S1 E12 - Life Skills Not Included

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Judy, wrapping up season one today on the podcast. Can you believe it?

SPEAKER_00 0:05

I can't remember laughing so hard and having all these memories of things that happened to us. And what's just insane is that that's just the tip of the iceberg.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Well, I think it's the perfect storm. We talked about growing up in Minot, North Dakota, folks the way they were with us, sheltered, not really kind of teaching us a lot in regards to getting us set up for life, how naive we kind of were because of that. So that's a lot of season one. Some of the stories, when we initially thought about doing this podcast, we were like, hmm, do we dare kind of tell some of these stories or talk about some of them? There's a little bit of that, but I think a lot of what we're talking about, Judy, is just fun, nostalgic stories from when we grew up. And again, the perfect storm, mine up, North Dakota. We're isolated from the rest of the country. Weather-wise, we have our unique weather. Technology obviously has changed dramatically. Kids growing up nowadays never, never get to experience the way we grew up, the way it was back in the 60s and 70s.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

One of the things that you said that's pretty spot on is our the sheltered life that we led. And not just because of where we were in North Dakota, there was like, I mean, two TV stations for news, one radio station. So you had all that. And then we had our parents. Our mom worked till like nine, 10 o'clock at night from nine in the morning, and our dad worked like four to midnight. So we we were unattended, we were sheltered, and we were also not allowed to do a lot of stuff for um the house.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Let's uh real quick look ahead to season two. We've talked a lot in season one about how mom and dad are, they're still that way. Mom and dad are still alive, mom's 91, dad's 86. Judy, I've got a crazy story where my daughters, and specifically Cassidy, banned from grandparents' house. Banned from mom and dad's house. Cassidy's six years old. What can a six-year-old possibly do to get the all the kids banned from the grandparents' house? Well, we're gonna touch on that in season two.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

I actually thought for a second you were just referring to our last Christmas because they still don't really like to have people over at their house. And I know you've mentioned before that they don't even holidays.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

That's how it was when we were growing up. It was just us. And we had relatives in town. We had grandma and grandpa that lived in Minot. We had relatives down in Bismarck. But our holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all the big holidays, you hear about the big family reunions and big family get-togethers with us? Nope, it was just us. So again, this whole sheltered thing that we're talking about and us being kind of naive played on every level.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Grandma and grandpa had their own place and no holidays at their house, too. So they were kind of similar. The only memory I have of grandpa is he had this Heine, which was like a crew cut. I love that name Heine. I I can't help it. I mean Heine. So anyway, but he had this bird that would kind of jump around the poop on his head. Poop on his head. The crew cut and be grandpa, you got there's what is that?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

And there's poop on your head.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

And I couldn't imagine a little bird pecking around on your head either, you know?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

So the birds were either in the cage enjoying life or they were out of the cage sitting on grandpa's head.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

