March 30, 2025 • 23 mins
From poverty to purpose, Brandon shares how his brother's birth sparked a transformation in his outlook on life during a childhood marked by neglect, hunger, and searching for guidance amidst family dysfunction.
Please start with Episode 1. Go to my site BrandonHeld.com
• Experiencing a new sense of responsibility and protectiveness after his brother's birth
• Growing up with an emotionally absent mother who spent much of her time in bed
• Surviving on limited food from food stamps and sometimes eating raw potatoes when nothing else was available
• Finding hidden snacks in his mother's closet while being told there was no food for him
• Cherishing Christmas at his grandmother's as a rare bright spot of abundance and care
• Developing a persistent positive attitude that confused his family members
• Setting clear goals to join the Air Force and become a police officer as an escape plan
• Learning from watching what not to do rather than having positive role models
Join me next time as I continue the story of how I transformed my challenging childhood into a path forward.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
Welcome back to episode two.
This is Brandon Held.
Life is crazy.
And today I'm going to pick upwhere I left off with the end of
episode one and the birth of mybrother.
What a huge impact that had onme and how to live my life.
(00:25):
Before I was just a kid goingthrough life, not giving it much
thought.
And just living day to day.
When my brother was born, itchanged everything.
It gave me a sense ofresponsibility.
It gave me a little bit moresense of a maturity for my age.
(00:47):
Obviously, I had a long way togo in that department.
And just protectiveness.
I already had a bit of aprotective nature for my mother
and what my mother was goingthrough.
But now I had these feelings andmore for my little brother.
He was brought into this life,this family that, frankly,
(01:15):
outside of my grandmother, wasnot anything to aspire to be
like.
I often make the joke, I grew upon the How Not To book.
And there's a lot of truth tothat.
My grandmother, who I love verymuch, Mamaw, showed me a lot of
(01:35):
love.
She stepped up and did thingswith me and my sister, things my
mother didn't do.
She took us out to eat twoplaces, Cedar Point, hotels.
She did things with us that madeus feel loved and like we were
part of a family.
(01:57):
My mother just didn't do thosethings.
Maybe it's because we were poorand just making ends meet were
part of the problem.
She just didn't have anythingextra to throw around.
We were on food stamps.
We lived a life where we wouldget our food stamps at the
(02:17):
beginning of the month.
I can't remember if it was onceor twice a month.
I remember a period of time, Ithink it was twice a month in
the beginning and the middle,and we would go to the store and
we would buy what we could withthe food stamps.
Typically, it was me or mysister walking several blocks to
(02:40):
the grocery store, taking thefood stamps, buying things, and
carrying the bags of grocerieshome.
It's not the only way.
I'm not saying my mom never wentto the grocery store, but she
sent us quite a bit.
Heck, we could even get sent tothe grocery store with a note
saying, my mom was giving uspermission to buy cigarettes for
(03:01):
her.
Times were so different backthen.
But yeah, just a lazy mom, apoor mom.
I loved her.
She spent hours of her life justlaying in bed in her bedroom.
I remember when he was home,because he worked on the
railroad, he would be goneMonday through Friday most of
the year, but there were timesin winter when he couldn't work
(03:25):
because of the weather, so hewould just be there all the
time.
I remember they would be layingin their beds upstairs in the
home, and my mom would call usto come upstairs and have us do
anything from...
taking her cup, getting her adrink to bring her food to
(03:48):
whatever the case was.
She just was an absent motherliving her own life while we
were trying to survive.
And so doing that, I felt thisneed to take care of this little
baby boy brother that I had.
And I know my sister did too.
(04:09):
My sister and I didn't have thegreatest relationship.
I think we had a decentrelationship until we hit the
teenage years.
I was a more reserved teenager.
I got along with everyone, butyou wouldn't put me in the
(04:30):
category of a jock or youwouldn't put me in with the band
geeks or you wouldn't put me inwith the nerds or whatever the
different categories are youwould lump people into.
I didn't fall into any of thosebecause I got along with
everybody, right?
And my sister was beautiful whenshe was young and my grandma
was, my mom was.
