To Free the Truth

“They call us problem child
We spend our lives on trial
We walk an endless mile
We are the youth gone wild ”
-Skidrow  

My father missed the first 7 years of my life. He was in prison for a robbery spree across America. He left my mother alone to raise my brother, sister, and myself. Being uneducated and without any real job skills, she constantly struggled to make ends meet. She did the best that she could. Nevertheless, my earliest memories are of being hungry and moving around a lot.

Neither of my parents were equipped (mentally or financially) to raise children. And this is illustrated in how my father reacted to being in my life. He tried to be super cool to me, rarely disciplining me when I misbehaved, smoking pot with me, and generally treating more like a friend than a son. He simply thought he could make up for all the lost years by being my friend. While I totally enjoyed having the coolest dad in the neighborhood, what I really needed was a father.

By the time I was 15, I was out of control. As a child, I hated being the poorest kid around, so I started stealing. It started with an ice cream sandwich in kindergarten and evolved to clothes and bikes by my early teens. Before I knew it I was stealing vehicles, committing burglaries, selling drugs, and making more money than my father and brother combined.

Don’t get me wrong, my father didn’t condone my criminal activity. He just wasn’t around much to stop me because he worked twelve hour days six days a week, and my mother never told him when I got into trouble. Hewould kick my butt when he caught wind of some of the things I pulled. Mom just didn’t like seeing me disciplined the way he did it, but I certainly needed it.

Things got considerably better when my father was released from prison in1986. He promised my mother that his days of being an outlaw were over, that he would settle down, be a man, and take care of his family. I was just ecstatic to have a father of my own.