In a later season, we'll we'll learn the new meaning of bird in the cage.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Hey, we've got a bird story from Mina. There's another thing we'll talk about for season two, the one-legged bird. We'll leave it at that. We talked about the folks, the chores, and not trusting us and stuff like that. And Judy, I don't know if you remember one of the things that they didn't trust us with. This is crazy. And I've got a quick story about it, is they didn't trust us with money. And I'm not talking about, you know, family money. I'm talking about our own money. When we got jobs at like Taco John's or we eventually started working, I remember mom and dad grabbing my paychecks and my money that I made and keeping it separate, almost giving me an allowance from the money that I earned. And at one point I even got a checkbook. And Judy, the checkbook got put up in the cupboard, and I wasn't allowed to really take it unless there was some kind of a need. And dad and mom kind of controlled that. Well, I got a little sneaky later on because a checkbook comes with multiple checks in it. And you can grab, Judy, you can grab a check from the bottom, rip it out, and unless somebody's looking through the whole checkbook, they're not even going to know that that's going on. Real quick, this also extended to a scenario where a buddy and I from high school thought we were going to be concert promoters. We actually put on a little show, senior year, final week of school, Silver Marshall Band was the name of the band out on the state fairgrounds. We named our company Rod Hartbender Productions. We're putting on a concert. You know, we have to get insurance, we have to get the venue, we have to hire law enforcement security, we have to do all this kind of stuff to make this happen. So we've got some money invested in this, and then we got to pay the band, Silver Marshall Band, a local band. So we've got kind of some money tied up in this. Well, as the folks and mom and dad are learning about me doing this, and they get on board with it and they're actually kind of cool about it. But at the last minute, dad decides he's gonna be the ticket taker at the concert. And dad didn't do anything bad, but just being looking out for Donnie made sure to kind of hold back a little bit of money to make sure that I didn't take a big loss on this concert. Kudos to mom and dad. I apologize to my friend that maybe got shorted uh a little bit on that deal 45 years ago. But again, mom and dad not trusting us with money, even to the point where we're out earning it, keeping it from us. The scenario where we're putting on a show, dad feels like, okay, and I'm sure that mom was kind of partly behind it as well. Make sure Donnie doesn't lose his shirt with this gig done, put a little bit of money on the side. And that's what they did. So at the end of the night or the next day or whatever, dad kind of slips me a couple hundred bucks and says, Hey, this is your profit from the show. And I was like, What? What? Where did that come from? And again, dad meant, well, I'm not throwing him under the bus. Love you, Dad, but that was kind of weird.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

One kind of cool memory is you worked, our sister worked, I worked, and every Friday night there was a $10 bill laying out for each of us, which I thought was very cool. And our cars were filled with gas. And that was kind of our allowance every week, which I thought was very generous considering it was on a cop's salary or whatever. One thing I do remember that they did do with money, and it wasn't anything weird. It was probably more my irresponsibility because we never had any conversations about money. But when I went from Bismarck to Grand Forks, dad gave me $500 for college because he saw my grades somehow came in the mail for my first two and a half years when I was in Bismarck. And he said, here's $500. Maybe you don't have to work. And I'm like, oh, cool. Because he did not pay for my college. I mean, nothing. So that was me and I had jobs or whatever. So $500, that was on a Friday. By Monday, I was applying for jobs because I was like, woo, I was out at the club. And then I had to get a job already on Monday because I went out because the totally new clubs, whatever. So you know what I mean? Every penny was gone on Monday.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

That allowance thing before we got jobs, that was a real thing. But later, your allowance, you know, I don't know where that came from, but I have a sneaking feeling that my allowance actually came from my pot of money. So I was somehow I wasn't getting really a lot of benefit out of this. I might have earned a couple hundred bucks at Taco John's that week, and then Friday night I get a $20 bill. It's like, what happened to the rest of my money?

