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chapter 2
Chapter 2
I was born in 1980 January 27th to be exact at, Henrico doctors, in Richmond VA where I was raised and a lower-middle-class income household with a definite ghetto/poverty-stricken vibe there's no way to cut corners my family in my upbringing was like the unintentional college PhD in crime of all sorts I would like to reiterate this was all unintentional my parents tried and did a great job the unfortunate truth is my family every last one of them where what the government called criminals and again every last one of them were addicts so of course growing up I seen a lot of an addict shit! And at around the age of five my family packed up all their stuff and got the f****** out of here, probably about 17 hours later I would start a new life in Tampa Florida I have a feeling that was a direct result of some addict s***. For whenever my family would f*** something up we pack up and get the fuck up out of there
Oddly enough that brings me to the first memory I really ever had. I lived in a Florida room attached to the house with a sliding glass door the Florida room is a room with a bunch of Windows that you can open and close kind of like a porch yes I lived on a porch. Like I said it was attached to the house the sliding glass door my father had conveniently spray painted black so young man like myself couldn't see what they were doing and get any ideas.one day I took a quarter and got down to the bottom right-hand corner of the store and scratched away some of the spray paint effectively giving me a window into real life at least my life. I had a friend named Daniel his mother's name was Debbie his fathers name was bracky they would come over and hang out with my parents Thomas and Judy. Debbie and brekke must have had some kind of connection if you will be at legal or illegal they used to come over with truckloads of cable wire, my mom dad Debbie and bracky would strip these wires for hours with razor blades I had no idea at the time but they were going turns out I would figure it out..
After they would get back from the recycling place after recycling the copper that just stripped and cleaned they would always send me to my room and shut that door I used to watch them take a long glass tube and put a lighter to the bottom of it the water with bubble and smoke with come up like I said I had no idea what was going on but I do now and hearing the stories I heard I have to assume it was crack even though I wouldn't waste my cracking a bong my grandmother Gertrude was a gangster and remain one until she left this f****** her we called near dirty Gertie. Gertie has passed so I'll go ahead and say it , dirty Gertie sold pharmaceuticals of all kind she also did that until the day she passed well that trade would trickle down to all the kids and grandkids maybe that's where it all began, in my mind of course nobody held me down and told me to take any medicine yet it would be 1989 before I was forced to take amphetamines and I do mean forced but back to Tampa we would live there hot house from House skip out on rent etc we ended up living in a haunted house the rumor was my sister and her friend Tracy I played with a Ouija board on the roof and a f****** thunderstorm they should sound ridiculous now but I'll be damned if I didn't believe it. They would wait for me to go to the bathroom and take a knife and stab you in the wall Right where I was sitting you know normal kids stuff after a while do I do remember noticing things that didn't seem right but I was so young I could be trippin
The year was 1986 the day January 28th the day after my birthday, a day I'll never forget! you see Tampa's not too far from her NASA don't there so-called space launches you can see it from Tampa but basically only seen a smoke trail left behind! So on this day the teachers brought the TVs outside so we can watch live on the TV as well as in person! Well that was a dumbass decision because I still have post-traumatic stress disorder just from that! I recall watching I thought it was f***** up from the get-go I had no idea all I saw was smoke then Boom I'd like to tell you I heard it but I can't remember I saw it though that's for sure I drew pictures of explosion with skulls and bones falling to the ground I remember thinking we were going to get hit by body parts and spaceship debris it was f***** up play Young Buck it really messed me up. ( good thing they're all still living though , they didn't even change their names one of them says he's his twin brother maybe later in the book was for that I would do some research if you) I believe they use that as an excuse to also put me on antidepressants I believe it was called imipramine! The next memory I have we were packing up our s***getting the f*** out of there I remember just have receiving a Nintendo NES for Christmas my pop said we're going to go to Blockbuster you can rent any game you want we're going to take me to Richmond with us that's exactly what I did Mike Tyson's Punch-Out mega Man contra s*** I bought like 7 games or rented I should say them shits were mine though even though I was leaving the couple friends I have made I had family in Richmond I remember being stoked shiit, plus I got all these damn games
We took a few trips to and from Richmond and Tampa and the kids always had to stay in the back of the U-Haul or maybe we just wanted to I can't remember but there we were in the back of a U-Haul doing like 85 and a thunderstorm whoever's driving I'm sure they were high on pills if not they were highly on something. But we had no idea we would wrestle and fight in the little space we had I was riding solo on this one it was a long 17-hour trip something like that there shortly we would arrive in Richmond.
