From Homeless to Mansion
You’ve seen the headlines. Now it’s time to hear the full, unfiltered story of Josh’s rise from homeless kid to NSA hacker.
From Homeless to Mansion is more than a podcast; it’s a raw, honest look at one man’s extraordinary journey of resilience, grit and reinvention.
Follow the story from the heart of opioid-ravaged Appalachia, where one kid battles the brutal realities of homelessness, generational addiction and daily survival.
This raw, powerful story reveals how Josh overcame seemingly impossible obstacles that no child should ever face, transforming into a headline-making hacker for the NSA before ultimately achieving all of his dreams.
Each episode uncovers layers of resilience, remarkable skill development and the mindset shifts that enabled this extraordinary transformation.
With new episodes released weekly and bonus episodes that dive deep into systemic poverty issues in our society, "From Homeless to Mansion" isn’t just a success story; it’s a masterclass in human potential that will motivate you to conquer your own obstacles and achieve your wildest dreams.
From Homeless to Mansion
E8 - The Guilty Child
What happens if the only constant in your chaotic world is abruptly removed... in handcuffs?
This is the night everything changed.
The adults were upstairs getting high, so it began with another night of trying to sleep in a car. The red and blue lights lit up the night to rescue a neglected kid. Did it really save me, though? Or did it just throw me from the frying pan to the fire?
I take you straight into that moment. Raw, real and unfiltered.
The terror of being woken up by police flashlights.
Watching my mom, my anchor, being arrested.
The guilt I carried, believing it was all my fault.
Moving in with a father I barely knew and his girlfriend, a woman whose violence and volatility created a new kind of danger.
But this isn’t just a story of trauma — it’s a story of survival and the silent scars of being the invisible kid no one checked in on.
My father's feeble attempts at normalcy, enrolling me in Cub Scouts and Taekwondo, only highlighted how different my life was from other children's. As an introverted, anxious child who'd never known stability, these activities became another source of alienation rather than belonging. Each awkward social interaction and failed attempt at fitting in served as a painful reminder that I existed in a world apart from my peers.
The most enduring pain, however, came from the burden of misplaced guilt. For years afterward, my mother continued to remind me that her arrest was my fault—if I hadn't been sleeping in that car, none of it would have happened. As a child, I accepted this blame without question. But this episode serves as a powerful reminder for anyone who has carried similar burdens: it was never your fault; children are not responsible for the failures of their caregivers.
If you've been made to feel guilty for situations that weren't your fault, I'd love to hear your story. Reach out with a message or comment so we can remind each other that the guilt many of us carry simply doesn't belong to us—and it's time to let it go.
Welcome back listeners. It's episode 8 of From Homeless to Mansion. Thanks so much for tuning back in. I say that every week. I need you guys to know that I appreciate it so much. I really do. It means the world to me every time I get another download, every time I get another, like a comment, anything. I love knowing that I'm reaching you guys. I love knowing that you identify with my story. It really makes this all worth it.
Speaker 1:So in this episode we going to take kind of a dark turn. I actually sent this to my marketing guy, alex, before I released it to get his thoughts on the episode and he listened to the entire episode and then he messaged me and said that episode changed my mood. I'm going to bed. So this is your warning that this is a pretty powerful episode. There's a lot of emotion in it. Yeah, just be prepared for what you're gonna hear.
Speaker 1:We left off in the last episode with just moving from place to place, all these roach infested horrible places you know, losing more of my stuff, getting evicted, lots of homelessness, sleeping in cars really, really rough period in my life and I think we left off with all the adults partying upstairs while I went downstairs to sleep in the car. I guess with that, let's really dive into this episode and prepare yourself for some darkness. It was the middle of the night. I was trying to sleep in the car because all the adults were getting high upstairs and the red and blue flashing lights had showed up. Now, to a 10-year-old kid, having the cops show up in the middle of the night is absolutely terrifying. I don't think anyone ever likes having the cops show up at any point, because it's usually a pretty scary experience. But a little kid, you're just trying to go to sleep because everyone's high, and the cops show up to tell you that something is wrong, like that's. I mean, that's kind of world shattering. Honestly, that's some special kind of trauma that's a little bit hard to get over.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously, the cops showed up because the neighbors from the last episode had called them to tell them that there's a kid sleeping in this car outside. Like you guys should probably do something about this, and you know the cops doing their job, they came to rescue this poor kid, see what the hell was going on. Why is this kid sleeping in the car by himself? So the cops were obviously 100% in the right ear. They did the right thing. They were doing their job. I don't fault them for that.