SPEAKER_00 7:33

I want my money. Did you ever learn how to balance that checkbook? No, because I remember when I went to Bismarck, I overdrew like $300. And I was in so much trouble. You know, my mom, oh, dad had a stroke because you, you know what I mean, overdrew on your account or whatever. And I'm like, sorry, I didn't know they really do anything about that. Of course, I thought the police were there for my unpaid phone bill, too. So, you know, I'm like, shows you how naive I was.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Hey, again, we didn't know, and we were naive in regards to a lot of things growing up. And again, uh some of it was a trust thing. And I think you had mentioned at some point that necessarily it wasn't not trusting us as much as they liked what they had and didn't want us to ruin it. For me, Judy, it was I never got to mow the lawn. I think I can count on one hand how many times I went and mowed the lawn later, way later. But I think mom thought you always kind of referenced the crop circles, which you know was kind of funny. But what mom really thought was that I was gonna cut off my foot running, you know, the lawn mower, that I didn't know how to operate it. And I was gonna run over my own foot and cut it off. So it never got trusted to mow the lawn, never got trusted to do a lot of chores around the house. You and I kind of got off scot-free. Other than maybe shoveling a little bit of snow later in life, I did clean the pool. They trusted me to clean the pool until I Well, you almost f that up. Yeah, yeah. We talked about it in season one where I accidentally almost drained all the water out of the pool. But again, they kind of started trusting you with a few things. As far as setting us up for life, they really didn't. And one of the things, Judy, I like to talk about, and I talk about it to friends, is growing up, mom and dad, and again, it wasn't a mean thing, but mom and dad, when they went grocery shopping, never took us. Never took us to the grocery store. They always kind of that was their little alone time. And they would go to the grocery store. And, you know, a lot of times when you take kids to the grocery store, I know when I take my kids to the grocery store, as you're going down the aisle, they're like, I want that, and I want this and I want that. And maybe mom and dad kind of knew that we would be that way as well. That's why they didn't take us. Or maybe it was just because of the alone time that they wanted to have the hour or the half hour and and get some stuff. And then we were always surprised when they brought something home, zingers or or whatever. But Judy, this translates to later in life when I had to go to the grocery store on my own. I didn't know where anything was. I'd go into the grocery store and I was like, what? What is this place? And didn't realize. I mean, I knew maybe two or three little sections, and then that was kind of what I limited myself to buying when I moved to Minneapolis and I go to the grocery store and pick up some stuff for my apartment. And I just went into the grocery store and bought what I was kind of used to buying and didn't get into the whole plethora of what they had. And I'm kind of still almost in a way like that, where there's some aisles where I'm like, hmm, I've never been down that aisle.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Yeah, anything with the healthy stuff. I can't help it. When you were talking about the grocery store and early memories of the grocery store, the only thing I remember is actually you could smoke in the grocery store. Do you remember that stupid thing? What part of that was okay around all this food? You know what I mean? There's an ashtray at the end of every aisle. But you're right about not getting to do a lot of chores and the crop circles, I do think, was a lot of it. And I don't know if you did the original crop circles or they had somebody that they hired one time to do their lawn and they damaged it and then therefore nobody was trusted. I think for you, they were more worried that something was going to happen. For me, I never did you ever get to do laundry at home?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Never, ever, never got was not allowed to touch the washing machine, the dryer, the dishwasher.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

So I came home, I'm 20. I came home with my laundry. I came home from Grand Forks. I'm like, and my mom always is like, I'll do your laundry, which is really super nice. You know, again, you know, I know we sound like we were spoiled rotten, but you know, why didn't I get to do the laundry? So anyway, I'm like, I'm 20. I can do my own damn laundry. Anyway, I put my laundry in and I kind of forgot about it for the day. And then later that night, our dad is like, God, damn it, we don't have any hot water. And I'm like, what? And he's like, Yeah, we have no goddamn hot water. And I'm like, what happened? So I know why they wanted to do the laundry because there was something wrong with the washing machine. Wow. Where if you used hot water and didn't, I don't know, you had to turn some knob or whatever, but the water wouldn't shut off. So the water had run for like eight hours and flooded the whole basement. All because I had to say, hey, I want to do my own laundry, but it was to protect their stuff too, you know? So I didn't have that scaled. The one and only time that I did get to do laundry, which is my own personal chore, turned into a disaster.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

