Michael Gerber and Kate Powers

00:02 My name is Michael Gerber. I'm 50. Today's date is Monday January 27th, 2024 in Santa Monica, California. The interview partner is Kate powers, and she's my wife.

00:16 Hi, my name is Kate Powers. I'm 47 years old. Today is Monday January 27th, 2020 hour and Santa Monica, California. The name of my interview partner is Michael my husband relationship famous. Who's my husband.

00:35 Okay, so I am I saw that this was something we could do. I thought it would be interesting to talk about your childhood because I met you when you were in your late twenties, and I know a little bit about where you grew up and what that was like, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to ask a little bit more about it if that's okay with you. Okay. Alright, so I know the answer to but I want to like so where did you grow up? Well, that's a complicated question cuz I grew up a lot of places but I was born in Columbia, South Carolina and then when I was about

01:12 I'm 18 months. I think little more than a year my mom and I moved to Ballwin, Missouri outside of St. Louis and then I grew up in St. Louis until I was 7 yeah until I was eight then from 8 to 11. I was in Jefferson City and then from 11 to 13 or 14. I was in back in St. Louis and then 14 in high school. I was in Oak Park.

01:44 So my first question is, what is your earliest memory or if you prefer your earliest happy memory.

01:59 I have there's a picture of me. It's a blurry Polaroid picture from 1970. I was born in 1969 and it shows me. I have 4 teeth. I have two top teeth in two bottom teeth and I'm in a highchair and I have a mallet blue Mallet that my mother called the Blue bopper which is for the the Fisher-Price xylophone. Okay, and I am in this high chair and there's the Beatles song Back in the USSR playing and I am popping everytime it would come on. I whip my I would wiggle my hands and feet and I would Bop on my Bop on my high chair with my blue bopper. So I I distinctly remember that because I distinctly remember what the top of that.

02:51 High chair was like what the plastic in the highchair was like, I remember that. I also remember I learned to read when I was three and I remember

03:05 A story this story was related to me later. And I remembered it that I was with my mother's friend Kathy and she kept hearing me say a p a p and she thought I meant like a p that you eat or I have to pee or something, but then she looked at where I was pointing and it was a flower it was in her pantry with a bag of flour from A&P, which was that brand so I was probably 3 at that point. So did you have a favorite toy when you were growing up?

03:42 Well, I had two bears. Yeah, I had two bears. I had one little little brown bear named Jojo bear who was given to be my my father's friend. My birth father's friend Jojo and that gives you an example of what it's like to grow up wasn't in the South, you know, that times I've never met another person named Jojo or call Jojo but so Jo Jo bear was was Monday and then I got another bear which was named Pooh Bear and both of those bears were chewed up by Gus my dog when I was about six and my mother I'd like carefully sutured them, you know suchard. The ear JoJo's year was gone into zioneer were gone. And she sort of carefully, you know, my mother she's heard of artistically kind of made it as if they'd gone into surgery and come out with by that time. I had gone into surgery and come out. So it was like, yeah, so that was a rumor that

04:42 I love little cars. I love little cars. And so I always had a little car with a little Matchbox car Corgi car and I did not surprising to you. I would I had to hide your definite preferences like this brand is good in this brand is not and all that certain stuff.

05:02 When did you have a favorite food?

05:05 China favorite food

05:08 It's funny cuz my relationship with food has been so dramatic when I was older.

05:17 No, I don't recall that. I had a favorite food by the time I was five and six and seven years old. I love my mother's chicken curry, but before then I could have any pretty good favorite food. And I know so I have two questions that I don't know which one comes chronologically earlier. Do you have early memories of school before you realize that your body work differently than other people's bodies or do was the the physical difference the first thing?

05:54 Oh, I knew my body work differently from almost from the beginning because I couldn't see very well and I couldn't walk very well and other people who could see it and walked so so I knew pretty early and then I had an eye surgery.

06:10 When I was

06:13 Flora v and end and a I'm a I'm thinking that must have been later but then I out that I had a heel cord lengthening surgery for my cerebral palsy when I was five or six, you know, I like all the stuff was happening.

06:28 And I remember.