(04:51):
And so my sister was too.
She was part of the more quoteunquote popular crowd.
So she thought she was too coolfor her older brother.
And that's fine.
We were just different.
We were very different.
And so we got along okay, but weweren't like best friends or
(05:13):
anything.
One of the main things was thatI was very big on honesty and
loyalty and doing the rightthing.
Not saying I never made amistake or did anything wrong,
but by and large, I tried to dothe right thing.
And my sister was just more of,she wanted to be liked.
(05:37):
She wanted to be popular.
What people thought was cool.
And if that meant lying, if thatmeant breaking some rules,
Didn't matter.
She was down.
We were just different that way.
But we both did have the bond,the common bond that we wanted
to take care of RJ.
But even that was crazy.
(06:00):
We were kids.
You think about it.
We were teenagers, early teens,mid-teens.
We were out living our life,doing whatever we were doing,
minding our own business.
RJ was crazy.
incredibly energetic andoutgoing, still is to this day.
(06:21):
He would always make his way outof the house and go to a
neighbor's or just take off.
Even as a young two, three,four-year-old, five-year-old
boy, he just took off, did hisown thing.
Many times we would be lookingfor him, running around the
neighborhood, yelling, RJ, RJ.
(06:42):
Just looking for him.
Sometimes there were some scarytimes where we really could not
find him for a while.
And my mom would be crying,tears running down her face.
And then, of course, we wouldeventually find him.
But do you think that would stopthat from happening again?
No, of course not.
(07:03):
It would continue to happenthroughout my whole childhood.
My family just...
didn't have it together.
My uncles were alcoholics.
My stepdad was an alcoholic.
Everyone smoked weed, used drugsas well that I just wasn't a
(07:24):
part of.
And my mom was in that realmtoo.
She definitely did drugs,smoked, did those kinds of
things that took her away fromdaily life and being sharp and
Being the kind of mother sheneeded to be to take care of her
kids, she was just there makingsure we had a roof over our
(07:49):
head.
But there were many times thatwasn't true.
I remember coming home fromschool, being hungry.
I ate a lot of cereal growingup, but we just had times where
there literally was nothing toeat in the house, at least
nothing prepared that I, ateenage boy, could make and I
(08:11):
would go get a potato and peel apotato and eat a potato.
Those memories are real.
Those are real in my mind that Isurvived off of a raw white
potato that I would put salt onand eat.
(08:31):
That was my life.
That was my normal.
I didn't know it was But I didknow that it didn't feel good to
be hungry.
It didn't feel good to have aweek right after we got food
stamps to feel good and eatwell.
(08:52):
And then know, oh crap, whenthis food runs out, we're not
going to have any more untilfood stamps come again.
And we would be hungry.
There were days where...
The only real meal that I hadwas my free lunch that I got at
school for being poor because wecould not afford for me to buy
(09:19):
lunches.
So I got them for free,thankfully, or who knows how
that would have went.
Just other dimensions of mychildhood.
I loved Christmas, still loveChristmas to this day.
It is my favorite holiday.
And the reason being is becausewhen you're poor, you don't have
(09:41):
a lot to eat.
You definitely don't get thingsunless it's your birthday or
Christmas.
At least I didn't get to just goin a grocery store and say, I
want this or go to the mall andsay, I want this.
That stuff just didn't happen.
Now you have online shopping.
If that would have existed backthen, I still wouldn't have been
(10:06):
able to be like, oh, I saw thisthing online.
The thing I wanted, my mom wouldsay, you'll have to get a job
and buy it.
Ironically, a lot of the reasonwe were in the place we were in
is because my mom didn't workmost of my childhood.
She did have a period of timewhere she was an assistant at
(10:31):
the doctor's office and But Idon't remember how long that
lasted.
And it certainly wasn't a greatmeans of income because I didn't
feel it significantlycontributing to our life.
Another thing that really burnedme up was my sister and I were
always told we were not allowedin my mom and Ricky's bedroom to
(10:54):
stay out.
And I never understood why.
