cross link it in my
description and then we'll chain will chain that and you
guys can if you have questions ask then having lost
my place in the queue, here, let's see my mom
getting me from my dad's and me recuperating. Okay, that
was a bit of a difficult task. So it ended

(35:19):
up with two stays at Brian West LGH Psychiatric Facility. Now,
I will say they were very accommodating for people who
are visually impaired the first time. The second time, I
can't really be as positive about that experience because of
the fact that they had a couple of newer nurses
there that did not really understand what it meant to

(35:40):
not have any what no vision really meant. Now, psychiatric hospital,
they should know this, but they didn't. They were trying
to make me more codependent than I wanted to be. Now, listen,
I believe that you should be willing to ask questions
and seek help when needed. However, I also believe that

(36:00):
if you are capable of doing something, it is not
okay to just let somebody do something for you if
you are capable, because the the we already have the
moniker in the able, you know, and and there's so
much ableism already going on of what.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
You need this done for you? You know, don't forget
I'm going to have to help you with this.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
So we really have to kind of get away from
that a little bit and start remembering that the skills
we were taught, we've got to put into practice. And
that's one of the things I've I've kind of gotten forward.
And I educated them and they, you know, it was
a lot of it was they didn't know, and so
I took time to educate them. And so really the
second stay, which was supposed to be more of a

(36:44):
secondary evaluation, turned into an education about people with visual
impairments there. But hey, I'm okay with that, I guess uh,
because it allowed me to teach people things.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Well.

Speaker 4 (36:57):
So that was before the in the outpatient therapist who
sent me back to my dad. So we're gonna skip
over two thousand and four's second stay at my dad's
in Augusta, Georgia, with the exception of how did I
get back home? Oh boy, my mom was back over
the road, and it just so happened. My mom had
just a little loaded Miami, Florida. I'm on the phone

(37:20):
with her. I've told her every by the way I
met my girlfriend Jessica, actually by name, I should point
out that we ran into each other by voice when
I was a kid, during the time my mom had
to get a car repaired. I used to travel a
lot when I was younger, all over the country. I
got some stories about that, including the infamous armadillo incident

(37:41):
in two thousand and two in course of Canada Texas.
But my mom, let me tell you something, and I
mentioned Texas because my mom was born in San Antonio, Texas. Which,
for anybody's knowledge, for anybody's you know, rapport, means that essentially,

(38:04):
I've been told that that makes me part Texan. I
tend to agree with this. She is told, hey, you
need to take another load to another state. Now, mind you.
Quail com which was a little utility they used for
the truck drivers back then to notify of things had

(38:25):
had to notice, you know, was a sheriff talking to
your son. My mom called to talk to my dad.
My mom eventually then got a call from the Columbia
County Sheriff's Department. Now Columbia County, for those who are curious,
is in Augusta, Georgia. It covers Augusta Grovetown and there's
a couple other communities within Columbia County. I'm not exactly

(38:47):
up on my geography, but enough to be able to
tell you that it's in that those two towns are
in Columbia County. And they said, he's not telling us
fully what's going on, but we know there's abuse going
on here because we can see it in him to hesitation.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
There's definitely something going on.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
Now, my mom being the eternal, you know, why aren't
you doing anything if you know something's going on? Well,
isn't because he's afraid to talk. Well, my mom told
the dispatcher, I have to go get my son. The
dispatcher says, no, you have to go take this load back.
My mom said, no, I have to go get my son.

(39:26):
That mean this was going on for and this was
across the quail Colm for quite a while. So finally
my mom called the dispatcher and the dispatcher's like, we've
got to be able to get this done.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
My mom says, if I have to, I.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
Will take the truck and I will turn it in
and I will go get my son myself. You are
not coming between me and my children. Well, okay, you're
still taking the load. Mom said, oh, you want to
bet and she dropped the load off goes and bobtails,

(40:00):
which for those who are younger, maybe that are in
your twenties, if you've never driven truck, bob tailing is
when you take the trailer off the back of the
truck and then you basically drive what they call the tractor,
which is the main part of the truck of a
semi truck or a big rig, and you are driving
that without the trailer hook to it. It's not something

(40:21):
that's highly recommended because it is a high profile vehicle
and if you hit a windy's zone, those things can
overturn real quick because they do not have the stability
of your typical van, suv or even for that matter, buses,
although they're high profile, but they at least have a
tad more stability than taking a big rig and bobtailing.

(40:44):
My mom hauled Patuti all the way down from where
she was at Omaha, Nebraska, takes in the truck, turns
it in. Pardon the French, but these exact words popped
over her mouth. I will be damned if you're gonna
come between me and my kid. Fucked this job, turned around,

(41:05):
got in her car. Now, mind you, she's gotten no
sleep at this point. Okay, so I want you to
I want you to picture this for just a second.
She's already bobtailed from the East coast back to Omaha
with no sleep.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
All right.

Speaker 4 (41:20):
Then gets in her car again no sleep, drives all
the way from Omaha to Grove to Grovetown, Georgia, where
I was located at the time, comes and picks me up.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
All right, well I again, still with no sleep.

Speaker 4 (41:40):
It took seven police officers to separate my mom and
my dad's wife, who was trying to pick a fight.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
With my mom.

Speaker 4 (41:46):
Might I add on the way as my mom was
getting stuff backed in? So that was fun. Not the
only thing was fun about it is I got out
of there. But this is how afraid of my dad
I was. We mom wanted to stop and get a
hotel in Atlanta, but see, I was too afraid of

(42:06):
my dad.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
So I was like, we're still in Georgia. He's gonna
find me.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
Mom says, I got to stop somewhere, so she said,
you pick a town in Tennessee and we'll stop there.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
I said, all right, let's do Chattanooga. Okay.

Speaker 4 (42:19):
Found of a hotel in Chattanooga, stopped there, and well
that's how I got out of my dad's the second time.
After all the abuse I went through, which, by the way,
ended up causing a traumatic brain injury. There is a
benign cyst on the base of the brain. Shrinkage of
the brain from what is called cerebral atrophy, which deals

(42:41):
with the atrophy refers to the shrinkage.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
By the way, for those who are.