Speaker 1:But again, being a little kid and having this happen to you, when you don't think there's anything wrong with what you're doing, because, again, like I, had slept in the car all the time, that was, you know, kind of the normal thing that we did Sleeping in the car, in the motels, at friends' houses, wherever we could stay when we were homeless. Right, that was life, that was how we survived. I didn't see anything wrong with it. It was just another night and I was just trying to get some sleep. But the cops showed up because it was wrong. I wasn't being taken care of by my parents, obviously, and they showed up to fix the situation. But I was terrified.
Speaker 1:So the cops show up and they come and they shine their flashlights through the window and, like my heart's racing, I don't know what the hell is going on. Why are the cops here? Why are they shining their flashlights through the window of this car while I'm trying to sleep? What have I done wrong? Am I going to jail for something Like? I have no idea what's happening right now.
Speaker 1:So they knocked on the window and I don't think I had the doors locked because you know, this was like late 90s, 2000 or so, and we didn't really lock doors all that much back then, especially out in the country in Kentucky. You know, it's not one of those big city things where you have to have your doors locked all the time. So the doors were unlocked and they opened the doors, you know, asking what's going on. Kid, why are you sleeping in the backseat of the car? Is everything all right? And I still hadn't gone to sleep.
Speaker 1:So I'm, you know, a little grumpy at this point, like, yeah, I'm just trying to get some sleep. You know what's going on, like what's the problem here? And of course they're trying to figure out where my parents are, why I'm down here, why I'm alone. And uh, I'm sure they could hear the party going on upstairs and naturally they made their way up there. I think I stayed down in the car the entire time and they had an officer stay with me down there.
Speaker 1:So they go upstairs and see this party going on. Of course everyone's getting high, everyone's drunk. There are kids in there. I was the only kid who came outside. All the other kids are still up there like hanging out with each other, and you know, a little while later my mom and her boyfriend come out in handcuffs. I mean, this was classic child neglect, right? You've got your kids sleeping down in the car while you're upstairs partying. You're going to jail for that. Nine times out of 10, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1:So they bring them out in handcuffs, they bring them downstairs and even through the alcohol and the drugs this high that they have going on, I can tell that all the adults upstairs, because it wasn't just my mom and her boyfriend this high that they have going on. I can tell that all the adults upstairs, because it wasn't just my mom and her boyfriend, you know, it was all the adults they were partying with up there. They're getting high. They got drugs around all these kids, right? Everyone's getting arrested, everyone's going to jail for this. Because why are you doing this stuff around minors? You should know better. But all the adults are pissed and they're pissed at me, right, because I was the one sleeping in the car. And now they're all going to jail because I fucked up and I don't even think any of them really knew I was down in the car trying to go to sleep. Like they all seemed confused, like why were you down here in the car trying to go to sleep. You could have been sleeping upstairs, blah, blah, blah, like, of course, just trying to deflect blame from their shitty actions. And I'm the villain here, I'm the one who fucked up and now we all have to pay for your fuck up. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's just how it was. It was on their faces. The adults were saying stuff like that, like why did you do this? It's terrible, it's traumatizing.
Speaker 1:Cops middle of the night, 10 yearyear-old kid, my mom, the only like steady rock in my life, even though she was never like steady right. She was the only constant in my life and I've spoken before about being terrified of being taken away from her. And now here she is finally going to jail. The thing that I've always dreaded, that I always knew was coming, it's here and I can't do anything about it and it's my fault. I have caused my mother to be taken away from me because I made a stupid decision and was sleeping in this car Like what the hell is wrong with me, why did I do this and what's going to happen to me? I'm terrified at this point, as you can imagine.