You know, my mom would alwayssay, oh, Ricky doesn't want you
in there.
My mom did that a lot.
She would tell us we couldn't dothings, and when we would ask
why, she would say, becauseRicky doesn't want you to do it.
I can't have a friend overbecause Ricky doesn't want your
friends here.
And who knows if that's eventrue.
(11:15):
A couple times when I got older,I asked Ricky about some of
these things, and he denied thathe did.
was saying those things he saidmy mom was just using him
because she couldn't stand upand say she didn't want us to do
it but we were going withoutfood I remember going upstairs
(11:40):
in her bedroom and opening hercloset one day against the rules
and there were just snacks upthere hostess cupcakes little
debbie's All these snacks in hercloset.
I remember being so angry andoffended by this.
(12:01):
Because here I am, a teenager.
And teenage boys are hungry.
We're growing.
Getting by a lot of days oncereal.
Just not enough food to maintainmy life and make me not feel
hungry.
And I was active too.
I played sports.
Whether it was with the schoolor after school with my friends.
(12:23):
I was always on the go playingsports and I was hungry and we
didn't have food for me to eat.
And then I go up there and Ifind hidden food in my mom and
stepdad's closet.
And I was so scared and afraidbecause I wasn't even supposed
(12:45):
to be in her room that Icouldn't even confront her about
it.
I certainly wasn't going to takeit and eat it.
Which hindsight being 2020, Iprobably could have eaten some
and they would have never known.
But it just hurt me and itoffended me.
And I couldn't believe thiswoman who was supposed to be
(13:07):
taking care of me was letting mesuffer while they were having
good stuff.
I wasn't allowed to have sodasgrowing up.
Literally my life was milk.
Kool-Aid or water.
The only things I was allowed tohave.
And the Kool-Aid was cheapbecause they were little packets
(13:29):
that you'd pour into water andadd sugar.
And milk was free from the foodstamps.
And obviously water was freeback then.
We just drank straight out ofthe sink.
My mom said it was for myhealth, but I just genuinely
don't believe that's true.
I believe it was because shejust didn't want to buy sodas.
(13:49):
She didn't want to pay the moneyfor soda.
So, yeah, that was a tough partof childhood was just being
hungry a lot.
I remember being hungry a lot.
When I graduated high school at17, I was 6'1 and 155 pounds.
(14:10):
It wasn't because I wanted tobe.
It was because that was as bigas I could get because I didn't
have...
the nourishment to be anybigger.
One of the things I loved aboutmy childhood was Christmas.
(14:31):
And it wasn't necessarilybecause of Christmas with my
mother.
It was because when I went to mygrandma's on Christmas, we would
walk into this trailer and itwould just be presence just 10
feet out from the tree wrappedaround the tree 10 feet out from
(14:51):
the tree and spread of thistable of food and candy and
desserts that mygreat-grandmother would cook she
was an amazing cook that didn'treally get passed on to anyone
sadly it was just a great timelike just Opening gifts, which
(15:13):
obviously kids love.
And my grandma made sure therewere plenty.
They probably weren't expensive,but who cares?
Your kid opening gifts and justbeing full on food.
Christmas is a wonderful memory.
One year, as an adult, I respectthe gesture.
(15:35):
One year, my mom and Ricky soldtheir truck.
the only means of transportationthey had to buy me and my sister
10 speeds for Christmas alongwith whatever else they did with
the money.
I doubt that was the only thingthat came out of a truck, but
that was certainly what wasrelayed to us.
(15:57):
Hey, you better take care ofthese 10 speeds because we sold
our truck for you to get these.
As an adult, I wouldn't do itmyself.
I wouldn't get rid of my onlyvehicle to make sure my kids had
some bicycles.
It just doesn't seem logical orpractical to me.
You have to have a car to getaround and make a living.
(16:21):
So the 10 speeds were nice, butI don't think they were worth
the cost.
When eventually one day I wouldlet a friend, Matt Orwick,
borrow my 10 speed.
This was a few years later.
And he was getting chased by thecops.
(16:41):
I don't know what he was doing,but the cops impounded my 10
speed.