The folks are still like that because I went over there a couple of fast forwards recently. Again, mom and dad still alive, living in Colorado, and I offered to go over there and mow their lawn for obviously for free. I'm just gonna go up there once a week and mow their lawn. Well, guess how many times I mowed their lawn? One time. And then they again, I don't know if mom thought that, you know, I was gonna do something to the yard or if it's gonna cut off my foot. So they ended up hiring the next door neighbor to mow the lawn. And I was like, wow, now you're paying somebody to mow the lawn. I would have come up there and have did it, you know, once a week and helped you guys out and and that kind of thing. So they're still that way. Also, Judy, recently dad was in the hospital. I went up and stayed with mom for a couple of weeks. As a fully grown adult, going back staying with mom, a little bit bizarre. Well, I stayed there for two weeks because dad was in the hospital recovering. And during that two weeks, Judy, I was not allowed to touch the washer or dryer. Same kind of deal. And I had some laundry to do, and mom, 91 years old, says, Donnie, I'll do your laundry, I'll put it in, bring it up here. Okay. Well, and she can't even reach in there. No, right. Well, what happened was I gave her a bundle of clothes, which would be Judy, one load, one load of laundry. And later I come in and, you know, kind of look at what's going on. She took like three or four things out of that load and put it in the washing machine. I'm like, okay, not a full load. Well, she washed it, and then she puts that in the dryer, and 10 minutes of it being in the dryer, she goes, Donna, your laundry's done. And I come running in there and my stuff's still wet. And she's like, Oh, yeah, you can hang it up. And I go, You got a dryer. Let's put it back in the dryer. And she's kind of holding the dryer door, and I'm grabbing the dryer door to kind of keep my stuff in there or put it back in there. And it was like this little tug-of-warth kind of thing going on for a second. I'm like, Mom, what you're not gonna ruin the dryer by running it for 30 minutes. You don't have to run it for 10 minutes. But she was trying to give me back wet clothes to hang up. And I'm like, to this day, still not allowed to touch the washer and dryer, still not allowed to mow the lawn. They got a brand new dishwasher a couple of years ago. I don't know what any of the buttons are on there because they've never let me near it.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

I'm gonna say a month ago they called, and this is also kind of just a weird little story, but they call and said, Oh, Judy, when you come, you have to change some light bulbs. I'm like, light bulbs. I said, You need me to travel 2,000 miles to change light bulbs? Donnie's gonna be there on Tuesday. Oh no, oh no, Judy, uh, he cannot do that. And I'm like, yeah, he's capable of changing a light bulb. Let him do it. He's not gonna hurt himself, he's not gonna wreck anything.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

So Judy, the light bulb story goes back to when we were little kids and you and I playing in the basement, and we unscrewed the light bulb, and one of us would stick our finger up in the socket, and the other one would flip the switch, and then our hair would fly up and we'd be like, and would be this where it was like pulling your finger, and it was we thought it was kind of cool. Unbeknownst to us, we were probably extremely close to electrocuting ourselves. And I think mom and dad caught wind of that, and they're to this day. No, no, no, Donnie, no light bulb. You don't get near that.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

I know in the last episode we talked a little bit about the glow and sniff and when we would all roll into the house. And it was crazy the curfews that we had, because most of our friends had a one o'clock curfew, and we had the midnight curfew. And you remember trying to negotiate.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Maybe you were midnight. Mine was eleven. I had to be home at 11 o'clock.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Why do you have a different set of rules?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Different set of rules. Now that we look back on it, it's like, hmm, what is going on here?

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Well, I remember trying to negotiate that. And do you remember what the answer was about midnight?

SPEAKER_01 15:53

I do. Nothing good happens after midnight. And you know, we always ask kids, we're like, what? What's dad talking about? Well, now it's adults. We kind of can relate to that. But Judy, that actually is one of the reasons that I talked about in season one about running home from like a party or, you know, a get-together or wherever I was on a Friday and Saturday night. And I kind of alluded to the fact that it was to air out and maybe sober up a little bit and clean up and just kind of get my faculties, you know, back together and run home. But part of it was because of that early curfew, 11 o'clock, and everybody else out till midnight or one. Judy, you know how many people wanted to give me a ride home at 11 o'clock at night, leave the party? And I'm at a party on the other side of town. It's 10:40. I've got to be home by 11 o'clock. Dad's gonna be waiting in the window, the glow of the cigarette. Dad's gonna be waiting. And I'm at 1040 or 10:30 running around the party going, Hey, is anybody leaving? Are you guys driving home? You want to give me a ride home? And everybody literally was like, No, you know, that's your deal. So then it'd be like, uh oh, I'm gonna have to do something about this. Run home.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah, and there was no Uber, there was nothing like that. So it was either run, walk, or in your case, not even ride a bike.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Judy was also scary because there were a couple of scenarios where you could call dad to pick you up. Wasn't always a good deal. And especially at 11 o'clock at night, he's not gonna want to come out and pick you up. But he was a parent, a dad, he would do it. Again, this was almost like mini in the car, mini sniff test, where if you got in the car reeking like alcohol or cigarettes or whatever, that could be a red flag, and all of a sudden you got yourself busted because you couldn't get a ride home, it was too far to run home, and now dad's coming to pick you up. Some of those stories did not end well.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