© Austin singletary
I was born in 1980 January 27th to be exact at, Henrico doctors, in Richmond VA where I was raised and a lower-middle-class income household with a definite ghetto/poverty-stricken vibe there's no way to cut corners my family in my upbringing was like the unintentional college PhD in crime of all sorts I would like to reiterate this was all unintentional my parents tried and did a great job the unfortunate truth is my family every last one of them where what the government called criminals and again every last one of them were addicts so of course growing up I seen a lot of an addict shit! And at around the age of five my family packed up all their stuff and got the f****** out of here, probably about 17 hours later I would start a new life in Tampa Florida I have a feeling that was a direct result of some addict s***. For whenever my family would f*** something up we pack up and get the fuck up out of there
Oddly enough that brings me to the first memory I really ever had. I lived in a Florida room attached to the house with a sliding glass door the Florida room is a room with a bunch of Windows that you can open and close kind of like a porch yes I lived on a porch. Like I said it was attached to the house the sliding glass door my father had conveniently spray painted black so young man like myself couldn't see what they were doing and get any ideas.one day I took a quarter and got down to the bottom right-hand corner of the store and scratched away some of the spray paint effectively giving me a window into real life at least my life. I had a friend named Daniel his mother's name was Debbie his fathers name was bracky they would come over and hang out with my parents Thomas and Judy. Debbie and brekke must have had some kind of connection if you will be at legal or illegal they used to come over with truckloads of cable wire, my mom dad Debbie and bracky would strip these wires for hours with razor blades I had no idea at the time but they were going turns out I would figure it out..
After they would get back from the recycling place after recycling the copper that just stripped and cleaned they would always send me to my room and shut that door I used to watch them take a long glass tube and put a lighter to the bottom of it the water with bubble and smoke with come up like I said I had no idea what was going on but I do now and hearing the stories I heard I have to assume it was crack even though I wouldn't waste my cracking a bong my grandmother Gertrude was a gangster and remain one until she left this f****** her we called near dirty Gertie. Gertie has passed so I'll go ahead and say it , dirty Gertie sold pharmaceuticals of all kind she also did that until the day she passed well that trade would trickle down to all the kids and grandkids maybe that's where it all began, in my mind of course nobody held me down and told me to take any medicine yet it would be 1989 before I was forced to take amphetamines and I do mean forced but back to Tampa we would live there hot house from House skip out on rent etc we ended up living in a haunted house the rumor was my sister and her friend Tracy I played with a Ouija board on the roof and a f****** thunderstorm they should sound ridiculous now but I'll be damned if I didn't believe it. They would wait for me to go to the bathroom and take a knife and stab you in the wall Right where I was sitting you know normal kids stuff after a while do I do remember noticing things that didn't seem right but I was so young I could be trippin
The year was 1986 the day January 28th the day after my birthday, a day I'll never forget! you see Tampa's not too far from her NASA don't there so-called space launches you can see it from Tampa but basically only seen a smoke trail left behind! So on this day the teachers brought the TVs outside so we can watch live on the TV as well as in person! Well that was a dumbass decision because I still have post-traumatic stress disorder just from that! I recall watching I thought it was f***** up from the get-go I had no idea all I saw was smoke then Boom I'd like to tell you I heard it but I can't remember I saw it though that's for sure I drew pictures of explosion with skulls and bones falling to the ground I remember thinking we were going to get hit by body parts and spaceship debris it was f***** up play Young Buck it really messed me up. ( good thing they're all still living though , they didn't even change their names one of them says he's his twin brother maybe later in the book was for that I would do some research if you) I believe they use that as an excuse to also put me on antidepressants I believe it was called imipramine! The next memory I have we were packing up our s***getting the f*** out of there I remember just have receiving a Nintendo NES for Christmas my pop said we're going to go to Blockbuster you can rent any game you want we're going to take me to Richmond with us that's exactly what I did Mike Tyson's Punch-Out mega Man contra s*** I bought like 7 games or rented I should say them shits were mine though even though I was leaving the couple friends I have made I had family in Richmond I remember being stoked shiit, plus I got all these damn games
We took a few trips to and from Richmond and Tampa and the kids always had to stay in the back of the U-Haul or maybe we just wanted to I can't remember but there we were in the back of a U-Haul doing like 85 and a thunderstorm whoever's driving I'm sure they were high on pills if not they were highly on something. But we had no idea we would wrestle and fight in the little space we had I was riding solo on this one it was a long 17-hour trip something like that there shortly we would arrive in Richmond.
© Austin singletary
