May 15, 2025 • 24 mins
"They were brother and sister and they were doing things they definitely should not have been doing."
This week's episode is all about the things we do when we should know better. Whether as children or adults, sometimes we do things that we know we shouldn't. Or maybe we don't know we shouldn't. How do you know the difference between right and wrong when you've been taught that the wrong things are okay your entire life?
The journey continues as we explore life after my mother's release from jail. When the system failed to recognize the dangers of returning me to her custody, we found ourselves starting over in one of the roughest parts of downtown.
The neighborhood itself was a microcosm of extreme urban poverty – chain-link fences, homeless people on doorsteps, and neighbors whose living conditions defied imagination. The family next door, perpetually dirty and living in hoard-like conditions, became my playmates in good and bad ways. These relationships crossed boundaries that, looking back, reveal how childhood trauma and neglect reshape a child's understanding of normal behavior.
When a neighborhood bully targeted my friend, my protective instinct manifested in shocking violence. Was this extreme reaction the product of undiagnosed anger issues, or simply the natural response of a child who'd learned that adults couldn't be relied upon to maintain safety?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey listeners, thanks so much for tuning back in this
week.
This is going to be a videoepisode If you're watching
somewhere with video, if not,you know, keep enjoying the
audio.
We're on episode nine now.
I think Kind of crazy.
As always, I want to thank allof you for being here.
I appreciate it so much.
Keep sending me that fan mail,find me on social media, send me
(00:20):
a message.
I just I love hearing from youguys.
I love hearing from you guys.
I love helping you out withyour own situations.
Recap the last episode.
You know I was sleeping in thecar while my mom and her
boyfriend were upstairs partyingand the cops got called.
They arrested them.
I had to go live with my dadfor a little bit and his psycho
girlfriend Wanda.
So let's just jump right intothis week's episode.
(00:42):
Let's just jump right into thisweek's episode.
So we talked a lot about meliving with my dad and all of
the random things that he wastrying to get me to do, you know
, going to this coin auction andlike trying out with the Cub
Scouts and all this other stuff.
That just wasn't me and he wasreally trying to get me into
(01:02):
these things and I think I mighthave painted an unfair picture
of this a little bit, because Ireally described it as like him
forcing these things on me, andfor sure he was.
You know, these weren't thingsI was interested in.
He was trying to turn me intosomething that I wasn't, because
he wanted a more traditionalboy, I guess not like an
(01:24):
introverted nerd type kid, buthis priority was always his kids
being happy.
I guess and that probablysounds weird because he was so
absent and didn't, like, doanything with his kids.
Right, he was never a realfather, but at least later in
life, you know, he just wantedhis kids to be happy.
(01:44):
However, they were happy, likehe doesn't care that I'm a huge
nerd.
He's not like some big jock whohates nerds and things like
that.
Right, he's happy that I'mhappy.
But he was trying to expose meto all these things that I just
didn't care about and so I don'tknow it's um, you know there's
some things to think about therein terms of like, who he was,
(02:05):
who he is and what he wanted forhimself and for his kids, I
think.
But I think I also misspoke alittle bit on the last episode,
because I talked about going tothe Cub Scouts, meeting with the
baseballs and everything, andlike having never done anything
like that, but I remembered thatI was actually on a t-ball team
(02:29):
for a while when I was a kid.
I don't remember what age I was, it had to be younger than 10
but I was on some t-ball team inKentucky called the Orioles,
and I just remember you know acouple of think, and of course I
wasn't very good at it becauseI'm not a sports kind of guy,
but yeah, so I guess I did playa sport at one point in my life.
(02:52):
Don't really have any memoriesof it, though, but eventually it
was time to leave my dad's,because my mom was released from
jail at some point, along withher boyfriend Earl, and you know
why didn't my dad try to keepme?
Because his house wasdefinitely more stable than
anything I had ever experiencedbefore.
Of course, putting aside hispsychotic girlfriend and those
(03:15):
living conditions that Idefinitely didn't want to stay
in right.
It just kind of seems to melike he probably should have
tried to like fight for custodyof me, and it seems like it
probably would have been prettyeasy for him to get custody of
me, like my mom had just gone tojail for neglecting her child,
being high, being drunk Seemslike it probably could have
(03:37):
taken me and kept me away fromthose things and, you know,
thrown me into more things withhim selling drugs, doing drugs,
his girlfriend always being high.
But I probably would have beena little bit more stable if more
stressful.
But that's not what happened.
My mom got out of jail and Iwent right back to living with
her and, of course, going tojail.
She obviously lost her job ifshe had one at the time, who
(03:57):
knows and she lost whateverplace that we were living in at
the time.
Not even sure if we had a placeat that time, but the next place
I remember living with her andEarl was this tiny little house
on Smith Street.
And again, this is in themiddle of downtown, like really,
really rough part of downtown,probably rougher than anywhere I
(04:20):
had actually lived previously,which is kind of saying a lot.
So when we moved into thishouse it was again kind of like
that apartment that we had livedin before, where my uncle threw
up on my things.
It was just sort of likestraight front to back, you know
, all the rooms were in a row.
There were no side rooms oranything like that, but it was a
(04:41):
standalone house, from what Iremember, and we had a decent
sized backyard.
But again, it's in the middleof downtown Terrible area and,
as always, this place was filledwith roaches.
And I talked in one of theprevious episodes about how the
roaches get into all of yourelectronics and they just
destroy everything.
They leave, like these littleroach poops all over the place,
(05:02):
these tiny little brown flecks,and it's terrible.
But here we are again.
Roaches are back and I had aPlayStation still at this point
and I remember the roachesgetting into this thing and like
they just completely destroyedit, it completely stopped
working.
I feel like there had to be afew other places we lived in
between my mom getting out ofjail and this place, but I can't
(05:24):
really remember them at all.