I remember too, you know, hiding in the garage a couple times when I was drinking when I shouldn't have been drinking, which wasn't, you know, a ton. Like I said, I was on a huge party year in school. But and when you're I always like to think, is it because I was young and a dumb and a moron when you would have too much to drink, you'd start crying, you know what I mean, for no reason. So you'd have to get it together. I never did, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Must have been a girl thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

I think it was. By the way, I have a friend that still does that.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

It's embarrassing. Yes, that's what happens. But anyway, I'd have to get it together. And then I remember our mom coming out, pistol, I'm buying it. And I'm like, and that is the translation of that is, Are you crying? And I'm like, well, no, no. And she's like, Are you sure? And she goes, Did you get in a fight with one of your friends? And then of course you have to lie and say that's totally what it was. But then it was the glow and the sniff. It was the sniff part that would happen. Some cases we'd have to empty our pockets. Do you ever remember having to empty your pockets?

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Well, you had to be kind of sneaky about that because if you knew that was coming, that's where hiding stuff in your sock started, or hiding it outside or hiding it out in the garage, or again, making sure that you didn't have any evidence on you. Because again, dad being a cop, mine of police department, chief of detectives, police captain, lie detector, hypnotist, all of that. You almost got a pat down when you came home. Yeah. And, you know, just short of that, it wasn't like get up against the wall, but it was like you said, empty your pockets. What do you got on you? Let me smell your breath.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

It could be any one of those things. It was uh it was terrifying. And then there was always the threat of the lie detector. And nobody else's dad would get to ask that. So it was kind of a constant thing that we would have that we would worry about. And I know we we laughed in one of the other episodes where you were talking about you didn't have the birds and bee conversation until you were like 25. I never had that conversation. And the only thing.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

They're still planning that with you. At some point when you come back to them, they're gonna give that, you're gonna get that talk here coming up. Because with our parents, nothing is ever really out of the time frame of doing that.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

We never had that discussion, we never had any discussions about anything like that at all. There was nothing. And one of the things that I the only conversation I ever remember is my dad saying, if anything you ever get pregnant or anything like that, just don't even come home. I'm like, okay, well, good enough. Nothing else to talk about here.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Judy wasn't quite 25, but I was living with a girl. I was living with Wonder Woman in Gillette, Wyoming, and then we moved to Bismarck, and I think mom and dad got freaked out that this girl ended up moving with me. And I went up and we talked about it in season one. I went up and talked to him. Dad pulls me in the backyard, and I'm like, what? And he's the same deal. I'm 20, maybe 21, and all of a sudden I'm like, is this the birds and the bees discussion? And I had to kind of say, Dad, dad, you know, what the hell's going on here? And he didn't sway. It was, hey, I want to make sure you're aware of this. You've never had that chat. Get ready, idiot's coming.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

One other thing that was kind of un unusual is I don't think we like I said, we didn't learn about the grocery store or going to the grocery store, which I kind of understand why they wouldn't do that. But when was the first time you bought like your own clothes?

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Never. Right? Never. I I don't still? Are you talking still? When I left on my own, I had clothes. And then I thought maybe I bought a couple of things. But then when I got married, my wife at the time ended up buying all my clothes. So I didn't even buy my own clothes at that point in time. In fact, I remember at one point when we were getting divorced or splitting up or something like that. And I said to her, just because I had never bought it in decades, I said to her, Hey, can do you mind going out and buying me some underwear? And she looked at me and said, Go buy your own effing underwear. And I'm like, Oh, okay, okay. This is how this how this story ends. So here I am, 45 years old, or how old I was. Gotta go out for the first time and buy my underwear. And Judy underwear, when you buy underwear, do you just kind of think you know the size, or do you try it on? If there's already a bag that's ripped open, is it did somebody else try this on? Was somebody else's junk in this underwear? And then they put it back, and then now you're gonna possibly Do the same thing. So I have a rule when I'm picking out underwear at the store that it's got to be a brand new pack. And I either have pre-sized it with a little bit of research and homework, or shamelessly, no, let's rip it open and go into the dressing room and try it on. But you Judy, you can't come out and model it. If somebody's with you, you can't come out and say, hey, how do these briefs look on me?