Speaker 4 (42:46):
Not entirely inclined on the medical front, perhaps that terminology
atrophy does tend to throw people a little bit. There's
a difference between atrophy and dystrophy. Dystrophy refers to the weakening,
Like muscular dystrophe is the muscles weakened over time and
they become less usable. And from what I understand, there's
there's a little bit more that goes on with that.

(43:07):
But with cerebral atrophy, imagine uh, somebody has started taking
apart your model car, or they've done something to compress
it and make it smaller. Or let's just press down
on the top of that popcn. Anybody got a popcan
just grab a hold of it, just squeeze the top
and the bottom together, and it just gets a little smaller.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
That's what my brain has done.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
Unfortunately, Mid American Energy has not actually restored the the
the the size of my brain back to its original
and I apologize for the power company not doing so.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
But that's what I'm stuck with.

Speaker 4 (43:41):
The other side of this is now that I have that,
along with the already ongoing conditions that I've been you know, graced,
shall we say with if if you if you call
it grace.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Some people call it cursed. I call it.

Speaker 4 (43:55):
I've still I still call it a blessing because it
teaches others to to learn to appreciate people for their differences.
I you know, I've had this constant thing, this nagging.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
Question every day, what if you could see? What if
you could say?

Speaker 4 (44:09):
And I answer, I said, I don't really want to
think about that because I love myself as I am.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
I don't care to be different. I don't I mean visually.

Speaker 4 (44:19):
I mean, it would be cool to know what to
look like, you know, to know what colors look like,
to be able to understand color. But I don't really
personally give two Cahoudi's about, you know, looking at the stars.
I mean, because they're so they've been described to me
so well that I feel like I've got a vivid
imagery painted in my head. You know, if you asked

(44:40):
me to describe a I don't know if you asked
me to describe a microphone, and I'm not holding it
in my hand, and it's one i've owned before. I've
never owned, for example, a Sure MV microphone series, but
I do have a Sure microphone and my mixer in
my microphone stand spot in the back of the house.

(45:01):
I could describe it to you. Just to stick mic
with a long cable at the end. On the microphone.
There's a little switched control mute on off and top
that had I've never known what those top grills are
made out of. Maybe somebody better than I can can
describe the material. It's the little screen that they put
on those mics that feels really rough, which, by the way,

(45:22):
don't ever hit it with your hand because it actually hurts.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
I've done it.

Speaker 4 (45:27):
When trying to diagnose why I'm hearing I shouldn't hear.
Let Yeah, don't ever listen to that in a microphone.
When you tap the top of a mic, you should
never hear. So as a result, my mom had to
take care of my health issues. And I know I
got way off topic, but hey, that's ADHD for you.

(45:49):
Welcome to the world of the Brandon. I did get
my Ham radio license in the year two thousand and five,
hence the email case zero USM at Gmail, which I'll
mention that later, but I'll just early prep I became
a Ham radio operator in the year two.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
Thousand and five, in the month of June.

Speaker 4 (46:12):
Yes, after even with the abuse of my dad's And
I know the questions coming, but.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Brandon, you have one side of your brain working. It shrunk.
Have a hell did you do that? Well, it's very simple.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
It's called I don't give up, and it's called I
don't care if Hello Facebook, which is now dinging in
my ear. It reached a point where I said, I'm
either going to do one or two things. I'm either
going to sit here and mope and say, poor pitiful me,
I can't do this, or I'm going to get off

(46:46):
my butt and I'm going to do something about it.
And I decided to get off my ass and do
something about it. Went in, took my hand test and bam,
bam bam and bam ninety four percent. I was told
I scored the highest number on a HAMD test that
they had seen in quite some time there in Scott's Bluff.

(47:07):
So I got my ham radio license in Scott's Bluff County, Nebraska.
By the way, my girlfriend Jessica still still hangs it
over my head and it's funny that she got the
higher score, and I'm like, that's great.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
I love it. We laugh about it all the time, just.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
Like I beat you with the scores, I said, I know,
but I could still beat you in Mortal Kombat.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
You know.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
I played video games.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
A lot, so and she's over here taunting me about
Mortal Kombat as we speak. But that's basically kind of
the where I got to that point.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Now let's fast forward. I'm going to skip over a lot.

Speaker 4 (47:44):
Of things here because there's just a lot of immaterial
unless you want to talk about the heart attack my
mom suffered in two thousand and six after I and
by the way, while this was happening, they had me
on a medicine called Sarah Will, which I personally had
to take myself off of because I was having a
lot of problems with it. But in two thousand and six,

(48:04):
December eighteenth, I'll never forget this, I'm talking to a
dear friend of mine who is now deceased.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
Many of you.

Speaker 4 (48:09):
Guys that actually that maybe listeners of Aaron's opinion may
have also been listeners to an old thing called The
Blow broadcast from Blahland, hosted by the late Shawn Coughlin.
And he passed away in two thousand and one. For
those who are perhaps not aware, maybe you don't know
where he is from complications due to what was stage

(48:30):
four kidney cancer of annwn origin.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
And we were very close, very close.

Speaker 4 (48:36):
I met Sean and O six or rather I know five,
I should say, in December thirty, first New Year's Eve.
And this is how bad the Sarah Quill messed me up.
I'll never forget this part. I laugh about it now,
but I was embarrassed when it happened. So he says,
I said, sir Sean, where are you from? He says,
I'm from mass. Now, I asked him, literally, I'm not

(48:59):
making this up, Aeron, I said, where's mass He just
sat there and and his jaw had to have dropped.
I'm pretty sure his jaw fell off his face and
landed on the floor, and likely he had to pick it.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
Up and put it back on.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
Sorry, Jacob Marley Ebenezer Scrooge reference if you've ever read
the Christmas Carol and he's going, what and so, yeah,

(49:36):
that was a thing before I continued, Do you have
any questions for me, Aaron, because there's there's quite some
more fun there's quite some fun stuff coming here in
this and I want to but if you have any
questions on the first half of this, I want to
make sure.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Well, absolutely absolutely everything you're saying is excellent. Your your
delivery is really really good, as of course I knew
I knew it would be. And no, I don't have
any specific I do not have any specific questions for you.
But of course everything you're saying, I'm relating to it
one hundred percent. Yeah, and by the way, you know

(50:12):
that I'm also him of course KQ four F f R.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
You know, Oh, I've seen your call sign on qr Z.
Actually that's me.