They took it.
And the only way I could get itback was to go to the police
station and rat on my friend.
Take my 10 speed and say, it wasthis guy who was riding my 10
speed.
I wasn't smart enough to thinkof it.
(17:03):
I lost the 10 speed.
Didn't have it after that.
So when you consider all that,Was selling a truck worth that?
I don't know.
But I understand the gesture.
I just didn't have people in mylife who could give me guidance
or advice in those situations.
My mom knew that happened.
(17:24):
I told her that I let Mattborrow the 10 speed and it got
taken by the cops.
She didn't give me any guidance.
I wasn't going to get it fromRicky or my uncles.
So I lost it.
I didn't have it.
I was always searching for sometype of guidance and advice.
My uncle Jesse would sit next tome, crack open a beer and say,
(17:48):
don't ever drink, bad for you.
Meanwhile, he lived his lifedrunk.
His motto was, if I'm notworking, I'm drinking.
Uncle Russell, same way, justdrunk all the time.
And doing more drugs, I wasn'tpresent for it.
I only know what's been told tome.
I definitely know my parents, mymom, and Ricky were doing drugs
(18:12):
as well as the drinking and theweed smoking.
And I was just around all thisdysfunction.
It just made me feel like all Ican do is look at these people
and what they're doing and justrealize this isn't for me.
(18:34):
That's not the life for me.
I would...
use their bad behavior as amodel for the way I would behave
oppositely in good behavior,which is why I had this moral
high ground to me of, oh, I'malways going to be good, make
(18:56):
good decisions, do the rightthing, not put myself in a
position that these guys areputting themselves in.
Obviously, that's not even closeto reality, we all end up doing
things that we regret or makingbad decisions in a moment.
But that was what I was strivingfor based off that childhood and
(19:19):
that life.
Didn't have much love at home.
I'm not saying my mom andgrandma didn't love me because
they did.
I didn't live with my mamaw andI only saw her every so often.
And my mom was doing her thingmost of the time, but that left
me free to be and do whatever Iwanted.
(19:42):
So I played a lot of sports andlistened to a lot of music and I
watched a lot of TV andlistening to music and watching
TV.
I thought, oh, romance, love,that's the way to go in life.
That's something that will makeme happy.
(20:04):
I'm going to meet the right girland we're going to fall in love
and we're just going to livehappily ever after.
Did I know what that meant?
No.
Did I know what it takes to dothat?
No, obviously not.
I had no adult to look at andsay, oh, they're the couple of
(20:25):
my dreams.
I didn't have that in my life.
I just had an idea in my mind.
that love was going to changeeverything for me.
That me and the girl that Ilove, we would just be so happy
together and screw everythingelse.
Life was going to be good thatway.
But it didn't turn out that way.
(20:46):
And I will get through my lovelife in these episodes and what
happened and how that happened.
So living the life that I lived,I always, almost always, had a
smile, positive attitude, wasfriendly.
(21:08):
And some people just couldn'tfigure that out.
Even people in my own familycouldn't figure that out.
Why are you so happy all thetime?
Why are you so positive?
They would even make jokes thatI was adopted, that I wasn't
from that family becauseeveryone else was so miserable
or drowning their misery inalcohol and drugs.
(21:30):
And I just didn't let thatatmosphere get me down.
And a large reason for that wasI knew I had goals in life.
I knew I was going to make adifference in my own life.
Clearly, I wasn't going to beable to count on anyone else,
(21:53):
but that's okay because I wasgoing to go do it.
And I wanted to be a cop.
That was the first thing Irealized from that protective
nature I had developed overbeing unable to help my mother
and wanting to help my brother.
And I found out you can't be acop till you're 21.
(22:18):
Okay.
I'm going to join the militarythen.
Cause I'm not waiting till I'm21 to do something with my life.
I'm doing it immediately.
I'm doing it right away.
Talked to my uncles.
I had an uncle in the army andan uncle in the air force.
Another uncle that was in thearmy.
My uncle Jimmy was also in thearmy and I talked to all three
(22:39):
of them and all three of themsaid, join the air force.