Speaker 1:So the cops got a hold of my dad and he made his way to the scene of the crime. He got there a little while later. He lived like an hour away, so it took him some time to get there. Got there and you know he's just distraught, like oh my god, I can't believe this is going on. How could you? I'm gonna take you and bring you to my house and everything's gonna be okay. I'm gonna take you away from this world. Like yeah, okay, man, like where the hell have you been for the last 10 years of my life while this shit's been going on? You didn't care about taking me away from all this stuff any other time. Now suddenly you care. Whatever, no one's buying it. But I mean he's the other parent and it's his right to take me away. I mean, where else am I going to go? Stay right. I mean I've got some other relatives, but none of them are as reliable as my dad probably was, even with as unreliable as he was. But he's my other parent, going to stay with him. So he load me up in his truck and off to his house. We go Now.
Speaker 1:I don't think I'd ever been to the place that he was staying at that time before. At this time he was currently living in the Double Wide trailer way out in the country, I mean way, way out there in the country. So we get out there middle of the night and brings me into the house. Now I don't know if you've ever been in a double-wide, but some of them are nice, right they. I mean you can't really tell the difference between a regular house and a double-wide if the people do it right. So we go in here and you know it's just like a house, it's a single-story house, it's got a pretty small kitchen, it's got a living room, it's got like a den, I think, two bedrooms and the master bedroom slash bathroom. It was definitely the nicest place I had ever been in and at the time, right, I didn't know really what a trailer was, what a double wide was. So, like this was sort of like a palace to me. You know it sounds ridiculous, right, but it was this huge, nice place out in the country lots of land, there was a forest behind him and it was just peaceful and it was a nice place to me back then.
Speaker 1:But I didn't want to be there. I had never lived with my dad before, I had never stayed with him for any length of time. I was terrified my mom had just been taken away. I don't want to go live with him. But here I am living with him. I had to stay with him for I don't know.
Speaker 1:My memory tells me I didn't stay with him Like I can only really remember living with him for like a week, but I know my mom was locked up for longer than that because when she got arrested, right, she had warrants out for her arrest, not to mention the reason she got arrested for neglecting me and being high, possessing illegal drugs, right, things like that. So I know she had to be locked up for more than a week, but I can only really remember being with him for a short period of time. But that's what a kid's memory does to you. So I was probably with him for at least a month and things were pretty normal. I guess he made sure I was in school every day, because school was always something that was important to him. So he took me to school every day and I don't know Again, you know, none of the teachers at this point ever like checked in to see what the hell is going on with me. You know my mom is in jail. I'm living with someone else now and no one's checking in to see if I'm okay.
Speaker 1:So this is still fifth grade and you know it was kind of hell for me at that point, like my life was all over the place. I didn't know what was going to happen from day to day and I'd never lived with this guy and it was not a good time for me. And so I guess this is a good point to introduce my dad's girlfriend. I've kind of been avoiding this topic for this whole podcast so far, partially because it's a long topic that takes a lot of talking about and a lot of explaining, but also I guess it just really hasn't been a good time to talk about it. But now that I'm living with my dad and his girlfriend and her son, I guess it's a good time to introduce these people and his girlfriend and her son guess it's a good time to introduce these people.
Speaker 1:My dad had a girlfriend at this time named Wanda. Wanda was the bane of my existence for my entire childhood until I turned 18 and got the fuck away from there. Wanda was a drug addict. Of course, my dad sold drugs, so he naturally attracted drug addicts to him. Wanda wasn't some young 20-something who was attractive and looking to score and do whatever she needed to do to score.
Speaker 1:Wanda was around my dad's age, so she was in her 40s. She was not attractive by any means. She always had her hair shaved. She was completely addicted to crack cocaine and you could see the effects of it in her face, on her body. She was very much, you know, what we called a tomboy back then. There was no femininity to her at all and I don't say these things to judge her for lacking femininity. Right, like you can be a woman and not be feminine. It's cool. I'm just trying to paint a picture of this woman for you.