So we're going here to SmithStreet.
One thing that I remember aboutus moving into this place was
that we needed, like all newstuff.
I'm assuming that when she wentto jail, like anything that we
had remaining in, whatever placewe might've been staying, had
gotten completely thrown out andwe had nothing left whatsoever.
So when we moved into thishouse, we went to a rental
(05:47):
company, you know, like arent-a-center or errands or one
of those places where you canrent to own like furniture and
things like that, except it'salways a terrible deal because
you end up paying two or threetimes more than what the item is
actually worth.
But you know, these placestarget poor people because, one,
(06:09):
they don't have the money tojust buy something outright.
Two, they probably don't havegood enough credit to put it on
a credit card or something likethat.
And back then credit cardsstill weren't huge, I think.
I mean maybe they were, and mymom just never had one because
she had no credit to speak of,but that wasn't really an option
for her.
I mean, actually, when I was akid, layaway at like Walmart and
(06:31):
Kmart and places like that wasstill an option.
If you don't know what that is,go look it up.
But we went to like arent-a-center and maybe my mom
had like just gotten a taxreturn or something because it
seemed like she was flush withcash at this point and, of
course, having the povertymindset that she did, that we
all did.
When you get cash, right, youneed to spend it immediately on
(06:52):
the things that you want, thethings that you don't have,
because that money could be gonethe next day and you don't know
when you're going to get anymore money.
There's no saving money insituations like this, you spend
it immediately.
Money there's no saving moneyin situations like this, you
spend it immediately.
So she had the cash.
We went to Rent-A-Center and werented a bunch of furniture and
stuff, but two main things thatI remember getting were a bunk
(07:14):
bed for me, which I feel like itwas every kid's dream back then
.
Like everyone wanted a bunk bed.
Of course it was just me, right?
I didn't have anyone sleepingin the bed with me, but having a
bunk bed was super cool.
It was just me, right?
I didn't have anyone sleepingin the bed with me, but having a
bunk bed was super cool.
And the other thing that we gotwas a computer for me, finally.
I had no idea how to use acomputer whatsoever, and when we
(07:35):
were in the rental placegetting this computer, the woman
who was selling us or rentingus this stuff behind the counter
she was like I guess she had toput in a ticket to get this
computer set up with IT peopleor something, I'm not sure.
And so she was like asking whatI wanted my Windows username to
(07:56):
be, and like I had no idea whatthis even meant really.
And this was maybe this was theend of 2000, probably.
But she was like, oh you know,do you like Pokemon and stuff
like that?
I don't think she like phrasedit that way, or maybe she just
asked my mom what I liked andthat was the answer.
But she ended up making myusername on this computer
PokenMan2000.
(08:17):
What's that?
That's nothing.
Those are just letters you puttogether, woman, like do you
have kids?
Or I don't know.
But my username on thiscomputer was pokenman2000.
And she also set up thiscomputer somehow to be internet
capable, get on the internet.
I'm not sure what she did.
I was too young to reallyunderstand back then.
(08:38):
But of course this was stillback in the days of AOL.
And you know, you had like thedisks that you would put into
your computer and you'd havelike X amount of hours of free
internet before you had to startpaying for it.
And then you needed like acredit card or something.
And again I said we didn't havea credit card, we didn't have
any form of payment for that, soyou couldn't even do like the
free trial and like I had noidea how to set this up, and so
(09:02):
I was like just messing with thesettings on the computer, like
trying to figure out how to getinternet to this computer, to
the house.
And of course I never figuredit out because the company
wasn't providing internet to thehouse, but I didn't know how
that worked at the time.
So like I had this computer andit just kind of sat there
gathering roach shit because Ididn't know how to use it, I had
nothing to use it for.
(09:22):
But we lived in this small houseon Smith Street and I know I
keep saying it was a roughneighborhood.
But I just I need you tounderstand this was a rough
neighborhood.
You know we're talking likechain link fences everywhere.
There were homeless people likeout front of the house sleeping
there, and this neighborhoodwas actually primarily Hispanic.
(09:45):
There were a lot of whitepeople there.
There were actually no blackpeople in this neighborhood that
I can remember.
So just white people andHispanic people and obviously
just extreme poverty everywhere.
And so there were neighborsnext door.
The house right next door toours was this white family and
they were for sure from thecountry.
(10:06):
The mother was illiterate, Idon't know about the father.
They were obviously very poor.
They had, I think, four kids.
One of them was an adult, twoof them were around my age at
the time, and then there was oneboy who was a few years younger
and so, like I would play withthe three that were, you know,
younger.
I didn't play with the adultkid, obviously, I played with
(10:27):
the other three.
It was one girl and two boysand so I'd play with them all
the time because they were nextdoor neighbors and the mom, like
had this huge fixation, I think, with Chuck Norris, you know,
walker Texas Ranger, and at somepoint, like we had gone to a
pawn shop and my mom had boughtme this little portable TV.
(10:48):
You know it had like a batterypack or something in it and it
was like a tiny black and whiteTV you could carry with you and
like pick up, you know, antennachannels, because that's what
you had back then, right, and Iremember going in the car with
the parents of the family nextdoor and my mom was there and
like all the mom from next doorcared about was like could I get
(11:10):
Walker Texas Ranger on thislittle TV so she could watch it
in the car?
It was, I don't know it wasfunny.
She was quirky, that wholefamily was quirky.
In trying to help you picturethis family, I just want you to
think of like a stereotypicalcountry redneck incestuous
family, country redneckincestuous family, and then
(11:34):
you'll probably have a prettygood picture of both what this
family looked like and how theyacted.
I was friends with the kids,like I said, the three younger
ones the girl was the oldest ofthe three and I think she was
like my exact age.
Her younger brother was like ayear-ish younger and then the
youngest one, like I said, was afew years younger than that and
I was around 10 or 11 at thistime, probably like 11.