06:31 After I had my eye operation that I think I've told you the story that I must have been during my kindergarten because I showed up at kindergarten with an eye patch like a flesh-colored eye patch. And so my mother who is an art school drew a little clothes. Dye over the eye patch and this is very much. What my my childhood was like, you know, people is like we're worried like, oh did people make fun of you as a know by the end of the day I had I didn't have any more eye patches because I give them all the way to kids who wanted and I've had just like me so that's good. That was very much like what my childhood was. Okay, the the. Of time before you start getting surgery is sometimes done. Do you have a memory of what your mom told you about why you were different or no? No there was going to be medical interventions in the beginning. Do you know it's so much because my mom

07:31 In answer. My my parents were living together in in Columbia, South Carolina where my dad was going to school.

07:40 And there was no this was the 60 so there was no like marriage or anything. This was just we were a free-range Triad and then she

07:52 You know, maybe this is weird saying I don't know if I ever told you the story of my birth, but there's a story about it, which is that labor came on very fast for my mom. She was taken to I don't know maybe she took something true in any case she got to the hospital and what she remembers is I was delivered so quickly that a man in a suit walked in took me and walked out meaning like I was already delivered and I think that that was what my cerebral palsy was about was it there was nobody attending or it happened so fast that nobody was attending and I didn't get enough oxygen in the birth canal and then after that they put me I was premature. I can't remember I always thought I was significantly premature like six or seven.

08:52 Is when I got the one my mother has said to me I think 8, so maybe I was less premature birth, and I thought I'm just trying to compensate for being so short but in any case she she said that they immediately put me into an incubator for a month and that they there was no there's no contact. I didn't have any contact with my mother for a month. They wouldn't even let her I breastfeed this was 1969. So who knows what they thought? Yeah, and it wasn't a great Hospital from what my mom said to do. So that was always so I don't know. I don't know what she's doing. I don't know if I have ever asked you that question what you're saying is you have no memories of her trying to explain to you. I don't are you asking question? Yeah, I don't you know.

09:51 I'm sure I must have asked.

09:56 But I also don't remember being to bother but I mean I'm pressed frustration. Oh my God, the frustration is intense and content if I ever get snappish with you now, it's usually that its use a residue of like years and Decades of not being able to get to something not being able to reach something not being able to make my legs work for my fans work whatever I want to do. So I had that I'm sure I had that when I was when I was small but

10:30 See my mom and I kind of had a compact which is like this is I'm just going to say I don't know if I can use it. And so we've got to get through this as best we can you know, you and your mom. This is the kind of extreme. I meant me and my mom was this is fucked and we got to get through this the best we can there's no husband cuz my father died when I was three, there's no family money. My fam polish family disowned us. My my mother's family didn't have any money had a lot of love and we live with them and that was great and my mother was trying to go to school and working two jobs. And you know, I've told you the stories about my mother shity cars, you know, this shity cars. She told me that a car that would only start on an incline.

11:21 It was a VW bug that it would only started in kind. So you'd have to put it, you know, you have to park on an incline and then you know remove the parking brake and then Coast. Oh, yeah. Oh no, this is that's the very least of it whenever my mom and I talk about those times. That's what it was. It was total like

11:40 All stall in a battle stations all the time. So for me to it was kind of clear that I wasn't going to add to her load by being and I like so why am I different than what are we going to do about this incident? Is it going to get any better Albert? She couldn't probably answer too. Well, and the other thing is too. I don't know. I don't know to what degree

12:03 The Diagnostics word were good back then so it might not have been until I was about 18 months or 3 years old or whatever the people that maybe I crawled maybe I crawled or walk later or something like that. Or maybe that's probably the first time that there was any question about it is when I was walking and I my gate wasn't the same as any other babies or I wasn't walking.

12:29 And so the first intervention is surgery on your heel push. I think that's the first one. I didn't the eye surgery may have been the first one to correct a slight turn in in one of my eyes.