Speaker 1:She was probably abused severely as a young girl and I'm sure that shaped who she was as an adult. Her first marriage, her husband, was extremely abusive to her and I'm sure that also shaped who she became later on as an adult. So there was nothing feminine about her. And to a young boy who's just lost the only feminine figure in his life right, his mother that's kind of jarring. Wanda was also illiterate. She was in her 40s, like I said, and she could not read. She had two kids, one daughter, one son. The daughter was a lot older and, you know, honestly, I'm not even sure if I've ever actually met her daughter in real life. I actually remember my dad sleeping with Wanda's daughter at some point. You know, obviously, she was an adult, they're both adults but again, he's selling drugs, she's buying drugs and he's sleeping with her daughter. These are the kinds of interactions that just went on constantly and, yeah, they're all kinds of fucked up. But here we are. Welcome to my life. Her son, on the other hand, was a teenager at this point, I think, probably mid to late teens, so he was older than I was and he lived with my dad and wanda and he was into all the typical teenager things.
Speaker 1:But the most important thing that you need to know about wanda, she was a bad, mean person. She was angry all the time. When she was high, it was so much worse. She would start a fight for no reason, and when I say fight, I mean physical fight. She was punching people. She was dragging you to the ground, kicking, screaming, punching, aggressive. There was no slapping and hair pulling with this woman. If she could find a weapon to hit you with, she was going to hit you with a weapon. If she could kill you, she would kill you. This woman was intense in all the wrong ways and, as you can imagine, this was not good for a man who sold drugs to other women who received sexual favors in exchange for these drugs.
Speaker 1:Multiple times my dad and Wanda were both arrested for domestic violence because one of them would start a fight with the other and again it would be a real fistfight between these two. Now Wanda was usually the instigator, the aggressor in these situations, but that didn't really matter back in the 90s in Kentucky, right, it was on the man to not respond to that, to basically not defend himself and to just kind of let it happen. For the record, I've never known my dad to be a violent person. He has never been the kind for domestic abuse or anything like that. You know, these kinds of situations can drive even these peaceful people to violence and just this constant fighting when emotions are running so high and you have these personalities that are just always causing problems.
Speaker 1:But this woman had worked construction her entire life. She worked construction for my dad's company at the time and she was strong, she had muscles. This was a big, like butch-type woman. So if you were in a fight with her it was a real fight. You better be defending yourself for all that you have. And so back to these women that my dad would receive sexual favors in exchange for drugs. Wanda would inevitably find out about it and she would be high and then it would be so much worse. She would figure out where my dad was at, go to wherever this deal was happening and she would fight these women and these were much smaller, like more feminine women. They didn't want to fight, they just wanted to get high. And she would go into these people's houses and she would drag them outside by the hair and she would beat the shit out of them on their front lawn. She would get in the car and chase them. If they tried to run, she would run them off the road. She was trying to kill these people.
Speaker 1:And my dad stayed with this woman my entire childhood. From the time he left my mother when I was about a year old until well after I had left Kentucky for the military at 18, he was with this woman. It didn't matter what she did to me, what she did to my mom, what she did to anyone. He lived with this woman this entire time. They were together. I and my siblings and some other people really think that they got married at some point and just didn't tell anyone. I haven't been able to prove that. My dad won't admit it, but we're all fairly certain it happened and he was too ashamed to admit it Because nobody liked this woman.
Speaker 1:Nobody Nobody in the world liked this woman. She sent me a friend request on Facebook a couple of years ago Like what the hell are you doing, woman? I despise you. You made my childhood even more of a hellscape than it needed to be. I'm already in poverty, homeless, not eating, living with roaches. And here you come, like beating the shit out of people and being aggressive, yelling. Why the hell would I ever want to be friends with you? I don't know Wanda's gonna play a role in some of my stories in the future, but right now in my story I'm living with my dad in his double wide in the country with his girlfriend Wanda and her son Chris.
Speaker 1:So, as I said, my dad's place out here in the country was really nice to me back then as a kid. It was the nicest place I'd ever seen. His bathroom was pretty large to me at the time. He had a hot tub in it and like a standalone shower and the toilet was in its own separate closet in the bathroom. There was a skylight in the bathroom Like, oh my god, I'm in a mansion at this point, what the hell is happening. So you know, that was pretty cool to me as a kid. I felt like I was living in luxury, but I for sure was not enjoying where I was living because I was away from my mom.