Two uncles that were in thearmy, one in the air force.
They're all saying, join the airforce.
So that was my goal.
That's what I was going to do.
I'm going to graduate highschool.
I'm going to join the Air Force,become a cop, meet the woman of
my dreams, and live happily everafter.
(23:01):
And that is where I will leaveEpisode 2.
We will pick up where we leftoff from here on the next
episode.
Thanks for listening, and I willtalk to you soon.
Welcome back to episode two.
This is Brandon Held.
Life is crazy.
And today I'm going to pick upwhere I left off with the end of
episode one and the birth of mybrother.
What a huge impact that had onme and how to live my life.
(00:25):
Before I was just a kid goingthrough life, not giving it much
thought.
And just living day to day.
When my brother was born, itchanged everything.
It gave me a sense ofresponsibility.
It gave me a little bit moresense of a maturity for my age.
(00:47):
Obviously, I had a long way togo in that department.
And just protectiveness.
I already had a bit of aprotective nature for my mother
and what my mother was goingthrough.
But now I had these feelings andmore for my little brother.
He was brought into this life,this family that, frankly,
(01:15):
outside of my grandmother, wasnot anything to aspire to be
like.
I often make the joke, I grew upon the How Not To book.
And there's a lot of truth tothat.
My grandmother, who I love verymuch, Mamaw, showed me a lot of
(01:35):
love.
She stepped up and did thingswith me and my sister, things my
mother didn't do.
She took us out to eat twoplaces, Cedar Point, hotels.
She did things with us that madeus feel loved and like we were
part of a family.
(01:57):
My mother just didn't do thosethings.
Maybe it's because we were poorand just making ends meet were
part of the problem.
She just didn't have anythingextra to throw around.
We were on food stamps.
We lived a life where we wouldget our food stamps at the
(02:17):
beginning of the month.
I can't remember if it was onceor twice a month.
I remember a period of time, Ithink it was twice a month in
the beginning and the middle,and we would go to the store and
we would buy what we could withthe food stamps.
Typically, it was me or mysister walking several blocks to
(02:40):
the grocery store, taking thefood stamps, buying things, and
carrying the bags of grocerieshome.
It's not the only way.
I'm not saying my mom never wentto the grocery store, but she
sent us quite a bit.
Heck, we could even get sent tothe grocery store with a note
saying, my mom was giving uspermission to buy cigarettes for
(03:01):
her.
Times were so different backthen.
But yeah, just a lazy mom, apoor mom.
I loved her.
She spent hours of her life justlaying in bed in her bedroom.
I remember when he was home,because he worked on the
railroad, he would be goneMonday through Friday most of
the year, but there were timesin winter when he couldn't work
(03:25):
because of the weather, so hewould just be there all the
time.
I remember they would be layingin their beds upstairs in the
home, and my mom would call usto come upstairs and have us do
anything from...
taking her cup, getting her adrink to bring her food to
(03:48):
whatever the case was.
She just was an absent motherliving her own life while we
were trying to survive.
And so doing that, I felt thisneed to take care of this little
baby boy brother that I had.
And I know my sister did too.
(04:09):
My sister and I didn't have thegreatest relationship.
I think we had a decentrelationship until we hit the
teenage years.
I was a more reserved teenager.
I got along with everyone, butyou wouldn't put me in the
(04:30):
category of a jock or youwouldn't put me in with the band
geeks or you wouldn't put me inwith the nerds or whatever the
different categories are youwould lump people into.
I didn't fall into any of thosebecause I got along with
everybody, right?
And my sister was beautiful whenshe was young and my grandma
was, my mom was.
(04:51):
And so my sister was too.
She was part of the more quoteunquote popular crowd.
So she thought she was too coolfor her older brother.
And that's fine.
We were just different.
We were very different.
And so we got along okay, but weweren't like best friends or
(05:13):
anything.
One of the main things was thatI was very big on honesty and
loyalty and doing the rightthing.
Not saying I never made amistake or did anything wrong,
but by and large, I tried to dothe right thing.