12:45 That may be the first one and then the second one was the big one was the heel cord stretching out of lengthening what they do. I don't know if I've explained this before you do you have any memory of how it was described to you what was going to happen, but you did, you know, you're going to the hospital. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was a little kid and I think because of the time it was I was pretty tune. I don't think was kept in the dark about a lot of stuff about occasionally. She'll talk about other medical interventions probably before that to figure out what was going on and she talks about a spinal tap and I have a kind of vague memory of that but it could be also that I'm thinking of the movie The Exorcist when she gets a spinal tap. I'm really seriously cuz it'll be a rock by the right about the same time 73 or 74 and

13:44 The the thing about spinal tap is there's no anesthetic. So, you know I suspected I remember for a lot that I don't remember. Okay, you know why I suspected there were a lot of and also to I mean was so fucking hairy like

14:03 If either of us if my mother or my or my aunt and my grandmother those, you know my support team my family if they had really allowed themselves to realize what was going on or I it's really, you know, it's interesting. I just want a grass just for a second but a couple years ago, I was dealing with some agoraphobia and my mother sort of let slip she said you used to be so brave and I just remember I know what she's referring to which is I was just absolutely stehlik throughout all of these medical procedures and and and pretty harrowing I think physical things young but the other thing was that I would see I was very aware very young. I was very when people talk about me is a three-year-old they will often say I walked into a room and I heard an adult talking about something and then I saw that there was only a kid there and that was because I was really around adult small.

15:03 I was around children and it was so verbal. So I was very tuned into my situation and so do both be tuned into my situation and also to have to deal with really hard physical stuff at Young. I think I just kind of turned it off and pulled through and I if you ask me where I think those that anxiety came from I think often times I don't think I'm a naturally anxious person. I think I think it's trauma that I had then it is it will be released when I feel safe. And so I would see no 47 or whatever. I was safe and I could feel those feelings, but I think that's what happened.

15:48 And sometimes we talked a little bit about this. You said that this is where you you learn to be friendly and Charming. Oh, yeah, and I just wondered if you have any memories of interacting with medical folks in like getting them on your side. Yeah. Yeah because my family didn't have any money. So when when we do, you know, when I say what I had a heel cord operation to end at so what they used to do was that they'd cut into your heel your where your Achilles heel is and they said they'd the slice the tendon halfway and then pull it and so it would and then they would hold it into place and so would stretch out like that. And so that was a way to give you a little extra because my kind of cerebral palsy is a tightness in my hamstrings. So it would give you a little more play a little more flexion in your knee.

16:48 Back in the day. They would only do your heels but nowadays or no not nowadays. I once knew a kid to buy 20 years younger than me. And he said oh no now they do it at the healed and knee and the hip to really so so yeah, so that's what that was. And so I wasn't, you know, I wasn't going to Cedar-Sinai. Do you know my family was living on my grandmother's Postal Service salary and you know, whatever my sister whatever my mom sisters could bring in and they were 18 to 22 and and my mother's job as a waitress. So, you know this operation took place for free at Shriners Hospital which back in the day. It was really quite Grim, you know, not not bad and I'm glad for it and I'm very appreciative for it. I want to say I'm very pretty

17:48 But the memories I have of that very grim and it was kids that had orthopedic problems or kids that had burn problems. So once again, very sensitive kid being put in a situation where there was a lot of people in the ward a lot of them were not pleasant to look at a lot of them are in a lot of pain so

18:13 You know, what are you do? I used my verbal notice in my kind of precociousness to make friends with the the nurses on the ward because the nurses on the ward of the people who change your bed pans and give you food and you know what maybe talk to you or tell you a joke or something like that make your life a lot easier and so I did it for myself, but I also did it because I knew I could help other people in the Warren if I had a little at Capitol if I had a little social capital and I remember like thinking that at 4 or 5 whenever was

18:55 Just like if I can be charming and nice and these these nurses will like me. I will be able more to get my needs met and and more than that the needs of other kids too because I just felt so bad for them. It was very very hard. That was very very hard.

19:16 So, okay. Sure. Thank you. So hope when I said I said to you when the nurse was walking by and I was in I was in bed in a waste so I couldn't move at all you know, like I was stuck and I said Hey to her to try to catch your attention and she said to me she turned me in very curtly said hey is for horses not for me and walked out and I was like, oh I get it. I got to be you know, I got to be David Niven here. I get a v mr. Suave and debonair insert Court these these nurses take to be able to get this to get what I needed to get with other kids need. Yeah. It was it was tough. I I thought I've written a little bit about this where I remember one particular.