Speaker 4 (50:21):
I don't think we've ever we have we have not
spoken on the radio, though we need to. We need
to change that some time.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah, certainly I love that call sign.

Speaker 4 (50:31):
By the way, f FR, I love it Free from Rockets.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Oh well, let's uh, well, you know what if you
know what if you say so, if that's what floats
your boat, that's what floats your boat, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
Well, I'm not on the sea, so if anything's floating
my boat, then I'm I'm I'm I'm hiding.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
How do you like that?

Speaker 1 (50:53):
You are quite a character, and I do not have
any questions apart from the fact that you are. You
are delivering this whole fun story in a very meaningful way,
and and unfortunately.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
I feel maybe a little too professional.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Go ahead, well, well, well, I well as I say, well,
as I say, if you're if if, if you're too professional,
that's too much your fault. I guess I don't know.
I can only I can only blame I can only
blame it. I can only blame the guests for that.
But what I what I will say is that, yeah,
I mean unfortunate. Fortunately, you have.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
The right attitude about living right.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Unfortunately, we we had Aaron's opinion, and the gentleman to
whom you've just mentioned a few moments ago, No, I've
never heard of that person.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
But remember I'm very much younger.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
I'm a lot younger than you, and I didn't start
podcasting until about five years ago.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
So that person, wow, never heard of? Right? Right?

Speaker 3 (51:48):
Right? I know a lot of people in the go ahead,
how long?

Speaker 2 (51:52):
How long did you think I have been podcasting?

Speaker 4 (51:54):
By the way, uh, listen with this the way you
go about it, I I you don't sound like somebody
that's podcasted for five years. You actually sound like you've
you've done this a long time. Like I really, you're
very very prepared, and I think, I think, honestly, I

(52:14):
would recommend this podcast to anybody who is very very curious.
I'll be honest Aaron's opinion, I'll be honest. I I'm
not nervous about public speaking at all, and I can
nervous when I go on an interview because I get
to tell a life story that I like. For the

(52:36):
first time and literally in my entire life, I'm publicizing
a story entirely talking about my life. That's the first
time I've ever done it, and I feel I don't
think I did too shabby a job. But then again,
I'm not I don't like to comment on my own work.
I let others be that be my critics. I'll criticize
myself in privacy.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Well, here's what I can tell you. Here's what I
can tell you.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
You're doing great and we'll definitely connect offline. But you're
you're definitely you're You're an amazing guest and you're absolutely
what our listeners from home have been wanting to hear,
and unfortunately your story, although it's your story unfortunately though
others also also have shared these experiences too, So sadly,

(53:19):
this is not the first time I've heard this type
of story.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
I mean, yours is a.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
State yours is especially crazy, but it's not the first
time I've heard.

Speaker 4 (53:26):
It's not the first story, and I'm trusting me. I
tell this to everybody. I feel bad for anybody that
has to go through this because it's important.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
It's important for you to tell your story though, because
people need to hear it.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
So you see you bet.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
So that's why that's why these stories are as important
as they are.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Yeah, absolutely, mm hmm, so and so then what happened.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
You can of course continue with this with this victorious
train ringing wreck.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
Yes, uh so, as I get my hand license in
two thousand and five, I mentioned my mom's heart attack
and O six's kind of go between that and introduced
my first time I ever got to go on Skype.
I'm going to keep others' names, and I mentioned Shaan's
because unfortunately for those fortunately fortunately for some, unfortunately for brothers,
they didn't get to meet him. Shawn was actually one

(54:14):
of my biggest inspirations to really keep going when I
was starting to get bullied a lot in those days.
So Shawn was really an excellent mentor in terms of,
you know, even though his personality was quirky, and even
though he had you know, and I say quirky, and
you know, for some that didn't you know, usialize the
terminology that he used that I used, they they probably

(54:36):
thought we were the weirdest people ever, especially me after
I got around him. But then I realized that what
he was trying to do was set up a lesson.
You know, he's saying, hey, you can't give up on
life just because everybody else thinks you're crazy nut and
because they think that your batteries are running low.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
And I well, and.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
Two thousand and five I got introduced the Skype, and
you know, I'd already been using Yahoo Messenger. Everybody remembers
Yahoo yahoooooo.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
And everybody remembers Yahoo Messenger.

Speaker 4 (55:07):
And I say everybody because there's people even and I
didn't realize this till recently that are younger than us, Aaron,
who are actually.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
Have Yahoo dot com email addresses.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Yeahoo, I'm bizarre. It is bizarre.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
It is, it is, and I'm surprised, but you know,
more power to them. I mean, I have a Gmail address.
I mean I used to have my old Yahoo email address,
and I kind of wish I still had it. But
at the same time, I'm glad I don't because well,
to be fair, I tend to find Gmail is a
little more easier to set.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Up, be honest.

Speaker 4 (55:43):
But hey, if you want Yahoo, get Yahoo, or do
what some people do, get your own mail server. If
you're running your own server and just do it that way,
that's another way to do it. And you know, if
if you happen to run your own website, if you
have the funds to do it, but if you're but
if you're if you're a.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
If you if you're poor like me, you get the
one you'd like. Well, I'm just use emails. So that's
that story.