And my sister was just more of,she wanted to be liked.
(05:37):
She wanted to be popular.
What people thought was cool.
And if that meant lying, if thatmeant breaking some rules,
Didn't matter.
She was down.
We were just different that way.
But we both did have the bond,the common bond that we wanted
to take care of RJ.
But even that was crazy.
(06:00):
We were kids.
You think about it.
We were teenagers, early teens,mid-teens.
We were out living our life,doing whatever we were doing,
minding our own business.
RJ was crazy.
incredibly energetic andoutgoing, still is to this day.
(06:21):
He would always make his way outof the house and go to a
neighbor's or just take off.
Even as a young two, three,four-year-old, five-year-old
boy, he just took off, did hisown thing.
Many times we would be lookingfor him, running around the
neighborhood, yelling, RJ, RJ.
(06:42):
Just looking for him.
Sometimes there were some scarytimes where we really could not
find him for a while.
And my mom would be crying,tears running down her face.
And then, of course, we wouldeventually find him.
But do you think that would stopthat from happening again?
No, of course not.
(07:03):
It would continue to happenthroughout my whole childhood.
My family just...
didn't have it together.
My uncles were alcoholics.
My stepdad was an alcoholic.
Everyone smoked weed, used drugsas well that I just wasn't a
(07:24):
part of.
And my mom was in that realmtoo.
She definitely did drugs,smoked, did those kinds of
things that took her away fromdaily life and being sharp and
Being the kind of mother sheneeded to be to take care of her
kids, she was just there makingsure we had a roof over our
(07:49):
head.
But there were many times thatwasn't true.
I remember coming home fromschool, being hungry.
I ate a lot of cereal growingup, but we just had times where
there literally was nothing toeat in the house, at least
nothing prepared that I, ateenage boy, could make and I
(08:11):
would go get a potato and peel apotato and eat a potato.
Those memories are real.
Those are real in my mind that Isurvived off of a raw white
potato that I would put salt onand eat.
(08:31):
That was my life.
That was my normal.
I didn't know it was But I didknow that it didn't feel good to
be hungry.
It didn't feel good to have aweek right after we got food
stamps to feel good and eatwell.
(08:52):
And then know, oh crap, whenthis food runs out, we're not
going to have any more untilfood stamps come again.
And we would be hungry.
There were days where...
The only real meal that I hadwas my free lunch that I got at
school for being poor because wecould not afford for me to buy
(09:19):
lunches.
So I got them for free,thankfully, or who knows how
that would have went.
Just other dimensions of mychildhood.
I loved Christmas, still loveChristmas to this day.
It is my favorite holiday.
And the reason being is becausewhen you're poor, you don't have
(09:41):
a lot to eat.
You definitely don't get thingsunless it's your birthday or
Christmas.
At least I didn't get to just goin a grocery store and say, I
want this or go to the mall andsay, I want this.
That stuff just didn't happen.
Now you have online shopping.
If that would have existed backthen, I still wouldn't have been
(10:06):
able to be like, oh, I saw thisthing online.
The thing I wanted, my mom wouldsay, you'll have to get a job
and buy it.
Ironically, a lot of the reasonwe were in the place we were in
is because my mom didn't workmost of my childhood.
She did have a period of timewhere she was an assistant at
(10:31):
the doctor's office and But Idon't remember how long that
lasted.
And it certainly wasn't a greatmeans of income because I didn't
feel it significantlycontributing to our life.
Another thing that really burnedme up was my sister and I were
always told we were not allowedin my mom and Ricky's bedroom to
(10:54):
stay out.
And I never understood why.
You know, my mom would alwayssay, oh, Ricky doesn't want you
in there.
My mom did that a lot.
She would tell us we couldn't dothings, and when we would ask
why, she would say, becauseRicky doesn't want you to do it.
I can't have a friend overbecause Ricky doesn't want your
friends here.
And who knows if that's eventrue.