20:11 Time when the kid in the bed next to me was in the middle of the night and he needed a bedpan and he didn't get one and I remember reaching over and holding his hand in and just like telling him is okay, like telling him to let you know you had to do what you had to do and it's okay and all that sort of stuff and I think in the hospital is where I learned a lot of

20:35 That empathy that super empathy skills that I used so well in school. I was never beaten up in school at all. I was never her after I was beloved in school and it was because I was really I had started seeing how bad things could get and so I was very conscious about the I don't know how to say this any better. It's Dopey the shared Humanity of of us all and so you know it just when you got to know I was always moving I was always moving schools. I was always the new kid. I was always the new kid first thing that they would discover about me was that I walked funny and so, you know, you think why you just must have gotten that are Pom-Pom about it. I never did and it was because I would I was always so aware of the other people that it was easy for me to make friends and it was all so easy for me to

21:35 Be known as a decent person. I think that the the moment that people started saying all this guy's decent and honest and friendly and funny in a good person and smart. So hey, what's the answer this question is that

21:54 I think that that was who I was in school. And that was you I wasn't school till I was ten, you know, I mean that was like

22:03 That is my personality today still is did you have friends when I can hear you being so compassionate with the kids in the war. Did you already have friends in the neighborhood at that age?

22:22 I had friends.

22:25 I don't remember any particular friends. I have friends and neighbors what they were my mother's friends. They were my mother's fellow students at Webster college. So not kids no and I was bored by kids most at you know, when you have beautiful college students who can draw that's the or the kids your own age. It's there's no real contest for me. I've always preferred adults. I've always dialed so just so I did have in it was like my mother and my aunt Mary and my Aunt Peggy my grandmother took care of me, but then I had all these people around me. My mother's friends Susan hooking and Cathy Spaulding Allegra can well be a million a million people. So the first

23:09 I also had friends the person that took care of me some days the neighbor in Ballwin. My grandmother's neighbor in Ballwin. Her name is Anna mounts. And Anna had several kids who were kind of aliens. And I remember one of them the younger one is named as I can get them is Chris think I took my glasses eyewear glasses from like 18 months on a maybe even earlier you remember him taking my classes and throwing them into the fire and and they melted and my mother still has those pair of melted little glasses multiple glasses. So okay strike one against Christmas, but then then when I was recovering from my heel cord lengthening surgery, I had to learn to walk again and there's a story about how I learn to walk and I think Chris is older brother. I think this is right. He discovered that if he'd walk in front of me and he put a wiffle ball.

24:09 Behind him so that it seemed like I can grab onto something that I would get up on my feet and start to walk. And so that's how we taught me how to walk. Of course if I had fallen and I'm sure I grab the wheel. NFL right now and you know, but it was the perception of it. And so that's so the mounts family. I have some affection for them for that. So you're not in the store. You're not holding on to the wiffle bat until you think you're about to go down. You're just hurting like walking towards the NBA. That's right. That's a good point. It may could have been my could have been I was holding on to it as I did it and I think to I was probably wearing some pretty heavy braces at that point probably to keep my leg straight to keep the cords healing straight or have it would be but those things man those things hurt and they were heavy and I remember anymore ugly and I remember going to sleep with them and you couldn't move your legs so, you know,

25:09 Make you sleep in your legs would be in this one position for the entire night and couldn't really turn over. But yeah, they were not on I was glad to get those off they were heavy steel. They were not what they are today. I'm sure it's much lighter you are around the clock. I'm not sure. I don't remember. I remember sleeping them in them. I remember walking in them, but mostly I remembered them coming off.