Speaker 4 (56:10):
But two thousand and five and six, I get introduced
to Skype and after writing on a forum, a guy says, hey,
I want you to get on Skype and I want
you to add me. Now, I got to tell you,
guys this, this is funny. I had a Pennium two computer.
Now understand the era we're talking about two thousand and five.
Think about the processors that were out in two thousand

(56:31):
and five.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
We're talking about processors.

Speaker 4 (56:33):
Everybody had mostly pennium four processors. Some of them actually
had even pennium. You know, they even had pennium or
you know Intel celerons at the time that were slower
than molasses in February or January depends on who you
where you are, and who you're from. Wait, whoops, uh

(56:54):
Freudian slip. You get the reference. But uh then, but
here I am this little rinky yinky computer, a M
two three hundred and fifty megahertz and one hundred and twenty.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
Eight megs of RAM. Notice emphasized megs.

Speaker 4 (57:13):
People I had machines with at least two gigs of
RAM in it by this point, so they're way ahead
of the game. And here I am with a slow computer, thinking,
all right, Skype should run beautifully on. Here was I
sorely mistaken. I get in Skype calls and they shounded
like phone calls. They shounded like everybody was talking on
their gums and not on their teeth, because of course

(57:34):
a k shounds like that when you speak on a telephone.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
And uh.

Speaker 4 (57:39):
Well, many people gave me, shall I say, fifty Shades
of Hell for that, I'm glad that's not a book.
I If it is, I'm gonna I'm literally going to
run for the hill. Not literally, but I'm going to
laugh my head off. That's what I'm going to do.
Fifty Shades of Hell. Watch someone look that up after
they hear this podcast and write one of us there
and go. By the way I found that book, it's

(58:01):
called fifty Shades of Hell.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
I might have found it in the boondocks somewhere. You know,
it'll be one of those types of things.

Speaker 4 (58:08):
But uh we you know, quite frankly, as I'm meeting
these people and you know, I'm nervous, mind you because
I just got out of my dad, so I don't
you know, I made the big mistake that an eighteen
nineteen twenty year old mates opened up to people before
I really knew who they were. Now I want to
point out if you're somebody that has gone through trauma,

(58:31):
I want to warn you about something. Do not ever,
as I've learned, as I learned them. A lesson I
learned is, don't ever ever try to turn around and
put your story out to people you don't know directly.
And I'm not talking indirect If you do it on
a podcast like we're doing that, that seems to have
a different effect than if you if you are like

(58:54):
you go to that person and suddenly you're telling them
I just came out of abuse in the hands of
my dad.

Speaker 3 (58:59):
So this triggering and then you get this, Well.

Speaker 4 (59:03):
If you're that easily triggered, I want you to turn
off your computer.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
One day, I said, hey, how do you I mean?
And this is how this is how how weird.

Speaker 4 (59:12):
Some of these people were, Hey, I have a problem
with this issue on my computer and I can't seem
to fix the lag.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
Now the guy I had to laugh at.

Speaker 4 (59:21):
Him a little bit because I thought it was kind
of hilarious because I wanted to do what he suggested.
He goes, well, just hold down the power button on
your computer and turn it off. That'll take care of it.
I knew what he really meant, but I laughed anyway,
because I'm like, hey, this computer bothers me enough, I
really kind of want to turn it off.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
The State of Nebraska saved me though.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
Finally in two thousand and seven, they gave me a
penny of four one point four gigahertz and five hundred
and twelve megs of RAM. Of course, they couldn't give
me a gigabram why because it was just a little
too hard.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
To do, you know how it is.

Speaker 4 (59:54):
State funded computers at that time were kind of a
little lesson. They were a little subpar. They weren't exactly
your your best, but hey, they got you buy and
I didn't complain. See I we lived, me and my
mom and my family. Just for everybody's knowledge here, we
didn't live a rich life. It may have looked like
it then me out of times we moved, but really
a lot of that came from saving, and a lot

(01:00:16):
of that came from paying bills, being responsible, and knowing
how to budget, and learning that budgeting concept, and then
going to stores and and learning how to shop. Mom
taught me how to ask for assistant shoppers, taught me
how to pass a card up to the register.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
She's like, I want you.

Speaker 4 (01:00:38):
You're gonna hand my card to the cashire and you're
gonna and you're gonna you're gonna hand the card over.
They're gonna run it. Of course, I'll tell them to
pin because it was it was her car, of course.
So she goes, but you're gonna hand them the card
and you're gonna let them run it. Then you're gonna
hand it and I'm gonna show you how to do this.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
This. This mom didn't let me just sit down and
not do anything.

Speaker 4 (01:01:01):
My mom was the if you're gonna learn to be
in this world independent, I don't give a damn if
somebody tells you you can't do it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
I know you.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
I'm the one that brought you into this world and
I and you're more capable than people think you are.
She used to get after a lot of my other
family members because see, to be honest with you, a
lot of them had the mentality while he's blind, somebody
has to take care of him, and they used the autism,
the ADHD, and the sensory processing disorders, the many millions
of other issues as reasons. Now, mind you I mentioned

(01:01:34):
sensory processing disorder, I shouldn't make a distinction for those
who are younger who are maybe listening to this, who
were born at a time that perhaps.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
You may be going, what that is a thing?

Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
In about twenty twelve, they actually a lot of the
neuropsychologists really started to dive into what the sensory responses
are and that's how they became acquainted with sen three
processing disorders, which basically refers to the ones inability to
process sensory and in certain ways. And thus accommodations now

(01:02:12):
are made to accommodate for those for those who need it. Well,
if you guys want to know a little more about
that again, we'll dive into that more deeper.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
That's probably going to be a deeper subject for.

Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
Offline communication, not that I don't want to talk about
it on here, but I feel like if I did that,
we'd have to split this podcast into about twenty five
parts because there's so many things that would that would
we'd have to cover, and and for those who are
maybe not as you know. And I love to educate people,
so I want to really encourage you again. I'm going
to be providing you my contact at the end of this.