(11:15):
A couple times when I got older,I asked Ricky about some of
these things, and he denied thathe did.
was saying those things he saidmy mom was just using him
because she couldn't stand upand say she didn't want us to do
it but we were going withoutfood I remember going upstairs
(11:40):
in her bedroom and opening hercloset one day against the rules
and there were just snacks upthere hostess cupcakes little
debbie's All these snacks in hercloset.
I remember being so angry andoffended by this.
(12:01):
Because here I am, a teenager.
And teenage boys are hungry.
We're growing.
Getting by a lot of days oncereal.
Just not enough food to maintainmy life and make me not feel
hungry.
And I was active too.
I played sports.
Whether it was with the schoolor after school with my friends.
(12:23):
I was always on the go playingsports and I was hungry and we
didn't have food for me to eat.
And then I go up there and Ifind hidden food in my mom and
stepdad's closet.
And I was so scared and afraidbecause I wasn't even supposed
(12:45):
to be in her room that Icouldn't even confront her about
it.
I certainly wasn't going to takeit and eat it.
Which hindsight being 2020, Iprobably could have eaten some
and they would have never known.
But it just hurt me and itoffended me.
And I couldn't believe thiswoman who was supposed to be
(13:07):
taking care of me was letting mesuffer while they were having
good stuff.
I wasn't allowed to have sodasgrowing up.
Literally my life was milk.
Kool-Aid or water.
The only things I was allowed tohave.
And the Kool-Aid was cheapbecause they were little packets
(13:29):
that you'd pour into water andadd sugar.
And milk was free from the foodstamps.
And obviously water was freeback then.
We just drank straight out ofthe sink.
My mom said it was for myhealth, but I just genuinely
don't believe that's true.
I believe it was because shejust didn't want to buy sodas.
(13:49):
She didn't want to pay the moneyfor soda.
So, yeah, that was a tough partof childhood was just being
hungry a lot.
I remember being hungry a lot.
When I graduated high school at17, I was 6'1 and 155 pounds.
(14:10):
It wasn't because I wanted tobe.
It was because that was as bigas I could get because I didn't
have...
the nourishment to be anybigger.
One of the things I loved aboutmy childhood was Christmas.
(14:31):
And it wasn't necessarilybecause of Christmas with my
mother.
It was because when I went to mygrandma's on Christmas, we would
walk into this trailer and itwould just be presence just 10
feet out from the tree wrappedaround the tree 10 feet out from
(14:51):
the tree and spread of thistable of food and candy and
desserts that mygreat-grandmother would cook she
was an amazing cook that didn'treally get passed on to anyone
sadly it was just a great timelike just Opening gifts, which
(15:13):
obviously kids love.
And my grandma made sure therewere plenty.
They probably weren't expensive,but who cares?
Your kid opening gifts and justbeing full on food.
Christmas is a wonderful memory.
One year, as an adult, I respectthe gesture.
(15:35):
One year, my mom and Ricky soldtheir truck.
the only means of transportationthey had to buy me and my sister
10 speeds for Christmas alongwith whatever else they did with
the money.
I doubt that was the only thingthat came out of a truck, but
that was certainly what wasrelayed to us.
(15:57):
Hey, you better take care ofthese 10 speeds because we sold
our truck for you to get these.
As an adult, I wouldn't do itmyself.
I wouldn't get rid of my onlyvehicle to make sure my kids had
some bicycles.
It just doesn't seem logical orpractical to me.
You have to have a car to getaround and make a living.
(16:21):
So the 10 speeds were nice, butI don't think they were worth
the cost.
When eventually one day I wouldlet a friend, Matt Orwick,
borrow my 10 speed.
This was a few years later.
And he was getting chased by thecops.
(16:41):
I don't know what he was doing,but the cops impounded my 10
speed.
They took it.
And the only way I could get itback was to go to the police
station and rat on my friend.
Take my 10 speed and say, it wasthis guy who was riding my 10
speed.
I wasn't smart enough to thinkof it.
(17:03):
I lost the 10 speed.
Didn't have it after that.
So when you consider all that,Was selling a truck worth that?
I don't know.
But I understand the gesture.
I just didn't have people in mylife who could give me guidance
or advice in those situations.
