Brandon Held - Life Is Crazy - Episode 2

In this episode, Brandon Howe talks about how the birth of his brother had a huge impact on his life. He felt a sense of responsibility and protectiveness towards his brother, especially because their family wasn't something to aspire to be like. Brandon's grandmother showed them love and made them feel like they were part of a family, while his mother didn't do those things. They lived a poor life, relying on food stamps and often going hungry. Brandon and his sister had to take care of their energetic brother, who would frequently run off and get lost. Their family had many issues, including alcoholism and drug use. Despite the difficulties, Brandon loved Christmas because it was a time when they received gifts and had more to eat. He also mentions feeling excluded from his mother and stepfather's bedroom and being told they weren't allowed in there. Overall, Brandon's childhood was marked by poverty, neglect, and the need to take care of his siblings. Welcome back to Episode 2. This is Brandon Howe. Life is Crazy. And today I'm just going to pick up where I left off with the end of Episode 1 and the birth of my brother. What a huge impact that had on me and how to live my life. Before, I was just this kid, you know, going through life, not giving it much thought. And just, you know, living day to day, really. And when my brother was born, it kind of changed everything. You know, it gave me a sense of responsibility. It gave me a little bit more sense of a maturity for my age. Obviously, I would learn later I had a long way to go in that department. And just protectiveness. You know, I already had a bit of a protective nature for my mother and what my mother was going through. But now I had these same feelings and more for my little brother. And, you know, he was brought into this life, this family that, frankly, outside of my grandmother, was not anything to aspire to be like. And, you know, I often make the joke, I grew up on the How Not To book. And it's a joke, but there's a lot of truth to that. You know, my grandmother, who I love very much, Mamaw, she showed me a lot of love. She stepped up and did things with me and my sister. Things my mother didn't do. She took us, you know, out to eat. She took us to places. Cedar Point. Hotels. You know, she did things with us that made us feel loved and like we were part of a family. My mother just flat out just didn't do those things. And maybe it's because we were poor and just making ends meet were part of the problem. You know, she just didn't have anything extra to throw around. We were on food stamps. We lived a life where, you know, we would get our food stamps at the beginning of the month. I can't remember anymore if it was once a month or twice a month. But either way, I remember a period of time, I think it was twice a month, in the beginning and the middle. And we would go to the store and we would buy what we could with the food stamps. And, you know, typically it was me and or my sister walking several blocks to the grocery store, taking the food stamps, buying things, and bringing, you know, carrying the bags of groceries home. It's not the only way. I'm not saying my mom never went to the grocery store, but she sent us quite a bit. I mean, heck, we could even get sent to the grocery store with a note saying, you know, my mom was giving us permission to buy cigarettes for her, you know. Times were so different back then. But, yeah, you know, just a lazy mom, a poor mom. I loved her, but, you know, she spent hours of her life just laying in bed in her bedroom. I remember when her and Ricky would, you know, when he was home because he worked on the railroad and, you know, he would be gone Monday through Friday most of the year, but there were times in winter when he couldn't work because of the weather. So he would just be there all the time. And I remember they would be laying in their beds upstairs in the home. And, you know, we would be in the house somewhere, and my mom would just call us to come upstairs and have us do anything from, you know, taking her cup, getting her a drink, to bringing her food, to whatever the case was, you know. She just was an absent mother. She was in her own world, living her own life while we were trying to survive. And so doing that, you know, I felt this need to take care of this little baby boy brother that I had, and I know my sister did, too. You know, my sister and I didn't have the greatest relationship. I think we had a decent relationship until we hit the teenage years. You know, I was a little more reserved teenager, meaning, like, I got along with everyone, but you wouldn't put me in the category of a jock or you wouldn't put me in with the band geeks or you wouldn't, you know, put me in with the nerds or, you know, whatever the different categories are you would lump people into. I didn't fall into any of those because I got along with everybody, right? And my sister was beautiful when she was young. I mean, how could she not be? My grandma was. My mom was. And so my sister was, too. And so, you know, she was part of the more quote-unquote popular crowd, you know, so she thought she was too cool for her older brother, and that's fine. So, you know, we were just different. We were very different. And so we got