(11:54):
The kids and the parents werealways dirty, like they didn't
shower or wash at all ever.
I mean they were always cakedin dirt and this was the first
time I had ever reallyexperienced that specific part
of poverty.
You know I feel like I've runthe gamut of all these poverty
(12:15):
experiences, but like havingpeople with literal dirt caked
on them was a new one for me,and I mean like you could just
see it on their skin.
You know it was like they werewhite.
I mean they were like pasty,pale white.
They didn't have any sun andyou know you've got this brown
(12:37):
dirt all over them.
It was gross.
I didn't care about thatbecause, like I was an 11 year
old boy, I was probably coveredin dirt a lot of the time too,
but I mean they never washed, itwas just always all over them.
It was so gross.
And their house, of course,like the parents, were hoarders.
There was stuff all over thehouse.
You, of course, like theparents, were hoarders, there
was stuff all over the house.
You couldn't walk through thishouse, stuff everywhere.
Yeah, it was just a badsituation for these kids.
(13:02):
The middle-aged boy who I wasfriends with, you know, like I
said, he was about a year ishyounger than me and there was
like a really shitty park downthe street, from the house to
like two doors down or something, and you know, this place was
like surrounded a chain-linkfence, I think it had a swing
set and like maybe a slide, Idon't know.
It was pretty shitty, butwhatever, it was a park, we
could go to it and we would godown there and play.
And there was this other kid inthe neighborhood and I think he
(13:22):
was maybe a year or two youngerthan I was, but he was a bully
for sure.
Again, extreme poverty.
And he wasn't being raisedright, of course.
He was like the type of littleboy who always had his head
completely shaved and he wasrunning around in a white wife
beater all the time and so hewas always picking on the
neighborhood kids and so we wentto me and the other boy went to
(13:45):
the park one day and this bullyshows up and he starts picking
on my friend there and I'vealways been very protective of
my friends, even with like assmall and scared of everything
as I was.
He's picking on my friend andlike he wasn't even doing
anything crazy, he was just likebeing an annoying little kid
bully.
He was like calling my friendbutterfingers because he dropped
(14:08):
something, I guess, and it wasreally upsetting my friend in
the way that stupid things likethat upset little kids right.
And like I wasn't having it, Ihad had too much of this kid.
I didn't like bullies, eventhough I wasn't really bullied,
I just didn't like it.
I didn't want someone pickingon my friend.
So this kid's over here bullyingmy friend.
I go pick up this huge rock andwalk over to this bully.
(14:30):
I just smash him right in theface with this rock like huge
gash on his face.
He's bleeding everywhere.
He runs away home crying,screaming.
That was bad.
I fucked that kid's face up.
Yeah, I never heard from thatkid again and he didn't go
around bullying people and likelike I never heard from his
(14:50):
parents, like complaining aboutit, who even knows if he had
parents at home, I don't know,but that's the kind of stuff I
would do if someone was pickingon my friends or if someone
pissed me off, I don't know.
I probably had some angerissues that really needed to be
diagnosed and they never were.
But these kids would come overto my house and you know we
(15:11):
would play outside, run aroundroughhouse, who knows?
Just doing kid stuff and, ofcourse, them being in extreme
poverty and the things they hadprobably been exposed to and
things I had been exposed to.
You already know where this isgoing.
We're going into sex stuff.
I did a lot of stuff with thosethree, probably more than I had
done with other people in thepast, and again we were all like
(15:34):
around the same age.
The youngest one wasn't right,he was a few years younger.
I don't think he was everreally around for any of that.
But that was some really badstuff, because the brother and
sister definitely did a lot ofstuff together and, yeah, that's
, I don't even know what to sayabout that.
Right, you've got this brotherand sister doing sexual stuff
together and, yeah, that's, Idon't even know what to say
about that.
Right, you've got this brotherand sister doing sexual stuff
together and I'm there doingstuff with them because do I
(15:58):
know any better?
I'm 11 years old.
I probably knew better at thispoint, but was it just ingrained
in who I was by then?
Did I really think that it wasthat wrong?
Or did I just think that thiswas completely normal because I
had done it so many times beforeand seen it done so many times
before?
I don't know.
I was talking to someonerecently about this subject and
(16:21):
I feel like they were reallyharshly judging me for all this
stuff, because they were like,well, you know, when you were
younger, like six years old orso, like sure, you didn't know
any better.
But then, by the time you'relike 10 years old, you should
know better, and you know, Idon't know if I agree with them
or not, because I was still alittle kid.
I don't know.
That's a question for apsychologist somewhere to answer
(16:44):
.
But regardless, we did thesethings, they did those things.
I am quite certain they weredoing those things at their own
house.
They had their much olderbrother, who was an adult.
I'm sure he was doing thosethings to them as well.
So I don't know.
It's a whole fucked upsituation and I was there for it
.
We still had our cat.
At this point I told you we hadthat cat that we picked up on
(17:07):
the way to Bowling Green and westill had it.
We had it for its whole life,like I said.
And around this point we endedup picking up another cat
because, again, that's what poorpeople do they get more pets
that they can't afford to takecare of.
So we got another cat.
This one was just black andwhite, you know, a regular
street cat, and we had it for awhile at least.
(17:27):
Through living on Smith Street.
I remember one time we had likea bonfire going in the backyard
.
You know we were all justsitting out there and of course
the adults were drinking andgetting high, because getting
arrested for neglecting yourchild while you're high isn't
going to teach you a lesson.
What I'm fucking American Likeyou're not going to tell me what
to do, right, like thesefucking people.
(17:47):
So they're out there, we're allsitting around this fire.
It's it's a cold night had tobe like fall or winter and this
black and white cat that we hadcomes out there and gets like
too close to this fire and burnsall of its whiskers off.