My mom knew that happened.
(17:24):
I told her that I let Mattborrow the 10 speed and it got
taken by the cops.
She didn't give me any guidance.
I wasn't going to get it fromRicky or my uncles.
So I lost it.
I didn't have it.
I was always searching for sometype of guidance and advice.
My uncle Jesse would sit next tome, crack open a beer and say,
(17:48):
don't ever drink, bad for you.
Meanwhile, he lived his lifedrunk.
His motto was, if I'm notworking, I'm drinking.
Uncle Russell, same way, justdrunk all the time.
And doing more drugs, I wasn'tpresent for it.
I only know what's been told tome.
I definitely know my parents, mymom, and Ricky were doing drugs
(18:12):
as well as the drinking and theweed smoking.
And I was just around all thisdysfunction.
It just made me feel like all Ican do is look at these people
and what they're doing and justrealize this isn't for me.
(18:34):
That's not the life for me.
I would...
use their bad behavior as amodel for the way I would behave
oppositely in good behavior,which is why I had this moral
high ground to me of, oh, I'malways going to be good, make
(18:56):
good decisions, do the rightthing, not put myself in a
position that these guys areputting themselves in.
Obviously, that's not even closeto reality, we all end up doing
things that we regret or makingbad decisions in a moment.
But that was what I was strivingfor based off that childhood and
(19:19):
that life.
Didn't have much love at home.
I'm not saying my mom andgrandma didn't love me because
they did.
I didn't live with my mamaw andI only saw her every so often.
And my mom was doing her thingmost of the time, but that left
me free to be and do whatever Iwanted.
(19:42):
So I played a lot of sports andlistened to a lot of music and I
watched a lot of TV andlistening to music and watching
TV.
I thought, oh, romance, love,that's the way to go in life.
That's something that will makeme happy.
(20:04):
I'm going to meet the right girland we're going to fall in love
and we're just going to livehappily ever after.
Did I know what that meant?
No.
Did I know what it takes to dothat?
No, obviously not.
I had no adult to look at andsay, oh, they're the couple of
(20:25):
my dreams.
I didn't have that in my life.
I just had an idea in my mind.
that love was going to changeeverything for me.
That me and the girl that Ilove, we would just be so happy
together and screw everythingelse.
Life was going to be good thatway.
But it didn't turn out that way.
(20:46):
And I will get through my lovelife in these episodes and what
happened and how that happened.
So living the life that I lived,I always, almost always, had a
smile, positive attitude, wasfriendly.
(21:08):
And some people just couldn'tfigure that out.
Even people in my own familycouldn't figure that out.
Why are you so happy all thetime?
Why are you so positive?
They would even make jokes thatI was adopted, that I wasn't
from that family becauseeveryone else was so miserable
or drowning their misery inalcohol and drugs.
(21:30):
And I just didn't let thatatmosphere get me down.
And a large reason for that wasI knew I had goals in life.
I knew I was going to make adifference in my own life.
Clearly, I wasn't going to beable to count on anyone else,
(21:53):
but that's okay because I wasgoing to go do it.
And I wanted to be a cop.
That was the first thing Irealized from that protective
nature I had developed overbeing unable to help my mother
and wanting to help my brother.
And I found out you can't be acop till you're 21.
(22:18):
Okay.
I'm going to join the militarythen.
Cause I'm not waiting till I'm21 to do something with my life.
I'm doing it immediately.
I'm doing it right away.
Talked to my uncles.
I had an uncle in the army andan uncle in the air force.
Another uncle that was in thearmy.
My uncle Jimmy was also in thearmy and I talked to all three
(22:39):
of them and all three of themsaid, join the air force.
Two uncles that were in thearmy, one in the air force.
They're all saying, join the airforce.
So that was my goal.
That's what I was going to do.
I'm going to graduate highschool.
I'm going to join the Air Force,become a cop, meet the woman of
my dreams, and live happily everafter.
(23:01):
And that is where I will leaveEpisode 2.
We will pick up where we leftoff from here on the next
episode.
Thanks for listening, and I willtalk to you soon.
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