25:39 How long have you been wearing them to you? Remember? No, I don't I don't and I don't remember how long I was going to waste gas either but I do remember cuz that's what it was. So I got the surgery and I was sent home I'll win it had to say one of my favorite memories of surgery is my my Aunt Mary who's my favorite person in the world. She had gone to England that during that time and she brought me back a couple of Corgi call. It cars including a a corgi double decker bus and I just loved it. I thought it was so great. So when I was sitting there in the hospital bed, I would have my cards and I would play with my car. That was great. So yeah, sweet. Yeah. Well, that's totally her. Right. I mean, that's so what do you think when you think back to St. Louis before you move in Jefferson City? There was one thing that you loved or one favorite memory. I want to tell you I had a friend. I did have a friend the first friend. I remember is a girl name.

26:39 Hulu which is a funny family story because I was five and I just this this this this girl and I were just Boon Companions and I said to my mom that I wanted to have her over for a sleepover and my mother was scandalized and wouldn't let me do it and I was so aggrieved and by that time I I I knew what sex was and I knew all sorts of things because I was hanging out with in a 23 year old in 1974, but I was just I was appalled because of course I was like that is not what I'm interested in I blew is my friend and I can't understand why you won't let me do this and blah blah blah to lose in the first friend. I remember you have any memories of the kinds of games you could play together or no, I remember, you know, I was always going to even then I was going to tease, you know, sort of weird schools. They sort of weird free to be you and me schools, you know, and I was frustrated because I wanted to conquer the world already.

27:39 Give me a test so I can get everything right already, you know, it was like

27:46 Physically, it was so hard for me that mentally I just started to Gallup. You know, what I've said. This is like it was like in a 1/2 of you was a Ferrari and the other half is that is a car that won't run until course. You spend more time in the Ferrari.

28:03 So yes, I remember playing I love dinosaurs in room playing with dinosaurs and her playing in the sand cars. You know, I like wish I had to I had an Evil Kenevil Mount motorcycle the thing that you crank up and when you let it go in at this thing had that a love that oh my God Six Million Dollar Man doll. I love sick mind on man for obvious reasons. You know my give me some bionic legs for God's sake please someone. Yeah, so but then it is energy trying to think it's there was one thing and it was like essential that I anyway, love gas the same? Jefferson City. What about if there's a happy memory cuz the stories you always tell us would have liked it wasn't your choice big step down from St. Louis.

29:03 Roll artists, you know, when you move to Jefferson City, which is basically a small town a small southern town early. It's a capital Missouri, but there wasn't much going on. Maybe now there is anyone who's listening? Who's Jefferson City? I apologize but in 1977 it was there wasn't much going on and I was used to living in a very kind of glamorous tip Greenwich Village you kind of area in St. Louis. I was trying to bite people who were artists and doing all sorts of weird stuff. I remember when my family moved to Jefferson City my mother turn to a friend's mother and said are there any good bars hear what she didn't know was one there aren't and to that woman was a born again Christian. So she was exactly the wrong person to ask but Jefferson City. Yes, I when I read about Jefferson City, I usually Play it For Laughs because my the house we lived in was crazy and full of roaches and full and drafty the

30:02 That the culture-clash was in Manson. I was already the person I am now and I wouldn't want to live in a place like ever since I'm sure they're plenty of nice people and I would like those people I would just be bored to tears not the kind of things that I would want to do, you know, Jefferson City when I was there.

30:23 People were it was like the South and the people were crazy about football and I like football I think football is great and I even played in my grade school football team. But but let's let that sink in there was a great school football team. And so, you know, if that's the route to Fame and Fortune for as a boy that was never where I was going to be I was getting into the newspaper for doing things in school, but but that wasn't valued at the same way, you know, that was some sort of suspect and so when people talk about like in the South and Midwest and all the rest that you know, kind of knowledge being suspect and in only face being what you were supposed to do while I experienced it firsthand where people were like the fact that I was so smart made people a little nervous and people in st. Louis got it a lot of the people that I was with you. No,

31:23 My mother's friends in and we'd hang out with people from her work Luellen's Pub and O'Connell's Pub. He's a writer's a newspaperman and all sorts of stuff.