Why did the cat get that closeto the fire?
I don't know, but it burned allof its whiskers off getting
close to this fire.
(18:08):
But you know where all of thisis going.
Of course we eventually gotkicked out of this place that we
were living because couldn'tpay the rent, I'm sure.
And of course, getting kickedout of this place meant that all
of those things we had rentedwent away as well, because I
imagine, like my mom, had paidthe initial deposit to rent
these things and then probablyhad never paid a single month to
(18:30):
continue renting them.
But all that stuff was gone mybed, the computer that I didn't
even know how to use, all of itwas gone.
It was time to move on.
At some point my aunt Gail hadmoved in down the street from us
in this neighborhood and shewas in like what would best be
described as a shotgun house,probably.
I mean, it was really reallysmall, and I think we went to
stay with her for a little bitafter we got kicked out.
(18:52):
I guess we're getting kind oftowards the end of this episode,
so I'll kind of just leave itoff talking about my aunt a
little bit, because I don'tthink I've really described her
too much.
She was older than my mom, likejust by a few years, and I think
I've said before that her andmy mom were like always together
.
They were really close.
It was a weird sort ofantagonistic sibling
(19:13):
relationship, I guess, but likemore so than I think regular
siblings get to relationship, Iguess, but like more so than I
think regular siblings get to,like they would be really close
for a few months and then, likesomething stupid would happen,
something that didn't actuallymatter, right, just something
that, like, poor people getupset about, right, someone said
the wrong thing, or they boughtpills and they didn't split
them up evenly, or like somestupid shit like that, right,
(19:35):
just something that doesn'tfucking matter.
And then they wouldn't talk formonths.
They would hate each other Like, oh my God, if you mentioned
the other one, that was a deathsentence, right, this was their
relationship my entire life Tothis day.
That's their same relationship.
I don't understand it, butthat's how they are.
For a while, when I was a kid,like for many years, my aunt was
(19:55):
a pharmacist, or like anassistant to a pharmacist, right
, she would work at, like thepharmacy in Walmart or Kmart,
you know places like that, and,as you can imagine, her and my
mom both being incrediblyaddicted to pills, this was
probably not the best occupationfor my aunt.
So she would work in thesepharmacies and, like she would
(20:18):
steal pills.
Of course, and it was easierright back in the 90s when she
worked in these places and inthe 80s when she also worked
there.
It's definitely not as easy todo that today, but she would
steal pills.
And then one time she somehowgot a hold of a prescription pad
from a doctor.
And you know this was back inthe day when, like, doctors had
their own like little.
And you know this was back inthe day when, like doctors had
(20:39):
their own, like little pads ofyou know, like you tear it off
and it's a prescription and youhand it out.
You know you didn't, theydidn't put it in the computer
and you go to a pharmacy andpick it up.
Right, you had to have thispiece of paper from the doctor.
You took that to the pharmacyand, like you know, it's just
kind of understood like yeah,the doctor prescribed this, so
cool, you can have it.
And so she got this pad ofpapers from this doctor and so I
(21:03):
mean it's like a blank check,right, she can write all the
prescriptions that she wants.
And her and my mom went crazywith this thing.
I mean, they were getting pillsleft and right, all the pills
you could want, no questionsasked.
But eventually questions wereasked because I guess she kept
going to the same pharmacy.
She wasn't mixing it up enoughand like trying to get opioids
(21:24):
right.
So someone called bullshit atsome point and I actually
remember being there when thishappened my mom, my aunt and I
were all in whatever store let'scall it Kmart and she was
writing this prescription.
She took it up to the pharmacyand she tried to get it filled
and they had caught on to her bythis point and it was like
(21:44):
taking way too long, and so herand my mom both knew that
something was wrong.
You know, they just got thisfeeling right.
You got this sixth sense forthe cops when you're doing these
sorts of things.
And so they both knew somethingwas going on, but they weren't
smart enough to like justfucking leave it alone.
Like my aunt went up stilltrying to get this prescription
(22:05):
filled even though it was takingso long, and she knew something
was going on and, of course,like the cops were waiting for
her and as soon as she went backup to the window to get her
pills, they arrested her.
And so, like there's the end ofher pharmacy career, those
years of training and like goodreputation and getting paid good
money to do this job, like allgone.
Yeah, luckily my mom didn't getarrested this time, but yeah,
(22:28):
my aunt was gone for a while andshe had a few kids and she was
actually raising one of hergrandkids because his father had
died when she was very young.
And like cool, now who's liketaking care of these kids now
that you're in jail?
For a while, my aunt also hadthis peculiarity where she would
(22:51):
only date Hispanic guys.
I don't know where that camefrom.
Like her ex-husband was white,but then after that she wouldn't
date anyone white, onlyHispanic guys, until she found
this boyfriend named Bobby, whowas white, and we're gonna talk
a lot about him, probably in thenext episode or two.
One other quirk about her, Iguess well too, like she had a
whole bunch of Barbie dolls fromwhen she was younger they were
probably super valuable and likeshe got rid of them at some
(23:12):
point, of course, because drugsand money, and she was super
obsessed with Elvis.
She had so much Elvismemorabilia wherever she went,
like she took it with her, justlike all these dolls and records
and pictures and just all thisElvis stuff.
So much of it it was crazy,yeah.
So that's a little bit about myaunt Gail.
You know she'll featuresometimes in the story, but now
(23:36):
you have some background on her.
But ending the episode, like Isaid, she lived down the street
from us in this neighborhood andwe got kicked out of our place
and we went to live with her fora while and that'll be a
recurring pattern pretty muchthroughout the rest of my
childhood.
But I think that's probablygood for this episode.
I got a new mic for this oneand I'm recording it with video
(23:56):
as well.
If you're watching it in video,obviously you can tell that I
appreciate you watching thevideo, and if you're just here
for the audio podcast, then Iappreciate you, as I always do.