(01:02:48):
I actually have Telegram too, and so you guys can
contact me there. I have discord and so we're going
to talk about those at the end of the podcast. So,
as I mentioned, we're in two thousand and seven, I've
gotten a new machine, still dealing with the bullies, but
still pressing on because why Brandon Hennis doesn't have a
give up button. I'm still trying to figure out how
in the world I managed not to have one after

(01:03:08):
twenty two years of dealing with bullying, even on Yahoo
groups and other places. But I guess maybe it's because
I guess you shut me down that quick. Or maybe
it's just because I love myself too much, and I
mean love myself.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
You have to love yourself to love other people, all right.

Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
Maybe it's just because I believe that I don't need
to let others win that are trying to bring me down. Instead,
I need to be victorious by believing in myself and
not listening to the nice sayers, because you know, all
they're doing is just encouraging you to press on. By
them saying you can't, it just gives you more of
an inspiration to say you can. That's really all they're doing.

(01:03:48):
They're just trying to tell you you can't do it
because they don't believe you're capable, even though you shown
time and again that you can. And so once I
got to the computers, I actually started working on writing
auto hotkey programming scripts like dialogue message boxes to test
how screen readers read dialogue boxes. Now understand that early

(01:04:13):
on in the podcast, if you fast forward through my
diet pribe earlier about my school and me bragging on
my computer teacher about his ability to his ability to
teach me computers, you'll know that this part here is critical.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
I was big into how do I make.

Speaker 4 (01:04:41):
An app work better with a screen reader because while
I wrote developers, I found developers at that time, and
they still some developers today still struggle with this when
we write developers, and this is a challenge I know.
I'm sure many of your other guests have talked about
this about developers who in their line of experience, when
you write and tell them an application is not accessible,

(01:05:03):
whether it's a Renter's app. Whether it's a website where
you're going in filling out a form but there's no
old tags on the text, or something like that that
someone has probably encountered this. You go and tell the
developers this is inaccessible.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
I'm having trouble.

Speaker 4 (01:05:22):
Okay, we will contact our web development team and we'll
get this fixed.

Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
But but.

Speaker 4 (01:05:32):
Guess what they don't do. Guess what still stays just
as it is. And that's part of the struggles I
went through over time. So I thought if I could
dive into the meat of what the screen reader is doing,
then I could sort of figure out what to do
about this problem myself. If they're not going to do it,
I don't have enough tools in front of me to

(01:05:54):
be able to hold them as accountable as i'd like it.
I'm not rich, I can't call a lawyer. But I
have a better idea. What if I can write something?
So I started with Jaws frames. I don't do Jaws scripting. Okay,
we have plenty of those out there, I'm unfortunately one
of them.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
But I do know how to do Jaws frames.

Speaker 4 (01:06:10):
So I started figuring out how to train Jaws to
put frames around it and announce certain pieces of information,
so I knew when to interact with the jaws cursor
and where to plant the jaws cursor when I needed to.
One such example as the dek talk text editor, which
I can use with MVDA with no problem, although I'll

(01:06:32):
mention I am partially responsible for beta testing an app
that a gentleman out of California made called dtpad, which
allows one to use dek talk in various DLL files.
And we have a speak Windows folder where you can
test out varying degrees of dek talk versions all in
one go from the same app rather than loading up

(01:06:55):
the dek talk Speak Windows and there's keystrokes.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
Galore with it. Well, A long, long story with dek
talk uh.

Speaker 4 (01:07:05):
One of my favorite sins, by the way, alongside macin
talk for you mac fans.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
Probably because Fred reminds me of deck talk. I don't
know it, just Fred kind of has that same sound
if you listen to him and then you listen to
Paul with dek talk, there are similarities. And I actually
think and I may be wrong, Aaron, I wonder if
you knew this, but can you guess where Dennis Klatt

(01:07:31):
where the accent that dek talk uses. Can you guess
what state that is from? We'll pick your brain a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Probably a Midwestern state.

Speaker 4 (01:07:41):
Nope, I'll give you a couple of I'll give you
a couple of ideas on the east coast. So we're
gonna stay east, but we're gonna we're gonna stay in
New England.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Oh, probably New Hampshire or Vermont.

Speaker 4 (01:07:55):
Okay, you were close. I'm gonna go ahead and give
you this one. It's Massachusetts, deslatt m. I t in Massachusetts.
So if you listen to the accent, and I don't
know why my phone thinks it needs to talk tonight.
Apparently my uh my, uh Pixel eight A is trying
to have a say in the conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Shut up, Pixel, We don't need your.

Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
Input anyway, all right, So the the correct answer would
have been out of Boston. And if you listen to
deck talk, it actually does have a bit of a
Boston accent. For example, when it says talk, it says talk,
not you know, kind of like they do in Boston.
It doesn't have it says car, kind of like a

(01:08:40):
car talk. Anybody ever listened to cor talk, you know,
with the with the right madiatz.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
Never never listen, never listened to it. But I've heard
of the show. I've heard of it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
Okay, yeah, you you're missing out. They are hilarious. Unfortunately
one of the brothers passed, but they have archives of
the show and it's it's one of them. It's hilarious.
Not because they're talking about the cars. Listen to the
car part. I still don't understand automobiles enough to listen
to it all the time. But I don't listen to
it so much for that purpose, but because they're so witty,

(01:09:11):
and they are.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
You can listen if you If you can listen to
that show without laughing, you have a very dry sense
of humor.

Speaker 4 (01:09:21):
I'm kidding. I'm kidding. There's not a dry eye listening
to that one anyway. So you know, two thousand and seven,
I get the fast computer or faster computer two thousand
and ten. I'm gonna jump a few years here before
I do, because the question will come up. You said

(01:09:43):
you met your girlfriend in two thousand and four three
four on Yahoo Messenger. Okay, let me correct something. We
didn't date until twenty twenty, all right, so just for
your information, but we knew each other long before we dated,
and we all had to go through our high roads
and low roads. So so for anybody who's wondering, we've

(01:10:05):
been together since twenty twenty, Jess and I.

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
And why is that important?