along okay, but we weren't like best friends or anything. You know, and one of the main things was that I was very big on honesty and loyalty and doing the right thing, not saying I never made a mistake or did anything wrong, but by and large I tried to do the right thing. And my sister was just more of, you know, she wanted to be liked. She wanted to be popular. She wanted to do what people thought was cool. And if that meant lying, if that meant breaking some rules, it didn't matter. She was down. So we were just different that way. We both did have the bond, the common bond, that we wanted to take care of RJ. But even that was crazy. You know, we were kids. If you think about it, we were teenagers, early teens, mid-teens. We were out living our life or doing whatever we were doing, and RJ was incredibly energetic and outgoing, still is to this day. Just has high energy, always has. And, you know, he would always seem to make his way out of the house and go to a neighbor's or just take off. Even as a young two-, three-, four-year-old, five-year-old boy, he just took off, did his own thing. And many times we would be looking for him, you know, running around the neighborhood yelling, RJ, RJ, just looking for him because he would just take off. And it's not his fault. He just wasn't watched that well. It's easy to do when you have a mother living in her own world and teenagers doing their own thing. And sometimes there were some scary times when we really could not find him for a while. And my mom would be crying and bawling and, you know, tears running down her face. And then, of course, we would eventually find him. But do you think that would stop that from happening again? No, of course not. Of course it would happen. It would continue to happen throughout my whole childhood. You know, my family just didn't have it together, you know. My uncles were alcoholics. My stepdad was an alcoholic. Everyone smoked weed, used drugs as well that I just wasn't a part of. And, you know, my mom was in that realm too. You know, I don't know if she was an alcoholic so much, but she definitely did drugs, smoked, did those kind of things that took her away from daily life and being sharp and being perceptive and being the kind of mother she needed to be to take care of her kids. You know, she was just kind of there making sure we had a roof over our head. And I would say making sure we had food in our mouths, but there were many times that that wasn't true. Like I remember coming home from school, being hungry. I ate a lot of cereal growing up, a lot of cereal. But we just had times where there literally was just nothing to eat in the house, at least nothing, you know, prepared that I, a teenage boy, could make. And I would go get a potato and peel a potato and eat a potato. Those memories are real. Those are real in my mind that I survived off of a raw white potato that I would put salt on and eat. And to me, that was my life. That was my normal. I didn't know it was abnormal. But I did know that it didn't feel good. You know, it didn't feel good to be hungry. It didn't feel good to have a week right after we got food stamps to feel good and, you know, eat well and then know like, oh, crap, when this food runs out, we're not going to have any more until food stamps come again. And we would, you know, be hungry. I mean, there were days where, you know, the only real meal that I had was my free lunch that I got at school. And I got it at school for being poor because we could not afford for me to buy lunches. So I got them for free, thankfully, or who knows how that would have went. You know, just other dimensions of my childhood. I would like to say that, you know, Christmases were great. I loved Christmas, still love Christmas to this day. One of my favorite holidays. No, it is my favorite holiday. Not one of them. It is. And the reason being is because, you know, when you're poor, you don't have a lot to eat. You definitely don't get things unless it's your birthday or Christmas. At least I didn't, you know. I didn't get to just go in a grocery store and say, oh, I want this, or get to go to the mall and say, oh, I want this. That stuff just didn't happen. That wasn't a part of my life. You know, now you have online shopping. If that would have existed back then, I still wouldn't have been able to be like, oh, I saw this thing online. You know, anything I wanted, my mom would say, well, you'll have to get a job and buy it. You know, ironically, because a lot of the reason we were in the place we were in is because my mom didn't work most of my childhood. She did have a period of time where she was an assistant at the doctor's office. But, you know, I don't remember how long that lasted, and I'm sure it certainly wasn't a great means of income because I didn't feel it, you know, significantly contributing to our life and what we had. You know, and another thing that I found, which really burned me up, was my sister and I were always told we were not allowed in my mom and Ricky's bedroom to stay out, and I never understood why. You know, my mom would always say, oh, Ricky doesn't want you in there, you know, and my mom did that a lot. She would tell us we couldn't do things, and when we would ask why, she would say, because Ricky doesn't want you to do it. I can't have