I don't think I really have likean ending message or thoughts
about this episode.
You know this one was prettystraightforward, just kind of
(24:18):
like the next chapter after mymom got out of jail, and I kind
of feel like I didn't talk aboutthat specifically enough.
But I don't really know what tosay about that.
You know, that's just whathappened, like the system didn't
really care that I was goingback to live with her.
I don't know, I'll talk aboutthat some other time.
I think it's been enough forthis episode.
Thanks so much for tuning in,as always, and I really hope to
see you back next week.
Hey listeners, thanks so much for tuning back in this
week.
This is going to be a videoepisode If you're watching
somewhere with video, if not,you know, keep enjoying the
audio.
We're on episode nine now.
I think Kind of crazy.
As always, I want to thank allof you for being here.
I appreciate it so much.
Keep sending me that fan mail,find me on social media, send me
(00:20):
a message.
I just I love hearing from youguys.
I love hearing from you guys.
I love helping you out withyour own situations.
Recap the last episode.
You know I was sleeping in thecar while my mom and her
boyfriend were upstairs partyingand the cops got called.
They arrested them.
I had to go live with my dadfor a little bit and his psycho
girlfriend Wanda.
So let's just jump right intothis week's episode.
(00:42):
Let's just jump right into thisweek's episode.
So we talked a lot about meliving with my dad and all of
the random things that he wastrying to get me to do, you know
, going to this coin auction andlike trying out with the Cub
Scouts and all this other stuff.
That just wasn't me and he wasreally trying to get me into
(01:02):
these things and I think I mighthave painted an unfair picture
of this a little bit, because Ireally described it as like him
forcing these things on me, andfor sure he was.
You know, these weren't thingsI was interested in.
He was trying to turn me intosomething that I wasn't, because
he wanted a more traditionalboy, I guess not like an
(01:24):
introverted nerd type kid, buthis priority was always his kids
being happy.
I guess and that probablysounds weird because he was so
absent and didn't, like, doanything with his kids.
Right, he was never a realfather, but at least later in
life, you know, he just wantedhis kids to be happy.
(01:44):
However, they were happy, likehe doesn't care that I'm a huge
nerd.
He's not like some big jock whohates nerds and things like
that.
Right, he's happy that I'mhappy.
But he was trying to expose meto all these things that I just
didn't care about and so I don'tknow it's um, you know there's
some things to think about therein terms of like, who he was,
(02:05):
who he is and what he wanted forhimself and for his kids, I
think.
But I think I also misspoke alittle bit on the last episode,
because I talked about going tothe Cub Scouts, meeting with the
baseballs and everything, andlike having never done anything
like that, but I remembered thatI was actually on a t-ball team
(02:29):
for a while when I was a kid.
I don't remember what age I was, it had to be younger than 10
but I was on some t-ball team inKentucky called the Orioles,
and I just remember you know acouple of think, and of course I
wasn't very good at it becauseI'm not a sports kind of guy,
but yeah, so I guess I did playa sport at one point in my life.
(02:52):
Don't really have any memoriesof it, though, but eventually it
was time to leave my dad's,because my mom was released from
jail at some point, along withher boyfriend Earl, and you know
why didn't my dad try to keepme?
Because his house wasdefinitely more stable than
anything I had ever experiencedbefore.
Of course, putting aside hispsychotic girlfriend and those
(03:15):
living conditions that Idefinitely didn't want to stay
in right.
It just kind of seems to melike he probably should have
tried to like fight for custodyof me, and it seems like it
probably would have been prettyeasy for him to get custody of
me, like my mom had just gone tojail for neglecting her child,
being high, being drunk Seemslike it probably could have
(03:37):
taken me and kept me away fromthose things and, you know,
thrown me into more things withhim selling drugs, doing drugs,
his girlfriend always being high.
But I probably would have beena little bit more stable if more
stressful.
But that's not what happened.
My mom got out of jail and Iwent right back to living with
her and, of course, going tojail.
She obviously lost her job ifshe had one at the time, who
(03:57):
knows and she lost whateverplace that we were living in at
the time.
Not even sure if we had a placeat that time, but the next place
I remember living with her andEarl was this tiny little house
on Smith Street.
And again, this is in themiddle of downtown, like really,
really rough part of downtown,probably rougher than anywhere I
(04:20):
had actually lived previously,which is kind of saying a lot.
So when we moved into thishouse it was again kind of like
that apartment that we had livedin before, where my uncle threw
up on my things.
It was just sort of likestraight front to back, you know
, all the rooms were in a row.
There were no side rooms oranything like that, but it was a
(04:41):
standalone house, from what Iremember, and we had a decent
sized backyard.
But again, it's in the middleof downtown Terrible area and,
as always, this place was filledwith roaches.
And I talked in one of theprevious episodes about how the
roaches get into all of yourelectronics and they just
destroy everything.
They leave, like these littleroach poops all over the place,
(05:02):
these tiny little brown flecks,and it's terrible.
But here we are again.
Roaches are back and I had aPlayStation still at this point
and I remember the roachesgetting into this thing and like
they just completely destroyedit, it completely stopped
working.
I feel like there had to be afew other places we lived in
between my mom getting out ofjail and this place, but I can't
(05:24):
really remember them at all.
So we're going here to SmithStreet.
One thing that I remember aboutus moving into this place was
that we needed, like all newstuff.
I'm assuming that when she wentto jail, like anything that we
had remaining in, whatever placewe might've been staying, had
gotten completely thrown out andwe had nothing left whatsoever.
So when we moved into thishouse, we went to a rental
(05:47):
company, you know, like arent-a-center or errands or one
of those places where you canrent to own like furniture and
things like that, except it'salways a terrible deal because
you end up paying two or threetimes more than what the item is
actually worth.