Speaker 4 (01:10:11):
Because I just I just know some of the questions
I've gotten over the years whenever I talk about that,
and people are like, hmm, so now my curiosity's perked,
And I'm like, all right, cool, Only come we go
ahead and squashed this before it perks their curiosity, because
I love that they're curious.

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):
All I answer it ahead of time. I'm ahead.

Speaker 4 (01:10:29):
I try to be ahead of the game, except in
baseball you're not really supposed to be that far ahead
because you don't know what the picture is gonna throw
at you. So as that as that were, twenty ten
is when I got my first cell phone. At this point,
I'm aged twenty four, twenty three, turning twenty four, and
I get my first cell phone. Everybody at this point

(01:10:51):
it had cell phones for quite a while. You know,
the LG eighty three hundred. Who remembers those LG phones,
those LG eighty three hundreds.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
That was my first phone, my first really LG.

Speaker 4 (01:11:01):
Yeah, Verizon wireless, remember that, lady, You know you always
turn it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
On forse and wireless, And then and then you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Dial like your call cannot your call cannot be completed,
his dial, Please check the number and call again.

Speaker 4 (01:11:15):
We're sorry you have reached a number that has been
disconnected or that longer in service.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
Oh yes, oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:11:21):
And and of course on the landlines, we all remember
the infamous sixty cycle hum with that, with that kind
of almost see natural uh sub harmonic, which usually meant
that the carbons in the line were going bad.

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
Yes, because people still used a.

Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
Lot of landlines then still along with their cell phones anymore.
Now it's cell phones. Why don't they just make them
use like, you know, meats or zoom anymore? You know, Hey,
we would love to have you call in by phone,
but we'll hear you better if you use meat.

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
Okay, now I'm kidding. I'm kidding you know as well
as I do.

Speaker 4 (01:11:53):
Most professional radio stations are probably sitting here laughing at me, now,
going why would we do that when we're on iHeart
and we can have a talkback option. So but hey,
that's all right. So twenty ten, I get my first
cell phone. It's a Samsung Haven and I was haven
a good time with that phone when I got it,

(01:12:14):
and quite frankly, it was, you know, the first ever
accessible cell phone, and I felt like I was on
top of the world, even though it wasn't a smartphone.
And everybody's sitting there with their smartphones, their touch screens,
and I'm sitting here with a dial pad. Now, you
have to remember, for some stupid reason, I kept following
this this mentality that Okay, it's not a good thing
to have a touch screen. You gotta have the buttons

(01:12:35):
because what happens that the touch screen goes bad, and
all this and this and this because the all the
negative talk everybody was giving about the touch screen phones,
like the you know that they couldn't really use them
all that well and everything. And of course at the time,
I BlackBerry had a screen reader, but it wasn't all
that popular. You had iPhone was starting to come out. Well,

(01:13:00):
I didn't get my first iPhone until twenty eleven, and
I say starting to come out. They had iPhones, but
voiceover was not popularly noticed.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
It was for a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
It wasn't nearly as versatile as it is now. No,
certainly not.

Speaker 4 (01:13:15):
I mean you you could you there were people who
did podcast on them. I mean immaculate podcasts. I think
back to the days of Blind Cool Tech. That was
one of my favorite podcasts back on the day.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
We'll just get on and look at Larry Scuokon.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
Uh, never spoke to him yet, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
Oh you you listen.

Speaker 4 (01:13:33):
I think that that should be that should be a subject,
that should be a two that should be a two
person interview because I'm talking about starting a new podcast
called Brandon in the Light, which which is something we're
going to talk about here here in a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:13:46):
And I think that'd be kind of.

Speaker 4 (01:13:47):
Cool to do a dual podcast together and we could
interview Larry Scukon about BCT.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
I don't know, that'd be kind of a cool idea.
I don't know why.

Speaker 4 (01:13:55):
I you know, because the guy was I would record
his podcast on walks. I mean, he would go from
business to business and you could hear the lights as
he's passing me the digital recorders and it's like this
guy's walking. That's great, and he takes you into his
life and he's he's talking about his opinion about Google

(01:14:17):
changing something, or or he's he's he's giving his opinion
about for example.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
You know, funny funny you mentioned it and then and
then you should you should pivot to the next.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
Marble that you lost.

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
How many marbles can I lose a thousand ahead?

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
You know, I've I've never I mean, it's it's it's
a very creative idea I've never actually done.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
I've never done an interview where me and somebody else interviews.
I've never basically, I've never done a three way podcast
for three podcasts meet on one podcast. And I'll tell
you why I've never done it and why I would
do it. I've never done it, And I read rarely rarely.
As you go through the archive of Aaron's opinion, you know,

(01:15:05):
as you delve into the history over the feet over
the years, you'll notice that most of the content on
the YouTube barn Apple is just me talking to guess
one on one.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
Very rarely, is it. Now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
There's been a couple of times where I've had two
people on all at the same time. But I will
tell you, as you know, with your audio knowledge, the
more people you have on a conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Then it starts to get a little a little confusing.
It starts to get a little dizzy.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
It gets a little dizzy for the listener. And then
so you have to be careful with that. Now you
gave me an interesting idea, you know that that could
be something that the two of us could work on.
Is maybe getting in touch with some of these people
that you know would be great guests for both of
our shows. And then you and I kind of come
on here once in a while and do a three
way interview. World just say well, this kind of counts
for all three of our podcasts. We'll just have a

(01:15:55):
great talk, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:15:56):
Oh yeah, and of course check us no more and
as and it left the scene after a while. Funny
you should mention that one of my I should give
a shout. I need to besides my girlfriend Jessica, and
besides a very dearest sister of mine, and I don't
mean sister by blood, but that lives with me, Haley,
who's somewhere somewhere hiding. I don't know what she's doing.

(01:16:19):
But I also want to give a shout to Nesma.
You guys, I think you've had Nesma on your podcast
years ago. And I have a confession to go.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
I have a confession to make and I'm an honest podcaster.
She was on the show so long ago that I do,
I don't quite remember the conversation well, which is why
in the show.