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Good? You like it? So you would talk about how we got these care packages. I got the ribeye steaks and cigarettes. And when I was older and I had graduated from college, kind of embarrassing, but I would get clothes sent to me by my mom. But they were always there was a time where the clothes came and they were too small. And she's like, Yeah, she goes, I looked at those pants. She goes, and I thought, those are really big. And and that can't be the right size for you. And I'm like, oh hello, if you're gonna send me something, at least send me something that fits. Don't be afraid to get me something, you know, because you don't think it's the right size.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Well, they were always cool about buying us clothes. And again, you know, back in the day we were spoiled and we always got lots of new clothes, and a lot of times it was cool. Later in life, I think it ended up not being cool. And for me, Judy, it ended up being where dad, I would get some of his hand-me-downs. Yes. And it was like my mom would come over and go, Oh, Daddy, I have all these polo shirts. And it was stuff that was like fashionable like 10 or 20 years ago. And then not to disappoint mom or bum her out and be like, oh, okay, yeah, let me let me grab that and take it and drive it home to back to my place so I can discard a bit properly and get rid of it. But that's to Judy, that still happens.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Yeah. Well, and I think she says try it on. And then you end up looking like a snostage coming out in a in a shirt that's like way too small because he's like a medium. So yeah, but cool the thoughts there, right? I mean, we have to say that it we shouldn't be r totally railing on him, but it was it was just kind of funny. And again, those are things that impacted our ability to make kind of informed things later on.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Well, I think we had to kind of learn life on our own after we moved out, just for the lack of preparation we got. And it's not just mom and dad, it was also the public schools back then. I mean, I think you could take a home economics class where taught you how to cook, or you could take a shop class and make a cutting board. And I remember in one class they did actually teach us a little bit about balancing a checkbook, but it might have been like an hour-long thing. It wasn't like a full-day deal where they taught us that. So, again, coupled with growing up in North Dakota in the middle of nowhere, coupled with the fact that our parents didn't really give us a lot of inside information for whatever reason, coupled with the fact that we were sheltered, that all led to the perfect storm of us when we got out on our own, not knowing stuff.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

There was a lot they didn't tell us. So it was even how they talked to us about relationships, people, all of that stuff. We never had any idea. Again, we had a lot of exposure to his police work, how he talked about things, and the answers sometimes he gave us were totally crazy.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

It's kind of we lived at both ends of the spectrum with dad being a cop. I think we were exposed to some kind of inside information into the workings of that, from autopsy picks to mom and dad telling stories late at night about a bad accident or somebody drowning or something weird like that. And when you're a little kid hearing that, that kind of sets you back a little bit or freaks you out a little bit. Now, the stuff that's important to us growing up, setting us up for life, the basics, the little things, never got that's what they should have concentrated on, was kind of exposing us to some stuff to set us up for life. Judy, when I was a little kid, I swear to God, this is how naive we were. When I was a little kid, or how naive I was, when I was a little kid growing up, and again, mom and dad not telling us things, I thought that you could get a girl pregnant by kissing her. So for the longest time, and I remember the first time I ever kissed a girl was at Perkett. Judy was in grade school, and I thought, uh-oh, uh-oh, Donnie's gonna be a dad.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