a friend over because Ricky doesn't want your friends here. You know, and who knows if that's even true. A couple times when I got older, I asked Ricky about some of these things, and he denied that he was saying those things, that he said those things, that my mom was just using him because she couldn't stand up and say, you know, she didn't want us to do it. But, you know, we were going without food, and I remember going upstairs in her bedroom and opening her closet one day, kind of against the rules, and there were just snacks up there, you know, Hostess cupcakes, Little Debbie's, you know, all these snacks in her closet, and I remember being so angry and offended by this because, you know, here I am, a teenager, and teenage boys, you know how teenage boys are. We're hungry. We're growing. We need to eat. You know, getting by a lot of days on cereal and, you know, just not enough food to maintain my life and make me not feel hungry, and I was active, too. I played sports, you know, whether it was with the school or whether it was just after school with my friends. I was always on the go playing sports, and I was hungry, and, you know, we didn't have food for me to eat, and then I go up there and I find hidden food in my mom and stepdad's closet, and, you know, I was so scared and afraid because, you know, I wasn't even supposed to be in her room that I couldn't even confront her about it, and I certainly wasn't going to take it and eat it, which, you know, hindsight being 20-20, I probably could have eaten some, and they would have never known, but it just hurt me, and it offended me, and I couldn't believe this woman who was supposed to be taking care of me was letting me suffer while they were having good stuff, you know. I wasn't allowed to have sodas growing up. I mean, literally my life was milk, Kool-Aid, or water, the only things I was allowed to have, and, you know, the Kool-Aid was cheap because they were little packets that you'd pour into water and add sugar, and, you know, milk was free from the food stamps, and obviously water was free back then. We just drank straight out of the sink, and that was a lot of reason why, you know. My mom said it was for my health, but I just genuinely don't believe that's true. I believe it was because she just didn't want to buy sodas. She didn't want to pay the money for soda. So, yeah, that was a tough part of childhood was just being hungry a lot. I remember that being hungry a lot. I mean, when I graduated high school at 17, I was 6'1 and 155 pounds, and it wasn't because I wanted to be. It was because that was as big as I could get because I didn't have the nourishment to be any bigger. And so back to the Christmas thing, one of the things I loved about my childhood was Christmas, and it wasn't necessarily because of Christmas with my mother. It was because when I went to my grandma's on Christmas, we would walk into this trailer, and it would just be presents just, you know, 10 feet out from the tree, you know, wrapped around the tree, 10 feet out from the tree, and, you know, just a spread of this table of food and candy and desserts that my great-grandmother would cook. She was an amazing cook, and, you know, that died with her. That didn't really get passed on to anyone, sadly, and it was just a great time, like just opening gifts, which obviously kids love, and my grandma made sure there were plenty. They probably weren't expensive, but who cares? You're a kid opening gifts, and that's fun, and, you know, just being full on food. Christmas is just a wonderful memory. You know, and I will say this. One year, as an adult, I don't quite understand it, but, you know, I respect the gesture. One year, my mom and Ricky sold their truck, the only means of transportation they had to drive, to buy me and my sister 10 speeds for Christmas, you know, along with whatever else they did with the money. You know, I doubt that was the only thing that came out of a truck, but that certainly was what was relayed to us, like, you know, hey, you better take care of these 10 speeds because we sold our truck for you to get these. So, you know, I appreciate the effort. As an adult, I wouldn't do it myself. I mean, I wouldn't get rid of my only vehicle to make sure my kids had some bicycles. It just doesn't seem logical or practical to me. I mean, you have to have a car to get around and make a living. So the 10 speeds were nice, but I don't think they were worth the cost. You know, and eventually, one day, I would let a friend, Matt Warwick, borrow my 10 speed. This was, you know, a few years later. And he was getting chased by the cops. I don't know what the heck he was doing, but he was being chased by the cops sometime at night. I don't know if he was out after a curfew or what exactly was happening, but the cops impounded my 10 speed. You know, they took it. And the only way I could go back, get it back, was to go to the police station and rat on my friend. You know, take my 10 speed and say, you know, it was this guy who was riding my 10 speed because I was too stupid to say, oh, my 10 speed was stolen. I wasn't smart enough to think of that. And so I just, I lost the 10 speed. Didn't have it, you know, after that, after a few years. And so when you consider all that, was selling a truck worth that? I don't know, but