But you know, these placestarget poor people because, one,
(06:09):
they don't have the money tojust buy something outright.
Two, they probably don't havegood enough credit to put it on
a credit card or something likethat.
And back then credit cardsstill weren't huge, I think.
I mean maybe they were, and mymom just never had one because
she had no credit to speak of,but that wasn't really an option
for her.
I mean, actually, when I was akid, layaway at like Walmart and
(06:31):
Kmart and places like that wasstill an option.
If you don't know what that is,go look it up.
But we went to like arent-a-center and maybe my mom
had like just gotten a taxreturn or something because it
seemed like she was flush withcash at this point and, of
course, having the povertymindset that she did, that we
all did.
When you get cash, right, youneed to spend it immediately on
(06:52):
the things that you want, thethings that you don't have,
because that money could be gonethe next day and you don't know
when you're going to get anymore money.
There's no saving money insituations like this, you spend
it immediately.
Money there's no saving moneyin situations like this, you
spend it immediately.
So she had the cash.
We went to Rent-A-Center and werented a bunch of furniture and
stuff, but two main things thatI remember getting were a bunk
(07:14):
bed for me, which I feel like itwas every kid's dream back then
.
Like everyone wanted a bunk bed.
Of course it was just me, right?
I didn't have anyone sleepingin the bed with me, but having a
bunk bed was super cool.
It was just me, right?
I didn't have anyone sleepingin the bed with me, but having a
bunk bed was super cool.
And the other thing that we gotwas a computer for me, finally.
I had no idea how to use acomputer whatsoever, and when we
(07:35):
were in the rental placegetting this computer, the woman
who was selling us or rentingus this stuff behind the counter
she was like I guess she had toput in a ticket to get this
computer set up with IT peopleor something, I'm not sure.
And so she was like asking whatI wanted my Windows username to
(07:56):
be, and like I had no idea whatthis even meant really.
And this was maybe this was theend of 2000, probably.
But she was like, oh you know,do you like Pokemon and stuff
like that?
I don't think she like phrasedit that way, or maybe she just
asked my mom what I liked andthat was the answer.
But she ended up making myusername on this computer
PokenMan2000.
(08:17):
What's that?
That's nothing.
Those are just letters you puttogether, woman, like do you
have kids?
Or I don't know.
But my username on thiscomputer was pokenman2000.
And she also set up thiscomputer somehow to be internet
capable, get on the internet.
I'm not sure what she did.
I was too young to reallyunderstand back then.
(08:38):
But of course this was stillback in the days of AOL.
And you know, you had like thedisks that you would put into
your computer and you'd havelike X amount of hours of free
internet before you had to startpaying for it.
And then you needed like acredit card or something.
And again I said we didn't havea credit card, we didn't have
any form of payment for that, soyou couldn't even do like the
free trial and like I had noidea how to set this up, and so
(09:02):
I was like just messing with thesettings on the computer, like
trying to figure out how to getinternet to this computer, to
the house.
And of course I never figuredit out because the company
wasn't providing internet to thehouse, but I didn't know how
that worked at the time.
So like I had this computer andit just kind of sat there
gathering roach shit because Ididn't know how to use it, I had
nothing to use it for.
(09:22):
But we lived in this small houseon Smith Street and I know I
keep saying it was a roughneighborhood.
But I just I need you tounderstand this was a rough
neighborhood.
You know we're talking likechain link fences everywhere.
There were homeless people likeout front of the house sleeping
there, and this neighborhoodwas actually primarily Hispanic.
(09:45):
There were a lot of whitepeople there.
There were actually no blackpeople in this neighborhood that
I can remember.
So just white people andHispanic people and obviously
just extreme poverty everywhere.
And so there were neighborsnext door.
The house right next door toours was this white family and
they were for sure from thecountry.
(10:06):
The mother was illiterate, Idon't know about the father.
They were obviously very poor.
They had, I think, four kids.
One of them was an adult, twoof them were around my age at
the time, and then there was oneboy who was a few years younger
and so, like I would play withthe three that were, you know,
younger.
I didn't play with the adultkid, obviously, I played with
(10:27):
the other three.
It was one girl and two boysand so I'd play with them all
the time because they were nextdoor neighbors and the mom, like
had this huge fixation, I think, with Chuck Norris, you know,
walker Texas Ranger, and at somepoint, like we had gone to a
pawn shop and my mom had boughtme this little portable TV.
(10:48):
You know it had like a batterypack or something in it and it
was like a tiny black and whiteTV you could carry with you and
like pick up, you know, antennachannels, because that's what
you had back then, right, and Iremember going in the car with
the parents of the family nextdoor and my mom was there and
like all the mom from next doorcared about was like could I get
(11:10):
Walker Texas Ranger on thislittle TV so she could watch it
in the car?
It was, I don't know it wasfunny.
She was quirky, that wholefamily was quirky.
In trying to help you picturethis family, I just want you to
think of like a stereotypicalcountry redneck incestuous
family, country redneckincestuous family, and then
(11:34):
you'll probably have a prettygood picture of both what this
family looked like and how theyacted.
I was friends with the kids,like I said, the three younger
ones the girl was the oldest ofthe three and I think she was
like my exact age.
Her younger brother was like ayear-ish younger and then the
youngest one, like I said, was afew years younger than that and
I was around 10 or 11 at thistime, probably like 11.
(11:54):
The kids and the parents werealways dirty, like they didn't
shower or wash at all ever.
I mean they were always cakedin dirt and this was the first
time I had ever reallyexperienced that specific part
of poverty.
You know I feel like I've runthe gamut of all these poverty
(12:15):
experiences, but like havingpeople with literal dirt caked
on them was a new one for me,and I mean like you could just
see it on their skin.
You know it was like they werewhite.
I mean they were like pasty,pale white.
They didn't have any sun andyou know you've got this brown
(12:37):
dirt all over them.