Speaker 1:I was with this psycho, wanda, and her son wasn't too bad. He tried to take me under his wing and be kind of like an older brother to me. So he tried to like, take me under his wing and, you know, be kind of like an older brother to me. So that wasn't awful. He, of course, was showing me things that you probably shouldn't because, you know, again, he's like in his late teens and I'm 10 years old. So I remember he listened to Insane Clown Posse at the time and kind of got me to start listening to it a little bit, and to this day, yes, they're still one of my favorite bands. So I don't really care if you judge me for that, but that's a little fact about me. But so we listened to things like that. You know, he was always watching porn and he was okay at the time. You know, having Wanda as a mother had obviously done some damage to him. It had rubbed off on him in a lot of the wrong ways, but he was always really nice to me, so I appreciated that. And my dad tried to be a father to him, I think. But I mean, my dad couldn't even be a father to his own kids so he wasn't really going to be a father to this kid either. So he tried, I think, but his efforts were really ultimately in vain.
Speaker 1:My dad had a computer at this place and you know it was really the first computer I had kind of ever been on for any length of time. We had some computers at school but I hadn't used them extensively. And so he had a computer, he had the internet and you know I just I didn't do much on it, like I played some Solitaire probably, but it was cool. It was a um, I wonder, like the, uh, the Gateway PCs that they advertised with the cows back in the day. It was one of those. And you know again, this was this was kind of a first for me. This is a whole new world for me, like the computer, the internet. I didn't really know what the hell I was doing and of course, no one in the house knew what they were doing with a computer or the internet, so I don't think it really got much use, but it was there. It was a novelty.
Speaker 1:I had my own bedroom in this place with my own bed, although it was a waterbed and we didn't have sheets for it for some reason. So I was just kind of sleeping on the straight waterbed with a blanket over top of me, and if you've ever slept on a waterbed without sheets like those, things get pretty cold and again, as I've said a thousand times already, I was a very tiny kid. There was no meat on my bones. I got cold very easily and I still get cold very easily to this day. But sleeping on a waterbed with no sheets, no, that sucked. That sucked really bad. The other thing that kind of sucked about living with him was that Wanda would cook dinner, and so as an adult now you know I can appreciate that I finally had steady meals. I was eating every day. This was great. I had never really had that in my life.
Speaker 1:But being a 10-year-old kid like I couldn't fully appreciate it because the things she was cooking weren't things that I wanted to eat. And I was a picky 10-year-old kid, you know, like most kids are, so I was stubborn about eating these things, even though I finally had food to eat. One instance in particular I remember she made some meal with peas. It was the first time I'd ever eaten peas and they were disgusting. I hated peas. I hate peas. To this day. I'm never going to eat a pea. They're so gross to me.
Speaker 1:And so she had all these peas on the plate and she made me sit there until I finished this full plate of food and I couldn't eat that much. I'm a tiny little kid and she gives me this full plate of food that I don't want to eat and insists that I eat it all. I sat at that table for hours. I mean, I was there until bedtime, long after dinner was finished, long after everyone had left the table. I had to sit there and just stare at these peas that I wasn't going to eat, because she wouldn't let me get up. And of course, my dad let this happen because he doesn't know how to be a father, so he's letting this woman, who has no motherly instincts whatsoever, be in charge of me. So that kind of sucked, compared to all the other problems in my life. Obviously you know you're rolling your eyes at this one because it's dumb. It's not really your problem, but like it was serious to me back then. Obviously everything is life or death when you're a kid.
Speaker 1:Now, while I was living with my dad, he tried to get me involved in some things. He brought me to work with him on these construction sites and like I wasn't helping him work or anything, I was mostly just, you know, playing around on the dirt mounds. You know, just being a kid, being a boy, living with him was probably like one of the healthiest things that ever happened to me as a kid because, like I said, I was eating regularly, I was outside doing things and it was all around probably good. But the factors surrounding that situation my mom being in jail, like Wanda trying to fucking raise me, this psycho those things definitely made it not ideal for me. But he tried to get me involved in some things and one of those things was Cub Scouts.