Speaker 3 (01:16:40):
She thinks it might have been TBA net.

Speaker 4 (01:16:43):
The discussion about TVA net, the blind advocacy network that
was run by a mutual friend.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Mari well could be very well.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
So I think that's exactly why in the in the
weeks to come, and we'll have to talk of off air,
but in the weeks to come, she needs to come
back to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
Certainly she's so, oh yeah here.

Speaker 4 (01:17:01):
But oh yeah, well, well, I don't know, I'm I'm yes,
she is, and and quite frankly, so are you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
Your Your attitude is impressive, thank you. You have a
very impressive and a.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
Very admirable learnable attitude that can be applied in people's learning,
you know. So anyway, though, yes, we'll definitely get some
get some special episodes planned in the future, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
That's a really cool idea.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
The thing with a three way conversation is it has
to sound and it kind of has to be just right.
If you're gonna get three people on there to be
kind of just right. That's kind of the problem with that.
So we'll definitely work towards that and get in touch
with some of these people.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
And you know, you'd be surprised. I've talked to people, Brandon.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
I'll tell you, I've had episodes here where somebody said, Aaron,
I used to be a podcaster, but I don't know
if I should get back into it, And by the
end of our conversation, they're like, yeah, Aeron, I'm definitely
getting back into podcasting. So let's see if we can
get somebody else back into podcasting. That would be so
cool to get a former podcaster back into the circuit
of the podcast. Absolutely, but certainly, though, why don't you

(01:18:03):
continue well with all this victorious marble marbles and just
keep keep telling the life story here?

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Absolutely?

Speaker 3 (01:18:11):
All right?

Speaker 4 (01:18:12):
Well, well, and so I mentioned we mentioned the cell phones. Now,
this is funny. The first ever smartphone did I get,
didn't wun the phone, the phone service. It was a
iPhone three gs and it was just to play with phone. Really,
that's all it was, because I still had Behaven. That

(01:18:33):
was the first time I got it. That was twenty eleven. Well,
I decided that I liked it so much that I
wanted an iPhone as a primary because the motorall of
Citrus that I'd had before it was simply blah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:45):
I couldn't use it for nothing. There was no track ball,
there was.

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
No other cool, there was no cool functionality there. It's Haley, Hi, Haley.
Haley's behind me, and I gave a shout to you.
So you know, Hayley has been instrumental. We'll get to
her in a minute, because she's been very, very much
an inspiration to all of us here. But here's the

(01:19:14):
thing with the iPhones is I had a Motorola Citrus. Now,
to explain for those who don't know, back then, Android
was at two point three Gingerbread, however I did not. However,
the Citrus, however, was not on Gingerbread. It was on Froyo,
which was Android two point two. And unfortunately, the accessibility

(01:19:36):
of that was a little bit difficult to come by
since you didn't have a track ball and you couldn't
double tap on stuff without enabling a secondary readout service
that was built into the Motorola.

Speaker 3 (01:19:48):
You had to tie it in with talkacks.

Speaker 4 (01:19:51):
You had to to kind of get that touch to
tap twice twice tapping to execute. You had to you
had to work pretty hard to get what you wanted.
And one thing that I loved when I got the

(01:20:12):
iPhone was just the seamless use of apps. Now, we
were still on iOS four point three point five back then,
so iPhone really was kind of my go to Android
at that time wasn't what it is today. It really
wasn't as developed in my opinion, I didn't feel.

Speaker 3 (01:20:30):
Like that as a productivity user.

Speaker 4 (01:20:36):
I didn't feel like productivity wise, like I really had
a shot at being productive with it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:49):
So feel.

Speaker 4 (01:20:54):
When I got the iPhone, I had to hit the
I'm taking a drink button for second. That's why my
voice went silent. I get the iPhone and as I
got a hold of that, the next phone in my

(01:21:15):
arsenal started being were Android phones. As Android Jellybean came out,
I start with an iPhone four and I had an
iPhone four up until twenty thirteen, when I decided to
give Android Jellybean a try with a Motorola Droid Ultra.

Speaker 3 (01:21:35):
Now, by the way, this was a great little phone droid.

Speaker 4 (01:21:41):
Now, a former friend of mine was responsible for giving
me an LG Enlighten before, and I did use it
as a primary phone. A couple of times, but there
were some apps that it just didn't do very well,
and it's space limitation. Listen, when an eight gig iPhone
can out do a one gig LG, anybody's going to

(01:22:03):
be a happy camper. So iphoned four was the phone
for a while. Then I went to a Droid Ultra
in twenty thirteen, to be succeeded at the end of
twenty thirteen into fourteen by a iPhone five C. Now
I'm bringing up the phones because the events during this

(01:22:23):
time really weren't all that eventful.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
I left.

Speaker 4 (01:22:27):
The only thing that was eventful as my move to
Eastern Nebraska.

Speaker 3 (01:22:32):
That happened due to the fact that my mom's health.

Speaker 4 (01:22:37):
Had begun to deteriorate after hitting a deer and she
broke her vertebrae in her back, so we had to
move to We moved to eastern Nebraska that we eventually
are permanent moved to Missouri Valley occurred in July of
twenty fourteen. Missouri Valley's a little town, for curiosity's sake,
outside of Omaha, Nebraska, due north in the little east

(01:22:59):
about thirty minutes, so I'm a little outside of Omaha
by this, so literally I can I can take runs
to Omaha and go to grocery store. And I mentioned
that because I am ten minutes away from a town
that made national news in twenty fourteen for the infamous

(01:23:19):
hailstorm that nearly took out about half the town, Nebraska,
which if anybody remembers watching the news and seeing the
stories about the baseball sized hail, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
I mean I vague.

Speaker 1 (01:23:32):
Now, I mean I don't. I didn't specifically remember, but
now that you mentioned, I do bring it up.