It was gross.
I didn't care about thatbecause, like I was an 11 year
old boy, I was probably coveredin dirt a lot of the time too,
but I mean they never washed, itwas just always all over them.
It was so gross.
And their house, of course,like the parents, were hoarders.
There was stuff all over thehouse.
You, of course, like theparents, were hoarders, there
was stuff all over the house.
You couldn't walk through thishouse, stuff everywhere.
Yeah, it was just a badsituation for these kids.
(13:02):
The middle-aged boy who I wasfriends with, you know, like I
said, he was about a year ishyounger than me and there was
like a really shitty park downthe street, from the house to
like two doors down or something, and you know, this place was
like surrounded a chain-linkfence, I think it had a swing
set and like maybe a slide, Idon't know.
It was pretty shitty, butwhatever, it was a park, we
could go to it and we would godown there and play.
And there was this other kid inthe neighborhood and I think he
(13:22):
was maybe a year or two youngerthan I was, but he was a bully
for sure.
Again, extreme poverty.
And he wasn't being raisedright, of course.
He was like the type of littleboy who always had his head
completely shaved and he wasrunning around in a white wife
beater all the time and so hewas always picking on the
neighborhood kids and so we wentto me and the other boy went to
(13:45):
the park one day and this bullyshows up and he starts picking
on my friend there and I'vealways been very protective of
my friends, even with like assmall and scared of everything
as I was.
He's picking on my friend andlike he wasn't even doing
anything crazy, he was just likebeing an annoying little kid
bully.
He was like calling my friendbutterfingers because he dropped
(14:08):
something, I guess, and it wasreally upsetting my friend in
the way that stupid things likethat upset little kids right.
And like I wasn't having it, Ihad had too much of this kid.
I didn't like bullies, eventhough I wasn't really bullied,
I just didn't like it.
I didn't want someone pickingon my friend.
So this kid's over here bullyingmy friend.
I go pick up this huge rock andwalk over to this bully.
(14:30):
I just smash him right in theface with this rock like huge
gash on his face.
He's bleeding everywhere.
He runs away home crying,screaming.
That was bad.
I fucked that kid's face up.
Yeah, I never heard from thatkid again and he didn't go
around bullying people and likelike I never heard from his
(14:50):
parents, like complaining aboutit, who even knows if he had
parents at home, I don't know,but that's the kind of stuff I
would do if someone was pickingon my friends or if someone
pissed me off, I don't know.
I probably had some angerissues that really needed to be
diagnosed and they never were.
But these kids would come overto my house and you know we
(15:11):
would play outside, run aroundroughhouse, who knows?
Just doing kid stuff and, ofcourse, them being in extreme
poverty and the things they hadprobably been exposed to and
things I had been exposed to.
You already know where this isgoing.
We're going into sex stuff.
I did a lot of stuff with thosethree, probably more than I had
done with other people in thepast, and again we were all like
(15:34):
around the same age.
The youngest one wasn't right,he was a few years younger.
I don't think he was everreally around for any of that.
But that was some really badstuff, because the brother and
sister definitely did a lot ofstuff together and, yeah, that's
, I don't even know what to sayabout that.
Right, you've got this brotherand sister doing sexual stuff
together and, yeah, that's, Idon't even know what to say
about that.
Right, you've got this brotherand sister doing sexual stuff
together and I'm there doingstuff with them because do I
(15:58):
know any better?
I'm 11 years old.
I probably knew better at thispoint, but was it just ingrained
in who I was by then?
Did I really think that it wasthat wrong?
Or did I just think that thiswas completely normal because I
had done it so many times beforeand seen it done so many times
before?
I don't know.
I was talking to someonerecently about this subject and
(16:21):
I feel like they were reallyharshly judging me for all this
stuff, because they were like,well, you know, when you were
younger, like six years old orso, like sure, you didn't know
any better.
But then, by the time you'relike 10 years old, you should
know better, and you know, Idon't know if I agree with them
or not, because I was still alittle kid.
I don't know.
That's a question for apsychologist somewhere to answer
(16:44):
.
But regardless, we did thesethings, they did those things.
I am quite certain they weredoing those things at their own
house.
They had their much olderbrother, who was an adult.
I'm sure he was doing thosethings to them as well.
So I don't know.
It's a whole fucked upsituation and I was there for it
.
We still had our cat.
At this point I told you we hadthat cat that we picked up on
(17:07):
the way to Bowling Green and westill had it.
We had it for its whole life,like I said.
And around this point we endedup picking up another cat
because, again, that's what poorpeople do they get more pets
that they can't afford to takecare of.
So we got another cat.
This one was just black andwhite, you know, a regular
street cat, and we had it for awhile at least.
(17:27):
Through living on Smith Street.
I remember one time we had likea bonfire going in the backyard
.
You know we were all justsitting out there and of course
the adults were drinking andgetting high, because getting
arrested for neglecting yourchild while you're high isn't
going to teach you a lesson.
What I'm fucking American Likeyou're not going to tell me what
to do, right, like thesefucking people.
(17:47):
So they're out there, we're allsitting around this fire.
It's it's a cold night had tobe like fall or winter and this
black and white cat that we hadcomes out there and gets like
too close to this fire and burnsall of its whiskers off.
Why did the cat get that closeto the fire?
I don't know, but it burned allof its whiskers off getting
close to this fire.
(18:08):
But you know where all of thisis going.
Of course we eventually gotkicked out of this place that we
were living because couldn'tpay the rent, I'm sure.
And of course, getting kickedout of this place meant that all
of those things we had rentedwent away as well, because I
imagine, like my mom, had paidthe initial deposit to rent
these things and then probablyhad never paid a single month to
(18:30):
continue renting them.
But all that stuff was gone mybed, the computer that I didn't
even know how to use, all of itwas gone.