Speaker 1:For anyone who doesn't know, cub Scouts are kind of like the junior version of Boy Scouts. You know, when you're too young for Boy Scouts, I guess they put you in Cub Scouts. I don't know. I did this for a very, very brief period of time, you know, measured in weeks, not years, and I didn't really enjoy it because, again, back then I was a super introverted kid. I didn't want anything to do with anyone, I just wanted to be left to myself. I didn't want to talk to people. I was super shy. You know, I was the kind of kid who was going to stand behind my parents when I was meeting new people because I don't want to talk to these new people.
Speaker 1:But he put me in Cub Scouts and it was like a branch of it that was pretty much with a lot of the kids I was already in elementary school with and I remember we had to like go to some sporting goods store and buy a uniform and buy like the little scouts handbook or whatever and I don't know. You know there's a bunch of stuff about God and stuff and I wasn't religious, I had never been to church, so I didn't know what the hell was going on. This is a foreign world to me and he would take me to these meetings and they would be in a church and they'd be talking about like all these things that I'd never been exposed to, you know, like civility and charity, helping people, things like that. You know, these weren't things that I had ever seen in my life. They definitely weren't values I had been raised with. Thanks to my mom. She didn't believe in any of this stuff. She believed in taking advantage of people however she could. So this was a brand new world to me and I hated it.
Speaker 1:All these kids came from these great childhoods, these great backgrounds or at least not terrible backgrounds like I had come from. You know, they could afford all these uniforms and all these things. Their dads were there with them to like, encourage them. They were there every week. They were out volunteering and helping the community and stuff like that. And I hated these kids. They had everything I never did and they didn't appreciate it. It was just another day to them. I hated these kids.
Speaker 1:I think the last time I ever went to one of these Cub Scout meetings it was, I don't know, some special day. We were going to be outside like playing baseball or throwing a baseball around. I had never done anything with sports in my life. That was not me. To this day, I'm not athletic at all. So that sure as hell wasn't me back then and we had to like bring a catcher's mitt and a baseball to this outside event of the church and I didn't know what the hell to expect. So I go to this place and I've got my mitt, I've got my baseball.
Speaker 1:I'm walking up with my dad and one of the guys, this much, much bigger kid named Will. He's already there and Will was a nice kid. I remember he was always trying to help people, like he was definitely a Boy Scout through and through. And so he's there, he's throwing a ball. He sees me come up and he was trying to be friendly, get me involved. So he throws a baseball towards me and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don't even know if I saw it coming, really, but this thing hits me straight in the diaphragm. I went down, I couldn't breathe. I thought I was dying. I'd literally just gotten out of the car, walked across the parking lot to this meetup. Baseball hits me, knocks the wind out of me. It was awful. I think I probably left soon after that and I don't think I ever went back.
Speaker 1:I know my dad was disappointed. You know he wanted, like a typical boy who's into sports and all this other stuff because that's what he was into. He was trying to be like a man's man. You know and my older brother certainly wasn't that he's a huge nerd. I'm a huge nerd and I don't think that's what my dad ever wanted. So he's trying to get me into all these other things. It didn't work out. Another thing he tried to get me into was martial arts. So he took me to these taekwondo classes for a while and I actually really enjoyed those. I enjoy learning how to fight and doing all that stuff.
Speaker 1:But again, I'm super introverted, like I'm scared of my own shadow, I'm terrified of being around all these other kids, and so I didn't really take to it very well and you know, I think I earned like whatever the first belt that you actually earn after having your white belt is. But that was it. You know, I stopped going to these classes. I had all the gear but I wasn't going anymore because it's it wasn't my thing, thing. Physical activities were not my thing and my dad just couldn't get that through his head. And I remember one graduation ceremony at this taekwondo place we had to, like you know we're celebrating. You know it's kind of like uh, graduation at a university where you throw your cap up in the air at the end, right. So we had to take off our belts and throw those up in the air, but I was like terrified of losing my belt among all the belts that these other kids had.