I understand the gesture. You know, and I just didn't have people in my life who could give me guidance or advice in those situations. I mean, you know, my mom knew that happened. I told her that I let Matt borrow the 10 speed and it got taken by the cops. But she, you know, she didn't give me any guidance. I certainly wasn't going to get it from Ricky or my uncles or anyone else to say, hey, just go down and say it was stolen. You want to get it back. So I lost it. I didn't have it. And I just was always searching for some type of guidance and advice. And it was literally like my uncle, you know, my uncle Jesse, he would sit next to me and he would crack open a beer. He would say, don't ever drink. It's bad for you. And meanwhile, he literally lived his life drunk. His motto was, if I'm not working, I'm drinking. That's how he lived his life. Uncle Russell, same way, just drunk all the time. And, you know, doing more drugs, I wasn't present for it. I didn't see that stuff. I only know what's been told to me. I definitely know my parents. My mom and Ricky were doing drugs as well as the drinking and the weed smoking. And I was just around all this dysfunction. And it just made me feel like, you know, all I can do is look at these people and what they're doing and the way they're acting and the things that they're doing and just realize this isn't for me. That's not the life for me. And I would use their bad behavior as a model for the way I would behave oppositely in good behavior, which is why I kind of had this, you know, moral high ground to me of, you know, oh, I'm always going to be good, make good decisions, do the right thing, you know, not put myself in a position that these guys are putting themselves in. I mean, obviously that's not even close to reality. We all end up doing things that we regret or making bad decisions in a moment. But that was what I was striving for based off that childhood and that life. You know, I didn't have much love at home. I'm not saying my mom and grandma didn't love me, because they did. But, you know, I didn't live with my mamaw, and I only saw her every so often. And my mom was doing her thing most of the time, but that left me free to, you know, be and do whatever I wanted. So I played a lot of sports, and I listened to a lot of music, and I watched a lot of TV. And, you know, in listening to music and watching TV, I thought, you know, oh, romance, love. That's the way to go in life, you know. That's something that will make me happy. Oh, I'm going to meet the right girl, and we're going to fall in love, and we're just going to live happily ever after. You know, did I know what that meant? No. I had no idea. Did I know what it takes to do that? No, obviously not. I had no adults to look at and say, oh, they're the, you know, couple of my dreams. When I grow up, I want to be like them. You know, I didn't have that in my life. I just had an idea in my mind, you know, that love was going to change everything for me in my life, that me and the girl that I love, we would just be so happy together and screw everything else and screw everybody else. You know, life was going to be good that way. But it didn't turn out that way, you know. And I will get through my love life in these episodes and what happened and how that happened. But I will say this. I will close this episode, too, on this. So living the life that I lived, I always, almost always, had a smile, positive attitude, was friendly. And, you know, some people just couldn't figure that out. Even people in my own family couldn't figure that out. Like, you know, why are you so happy all the time? Why are you so positive? They would even make jokes that I was adopted, you know, that I wasn't from that family because everyone else was so miserable or drowning their misery in alcohol and drugs and cigarettes. And I just didn't let that atmosphere get me down. And a large reason for that was, you know, I knew I had goals in life. I knew I was going to go make a difference in my own life. Clearly, I wasn't going to be able to count on anyone else. But that's okay because I was going to go do it. And, you know, I wanted to be a cop. That was the first thing I realized from that protective nature that I had developed over being unable to help my mother and, you know, wanting to help my brother. And, you know, I found out you can't be a cop until you're 21. Okay, well, I'm going to join the military then because I'm not waiting until I'm 21 to do something with my life. I'm doing it immediately. I'm doing it right away. And so, all right, talked to my uncles. I had an uncle in the Army, an uncle in the Air Force, another uncle that was in the Army. My Uncle Jimmy was also in the Army. And I talked to all three of them, and all three of them said, join the Air Force. So, all right, you know, two uncles that were in the Army, one in the Air Force, they're all saying join the Air Force. So that was my goal. That's what I was going to do. And I just had that in my brain, you know. I'm going to graduate high school. I'm going to join the Air Force, become a cop, meet the woman of my dreams, and live happily ever after. And that is where I will leave Episode 2. We will pick up where we left off from here on the next episode. So, thanks for listening, and I will talk to you soon.