It was time to move on.
At some point my aunt Gail hadmoved in down the street from us
in this neighborhood and shewas in like what would best be
described as a shotgun house,probably.
I mean, it was really reallysmall, and I think we went to
stay with her for a little bitafter we got kicked out.
(18:52):
I guess we're getting kind oftowards the end of this episode,
so I'll kind of just leave itoff talking about my aunt a
little bit, because I don'tthink I've really described her
too much.
She was older than my mom, likejust by a few years, and I think
I've said before that her andmy mom were like always together
.
They were really close.
It was a weird sort ofantagonistic sibling
(19:13):
relationship, I guess, but likemore so than I think regular
siblings get to relationship, Iguess, but like more so than I
think regular siblings get to,like they would be really close
for a few months and then, likesomething stupid would happen,
something that didn't actuallymatter, right, just something
that, like, poor people getupset about, right, someone said
the wrong thing, or they boughtpills and they didn't split
them up evenly, or like somestupid shit like that, right,
(19:35):
just something that doesn'tfucking matter.
And then they wouldn't talk formonths.
They would hate each other Like, oh my God, if you mentioned
the other one, that was a deathsentence, right, this was their
relationship my entire life Tothis day.
That's their same relationship.
I don't understand it, butthat's how they are.
For a while, when I was a kid,like for many years, my aunt was
(19:55):
a pharmacist, or like anassistant to a pharmacist, right
, she would work at, like thepharmacy in Walmart or Kmart,
you know places like that, and,as you can imagine, her and my
mom both being incrediblyaddicted to pills, this was
probably not the best occupationfor my aunt.
So she would work in thesepharmacies and, like she would
(20:18):
steal pills.
Of course, and it was easierright back in the 90s when she
worked in these places and inthe 80s when she also worked
there.
It's definitely not as easy todo that today, but she would
steal pills.
And then one time she somehowgot a hold of a prescription pad
from a doctor.
And you know this was back inthe day when, like, doctors had
their own like little.
And you know this was back inthe day when, like doctors had
(20:39):
their own, like little pads ofyou know, like you tear it off
and it's a prescription and youhand it out.
You know you didn't, theydidn't put it in the computer
and you go to a pharmacy andpick it up.
Right, you had to have thispiece of paper from the doctor.
You took that to the pharmacyand, like you know, it's just
kind of understood like yeah,the doctor prescribed this, so
cool, you can have it.
And so she got this pad ofpapers from this doctor and so I
(21:03):
mean it's like a blank check,right, she can write all the
prescriptions that she wants.
And her and my mom went crazywith this thing.
I mean, they were getting pillsleft and right, all the pills
you could want, no questionsasked.
But eventually questions wereasked because I guess she kept
going to the same pharmacy.
She wasn't mixing it up enoughand like trying to get opioids
(21:24):
right.
So someone called bullshit atsome point and I actually
remember being there when thishappened my mom, my aunt and I
were all in whatever store let'scall it Kmart and she was
writing this prescription.
She took it up to the pharmacyand she tried to get it filled
and they had caught on to her bythis point and it was like
(21:44):
taking way too long, and so herand my mom both knew that
something was wrong.
You know, they just got thisfeeling right.
You got this sixth sense forthe cops when you're doing these
sorts of things.
And so they both knew somethingwas going on, but they weren't
smart enough to like justfucking leave it alone.
Like my aunt went up stilltrying to get this prescription
(22:05):
filled even though it was takingso long, and she knew something
was going on and, of course,like the cops were waiting for
her and as soon as she went backup to the window to get her
pills, they arrested her.
And so, like there's the end ofher pharmacy career, those
years of training and like goodreputation and getting paid good
money to do this job, like allgone.
Yeah, luckily my mom didn't getarrested this time, but yeah,
(22:28):
my aunt was gone for a while andshe had a few kids and she was
actually raising one of hergrandkids because his father had
died when she was very young.
And like cool, now who's liketaking care of these kids now
that you're in jail?
For a while, my aunt also hadthis peculiarity where she would
(22:51):
only date Hispanic guys.
I don't know where that camefrom.
Like her ex-husband was white,but then after that she wouldn't
date anyone white, onlyHispanic guys, until she found
this boyfriend named Bobby, whowas white, and we're gonna talk
a lot about him, probably in thenext episode or two.
One other quirk about her, Iguess well too, like she had a
whole bunch of Barbie dolls fromwhen she was younger they were
probably super valuable and likeshe got rid of them at some
(23:12):
point, of course, because drugsand money, and she was super
obsessed with Elvis.
She had so much Elvismemorabilia wherever she went,
like she took it with her, justlike all these dolls and records
and pictures and just all thisElvis stuff.
So much of it it was crazy,yeah.
So that's a little bit about myaunt Gail.
You know she'll featuresometimes in the story, but now
(23:36):
you have some background on her.
But ending the episode, like Isaid, she lived down the street
from us in this neighborhood andwe got kicked out of our place
and we went to live with her fora while and that'll be a
recurring pattern pretty muchthroughout the rest of my
childhood.
But I think that's probablygood for this episode.
I got a new mic for this oneand I'm recording it with video
(23:56):
as well.
If you're watching it in video,obviously you can tell that I
appreciate you watching thevideo, and if you're just here
for the audio podcast, then Iappreciate you, as I always do.
I don't think I really have likean ending message or thoughts
about this episode.
You know this one was prettystraightforward, just kind of
(24:18):
like the next chapter after mymom got out of jail, and I kind
of feel like I didn't talk aboutthat specifically enough.
But I don't really know what tosay about that.
You know, that's just whathappened, like the system didn't
really care that I was goingback to live with her.
I don't know, I'll talk aboutthat some other time.
I think it's been enough forthis episode.
Thanks so much for tuning in,as always, and I really hope to
see you back next week.
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