Speaker 1:I don't know, it was little things like that that always scared me when I was a kid and I didn't want to take part in them because, like I guess I was kind of anxious about them, I don't know. But so everyone else throws their belts up in the air and like I just kind of whip mine up into the air while I'm still holding on to it because I'm not letting go of that thing. What if I lose it? Oh my God, that's the end of the world. Yeah, so little things like that got to me as a kid. But aside from these physical things that my dad tried to get me into I think I'm jumping a little bit ahead of my story, but this seems like a good place to talk about it he would also try to get me into I don't really want to say intellectual things, but I guess that's the best way to put it Maybe like stuffy rich white people things is the best way to put it, my dad was always trying to fit in with people above his station, we'll say, because he was thoroughly middle class, lower middle class at this point.
Speaker 1:He made decent money from his construction business but he still sold drugs. Right, he's still through and through a drug dealer, but that's not where he wanted to be in life. He always felt like he was robbed from his true potential in life by all these women that he would date and would steal from him, and he refused to acknowledge his own part in this drama and in holding himself back in life. He always felt he should be more ahead than what he was. So he would always try to schmooze with these rich people, these people who were well ahead of him in society in life. In every way possible he would try to be a part of their group and he always prided himself on being able to fit in with these people. But I don't remember him ever fitting in with these people so much as just pretending to. You know, it's like when you see movies and there's all these rich people who are part of a group and then the outsider comes in trying to pretend like he's one of them and you know they just kind of humor him, but they're really mocking him behind his back, like it was that kind of situation.
Speaker 1:He wasn't one of them, as much as he wanted to be one of them, and he took me to a coin auction one time and he had me dress up in like whatever the nicest clothes he could find for me were, which of course, weren't that nice. I mean, I'm sure it was like jeans and tennis shoes, and maybe he got me a button-up shirt, who knows, but it wasn't nice clothes really. And so he went to this thing and he's dressed in his nicest clothes, which, again, aren't really anything, because he doesn't have nice clothes. He works construction and sells drugs. He's in jeans, he's in maybe a polo, probably like a button up shirt, no tie, for sure. He never had dress shoes. He always had this pair of cowboy boots that he wore everywhere and he thought that these were like the nicest things in the world and that's what he wore to dress up to these events, up to these events.
Speaker 1:And so we go to this event and it's a bunch of fucking rich white people. They're all dressed up in nice clothes. You know, some of them are wearing suits like ties. All these nice clothes we do not fucking fit in. And here he is dragging me to this event, trying to fit in with these rich white people because he wants to be one of them so desperately and he just can't get into it. And so he's just schmoozing with these rich people and he sits me down next to this kid who's there.
Speaker 1:I didn't have any fucking interest in collecting coins, could not have cared less. I was a kid. I wanted to play Pokemon, I wanted to play with Power Rangers, I wanted to go outside and roughhouse with people. As much of an introvert and not athletic person as I was, I was still into roughhousing with other boys. You know it was fun. I was a little boy in the country.
Speaker 1:And so he sits me down with this fucking coin auction next to this kid. I mean, this kid screamed nerd. And again, I'm a huge nerd. I read comic books, I play board games, I play video games. I'm not disparaging nerds here, but like, if you think of like a typical, like rich white kid who's into like stamp collecting and coin collecting and stuff like that's that's the kind of image that's happening here.
Speaker 1:You know, this kid had really thick glasses. He just looked kind of stuffy, I guess, like he was trying to be way older than he actually was. This was the kind of kid that if you can just imagine someone with like a pocket protector and maybe wearing like a suit with a bow tie and he's got like his socks pulled over his pants or something like that kid probably didn't actually look like that, but that's how I remember this kid in my head, and he was so into coin collecting. Now was he actually into coin collecting or had his rich dad just told him he needed to be into coin collecting, who knows? But here he is at this event and this kid is trying to talk to me about all these fucking coins. I'm like I don't care. Talk to me about Pokemon or something.