Speaker 3 (01:23:39):
Brandon, I hope you don't get that kind of hail
where you are.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
Well, well, we'll get to that. But what I wanted
to say to you is that you've done such a
magnificent job with part one of our conversation here on
Aaron's opinion, that I must confess that I am starting
to run out of time for part one. We certainly

(01:24:06):
need a part two and probably probably a part three
with you.

Speaker 3 (01:24:09):
But oh indeed, but I I there are.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
Many reasons why I'm saying it at this in this
way and in this moment, But I would like to
say that he will Brandon will be back for certainly
part two to tell the rest of the story soon,
but until then.

Speaker 3 (01:24:27):
And we'll if I may.

Speaker 4 (01:24:28):
Before we wrap up, let me give a quick bit
of contact information for people if you would like to
get with me on what you heard on part one.

Speaker 3 (01:24:34):
Absolutely, if you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:24:35):
Would like a little more insight into part one of
this podcast from my perspective, if you would like to
reach out to me, my telegram is Chinmouth eighty six
c h I N M O U t H eighty six.
It's a silly telegram name, but hey, who kids. My
email KC zero USM at gmail dot com. That's k

(01:24:57):
C zero U s m utterly silly man at gmail
dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:25:04):
And of course.

Speaker 4 (01:25:06):
My discord, because I'm part of an anti bullying movement,
is webooll w ebb O role r O l.

Speaker 3 (01:25:14):
E dot londini l O n d I NI.

Speaker 4 (01:25:21):
That also follows the same moniker as TikTok U, and
you can find me there as well. And I'm also
on Facebook under the name Brandon Hennis. And if you
would note that there are two facebooks of mine, look
for the Facebook that is dated who has posts dated.

Speaker 3 (01:25:42):
Twenty twenty five, and then you will find me.

Speaker 4 (01:25:45):
So if you have any questions, those are how you
reach me and that was part one from this angle
back to Aaron, well.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
Why thank you?

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
Absolutely so certainly, though before we get going, I'm sure
that you have some questions for this, Aaron Richmond guy,
Aaron's opinion. You know so, as I like to say,
and trust me, you aren't getting out of this by
saying I don't know. You know that that answer is
not going to suffice.

Speaker 3 (01:26:16):
I don't know. It's not an answer.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
You're a character.

Speaker 3 (01:26:20):
If I'm a character, what movie.

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
Life? Life, Life Starring.

Speaker 3 (01:26:29):
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness. All right, I'm done.

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
You're a blasphemy man. We just love you on this show,
but you're You're I'm going to be one of our characters.

Speaker 1 (01:26:43):
You're the movie that it's called Life Starring Life, written
by God.

Speaker 2 (01:26:50):
Props use the universe Marbles.

Speaker 4 (01:26:52):
And Brandon Marbles and happy if you have a problem
with lost marbles called one eight hundred Marvel five, You're
marble are important to you and to us as well.
If you've lost them and you are having any technical issues,
we would advise you to not press the off button
on your microphone.

Speaker 3 (01:27:08):
Damage may ensue with the process. Each sel separately. Power
companies not included.

Speaker 1 (01:27:17):
Don't forget and by the way, by the way, if
we can ever get our guests to stop laughing and
having way too much fun, don't forget the views expressed
on this opinions or on the views expressed on this
podcast are not always the opinion of the of the host,
but but they are almost always the opinion of the
guests or things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
So if you can.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
So, if you can ask me now only one question
to really make me sweat, to see if I'm worth
my salt as a podcaster. What do you really want
to know about Aaron's Aaron Richmond or Aaron's opinion? One
more question, and then we'll wrap up Part one.

Speaker 4 (01:27:53):
If you could do anything in terms of your podcast,
would you ever want your podcast to be a syndicated
radio show at some point where you could actually have
live guest interactions so that if anybody had questions they
could ask them live on air.

Speaker 3 (01:28:11):
And if so, why and if not why.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
Well, we've kind of done it in some cases, now
that I know that you're this much of a blast.
In some cases, what I've done is I've actually shared
the zoom link publicly and then the public can come
into the zoom room and sit and sit mute it
in the audience. So I do know how to do that,
and I've done that in the past. It just depends
on what mood I'm in and if I feel like

(01:28:34):
doing that, and.

Speaker 2 (01:28:36):
How well I know the guests. I understand, and I'm
sure you do that.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
I didn't really know you before now, so I wasn't
sure you know how well things would or would not go.
But now that we know how things are going to go,
we'll certainly do that for part two. And we'll definitely
get people to come in and ask you someone You've.

Speaker 4 (01:28:52):
Got a snake preview of me, actually, to be fair,
through a former guest of yours who may be a
rich our guest of yours, when I spoke on her
Facebook messenger, So you kind of got an early introduction
to me that was was not exactly the easiest introduction
for those who are curious.

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
Indeed, But but we spoke with Nesma many many years back,
you see.

Speaker 4 (01:29:13):
So many many decades ago in a galaxy fa fat away.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
But we will certainly include more audience interaction, indeed, and
absolutely and we'll certainly we'll certainly keep in touch in
that way and we'll definitely figure out how we're gonna
get how we're gonna get you on here for part two,
because you've got a lot more to share, and we
didn't even we didn't even finish the half of it.

Speaker 3 (01:29:36):
We haven't even scratched the surface. I'm telling you we will.

Speaker 1 (01:29:39):
So part part two we'll pick up where we left off,
and then we'll get we'll get up to where we
are today, and then probably by party three we'll we'll
kind of sum it all up so that people truly
know who Brandon Hennis truly is inside.

Speaker 4 (01:29:50):
It indeed all right, and and at least and then
you will hear and the words of the.

Speaker 3 (01:29:56):
Late Paul Harvey the rest of the story.

Speaker 1 (01:30:00):
There you go, There you go, absolutely and until next time,
and until part two with Brandon Hennis, don't forget he's
Brandon Hennis. I'm Aaron's opinion, and until next time. Help
one person today, help one million people tomorrow,

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