There'll be a lifetime movie about this soon.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Donnie just got a sixth grader pregnant by kissing her. But Judy, I thought that. I thought literally that you could get, and again, mom and dad, the birds and bees came way later. You still haven't got that chat. And when I was a kid growing up, it didn't last forever, but I thought for a little while that you could get a girl pregnant by kissing her. How weird is that? Very weird, you know. Judy, I've got one story that kind of relates to that. And again, just the naiveness in regards to us growing up and what we were exposed to and what we weren't. One day, I'm in, I think I'm in just getting ready to go into seventh grade, the summer after sixth grade. So I don't know how old I'm 11, and driving around with dad and our older sister. And dad and older sister in the front seat, me in the back. And they're talking about rape. You know, I'd never heard that word before. So I just said, kind of nonchalantly, innocently from the back seat, Dad, what's rape? And dad's like, and you could tell he was hemming and hawing, and he's like, hmm, uh, don't worry about it. And then I persisted and I said, Dad, no, what's rape? And then now he's gonna tell me something. And he says, Well, that's when you you rip a girl's blouse off. And I'm like, Oh, okay. So I thought, rape, rip, logical, makes sense, rip a girl, can get a girl pregnant by kissing her, and raping a girl is ripping her blouse off. So that's kind of what I thought for many years. Now, fast forward into seventh grade, a couple months later, I'm in seventh grade. I don't know what class I'm in. It's at Jim Hill Junior High School, it's second period, Judy, and there's this big kid in my class, big kid who ends up playing football for minute high. Big giant kid. He's probably in seventh grade, six foot. I'm all up five, two, the scrawny kid. Well, the whole time in this class, I'm shooting spitwads at him. And I'm thinking it's funny. And I'm like, boo, shooting these spitwads. And it's like drilling them off his head. And, you know, first couple times, you might have got a chuckle. I don't know, Judy. I have no idea. I didn't even know what could happen by doing something like this. But I'm shooting the spitwads. First one or two, maybe got a little kind of smirk or a chuckle out of them. Well, by the end of the spit wad session, which is probably like in the dozens, he's perturbed. But I didn't realize again what the consequences of this might be. Well, at the end of class, I walk out of class and right outside the front door, this big kid is waiting for me. And Judy, he grabs me by my shirt like this, and he throws me up against the locker. And I'm off the ground. I'm like five inches off the ground. And he's got me up against the locker off the ground, and he goes, and he rips my shirt open. Judy pops every button on my buttoned-down shirt, pops every button off. I'm sitting there with my shirt wide open. Well, I start crying. I'm freaking out. This guy's ready to beat the shit out of me. And so I go to my next class. I have to hold my shirt together because nothing buttons. And the teacher's like, and I'm bawling. And the teacher's like, Donnie, what's going on? What happened? I'm like, I got raped. I got raped. I got raped by blah, blah, blah. And the teachers almost fell over and said, What? And I'm like, yeah, I got ripped. And I'm crying and can barely talk. And before the principal and the authorities get involved, the teacher finally realized that all that happened was I got my shirt ripped open. And again, with what the explanation was to me months earlier from dad on what rape was, I erroneously told the teacher that I was raped by this student. Luckily, it didn't go further than that. However, Judy, the back end of that story is that I had every button missing off my shirt. So for the next four periods, I had to go to every class and hold my shirt together. I was too embarrassed to call home to say, Dad, can you bring me a shirt to school? I got raped. And taped dad would have been probably in two seconds driving up to the gym hill going, Oh my God, Donnie got raped. Which again, it was a big misunderstanding. But again, a lot of it plays to what we knew, what we didn't know, the sheltered existence that we lived, and almost kind of to this day, how mom and dad still talk to us.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

They still talk to us like we're in fifth or sixth grade. And one thing I'm gonna say here is I am, you know, not ashamed of you for all the things that you've done. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I'm not ashamed, but I'm like, you just never learn. You keep you're either crying or you're wrecking something or whatever. And some of that's gonna continue as we go into season two. And our season two, we're so excited about that. We have six episodes dropping on September 8th. One of the things that I'm really looking forward to telling everybody is kind of did the chaos continue? I know yours did. For me, was it my RV or my boat that sank?