Speaker 1:This kid has had none of it. All he wanted to do was talk about coins. That kid probably grew up to be an investment banker or an insurance salesman or some shit like that, and he's probably loving his boring life that he bought with daddy's money. But I was not into it and he was so enthusiastic about these coins and like I just I don't know I tried to ignore him. My dad's over here, like trying to ask me which coins that are being auctioned that I'm interested in. Which ones do you want to buy? Son Like, oh, that one's really cool. Shut up, dad, you don't know shit about these coins. Why are you trying to get me into this? So he's trying to get me to buy all these coins and I think we ended up leaving with some ancient Roman coin, which, admittedly, was pretty cool. I wish I still had it to this day, but I can appreciate those things. Now, right, I couldn't appreciate those things as a 10 year old kid. This is a 10 year old kid, but I had this cool Roman coin for a long time until, you know, naturally, my mom eventually sold it because it was something that was worth a little bit of money. I mean, I think he paid like 50 bucks for it, probably, but you know it was worth a little bit of money. So, of course, she sold her for drugs, but that was one cool thing that happened.
Speaker 1:From that, all right, I have talked for a long time this episode. I feel like all I've really done is complained about my dad and the situation that I was in. But you know, this was a pretty pivotal moment in my life. It was all pretty traumatic and I hated every single second of it and I think it was really a turning point in my life where things were already pretty bad and this whole situation just made them go from bad to worse. You know, nothing was ever really the same after my mom got arrested.
Speaker 1:I talked about it a lot at the beginning of the episode, like everyone making me feel guilty for being the reason that they got arrested, and you know that stuck with me for a really long time, like even after they got out of jail later. They still made me feel really shitty about that, like it was my fault that they got arrested. If you had just not been sleeping in the car, this never would have happened. We wouldn't have gone to jail. Why did you have to do that? Like, take some fucking responsibility for your actions as adults, as parents, and maybe look at the situation you're putting these kids in. You got arrested for a reason. I didn't get arrested for doing something wrong because you guys are the ones who were doing something wrong, but I did carry that guilt for a long time as a kid and if you asked my mom today if you could still ask Earl if he were alive, I guarantee they would still be a little upset that they got arrested because I was sleeping in the car. I 100% guarantee they would still be a little upset that they got arrested because I was sleeping in the car. I 100% guarantee they would not take responsibility for their actions. But I was a kid. Of course I was going to feel guilt if my mom was basically telling me that I should feel guilty about this situation. I didn't know any better, and so I think that that is really kind of the message that I want to leave off on for this episode.
Speaker 1:Those of us who went through terrible situations in our childhood were usually made to feel guilty for them, like it was our fault that our parents were miserable, that they were going through this. You're such a terrible child. That's why I need to be drunk all the time Things like that. But you know, it never was. It was never our fault that our parents couldn't get their shit together and provide for us the way that they should have. It wasn't my fault that she got arrested for neglecting me, for being high instead of taking care of me, and to all these other kids out there, it's not your fault that your parents sucked, that they put you in these situations, that they shouldn't have that. They didn't care for you the way that they should have. It was never your fault. Have that. They didn't care for you the way that they should have. It was never your fault, and anyone who says otherwise is just trying to make themselves feel better, to redirect their guilt to someone else because they're incapable of addressing their own shortcomings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a good place to really end this episode. If you've ever had something like this happen to you, if someone's made you feel guilty for something that wasn't your fault because they were unable to accept blame themselves, I want to hear about it. Send me a message, drop a comment, get in contact with me somehow and let me know about this, and I'd love to read those in the next episode. I'd love to let people know that they're not alone out there, that we all went through some shit like this in childhood. You can let go of that guilt. You know. Maybe you're still a teenager listening to this, maybe you're an adult and you still haven't processed it, but you can let go of that. It's okay.
Speaker 1:As always, I want to thank every single one of you for tuning in every week. It means the world to me. I know I say it every time. I'm going to keep saying it because I want you guys to know how much I appreciate you Tune in next week for, hopefully, a little bit of a brighter episode. Probably not, but that's what you're here for. Right Is all the shitty parts of my life and trying to learn from them so you can hopefully heal your own trauma. Or maybe you're just for a good story, I don't know. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you next week.