31:35 Do you know she would pick me up from my weird school take me back to her figure drawing class. I would either play with clay or talk to the naked woman in the front of the room who was the model then she would take me to wherever she needed to go. Whichever bar. She was waiting waiting tables at she'd stick me on the the the Barstool between one kind of retro reprobate in another newspaper writer on deadline for the globe Democratic Post-Dispatch st. Louis globe-democrat, and we would talk and she would finish her shift and she would take me home we'd have some quickie dinner and then she would probably read to me her school work cuz she was in college. So I remember she used to read Alice to me or Dickens to me or WB Yeats to me. She read to me about all sorts of things. So that was really kind of a intellectually pretty intense environment and a very

32:35 Health environment and then I moved to Jefferson City which was much more of a

32:40 Conventional kid Boyhood, you know and and my mother had remarried by that time for my stepfather was in the picture and and he was great but he was also was very interesting that can kind of conventional family and he was also super young 22 or 23 forget that scene 23 when they got married and he didn't know how to raise a boy much less a boy who was kind of like from the planet.

33:11 Harvard, you know. Yeah, it's it was weird. It was weird. And so Jefferson City was

33:21 It was a it was a big adjustment. I will say that what I loved about Jeffords today and I did dearly loved it is the reason we were moved there was it my father was a photographer for a historically black college actually Lincoln University Lincoln University, which was a land grant College. I think it was founded in 1866 or 67. It was right after the Civil War end, so I got to know a lot of instructors there and I got to know a lot of the students in a lot of the students students were great. They were mostly kids as I remember. They were mostly kids either local local or from the Deep South to come up to get an education and I think they might have been a lot of them the the first kids to go to college. And so it was great. It was it was super they were they were neat. And so I spent a lot of time with them because I would be babysat by the time or my father was going to photograph of a sporting event. So I'd sit in the crowds and they all

34:21 Had a other work division 2 school and they had a a basketball team that went to the final eight. I think of of the division 2 1 year or two players Harold Robertson was it was a guard or shooting guard I believe or maybe a Ford but I think the guard and Tim Adney was the point guard and those players were wonderful players. And so I remember that year going to so many of those games at Lincoln and just loving that team as a picture of me with those two players Harold got drafted by the Lakers and I don't think he ever play in the NBA or maybe you asked for a year to be mad at me I had

35:05 Google search the couple years ago and he was the athletic director of Lincoln and for wild least. I don't know if he still is but but both of those guys and I remember hanging out with those college kids to like those guys. They were always very sweet and decent to me and I'm sure they saw that I have cerebral palsy. I'm sure they called me little Greg. My my stepfather's name is Greg. And so they call me little Greg and it was great. It was great. So so, you know, I I I talk a lot of crap. I make a lot of jokes about Jefferson City and my crazy dog and having to walk him every morning and having him pull me around the block and knock me down and pull me around the block but there was a lot of good stuff too. And I really got into a lot of African American culture without knowing about it, which is really neat. And as I get older, I like reason why I went to school at Yale and and Yale has a really strong African American culture that that I was able to kind of connecting to

36:02 It's a little different because a lot of those folks came up from Georgia or North Carolina South Carolina. And the lot of people I knew at Lincoln came up from Alabama, Mississippi Arkansas. Would you say that that's probably where you got your love sports? Yeah sure competitive just quickly touch on the subject of you playing football was that your idea was that your dad's idea of both? I think my parents my parents decided at a certain point the way to deal with my disability was too sore to treat me like every other kid witch on one hand is good, but on the other hand and built in a lot of frustration because I'm super competitive and so

36:53 Yeah, I don't know if that was my mom and dad's idea but I like football out and and I want to do it. So I did it and I remember the story that the family has been with story about it. We're in my balance isn't very good always getting knocked down. I was getting knocked down but we were playing this must have been fourth grade. We were playing for the fifth grade. We are playing another team and I was on the defensive line or something, you know, and we started playing and my parents were watching and there was another game is older. It was high school kids were going to use the field after us and my parents noticed that the high school kids were watching me play and they were like by the end of the game. They were cheering me on and they were going over to my parents. I think is that your kick your kid never gives up. Your kid is great at this amazing. I'd we just were they were rooting for me which was you know, that's the kind of

37:48 That's the kind of person you have to be if you are in a situation like that. There are other stories that are less.

37:56 Wasn't I remember having been forced to run to run a hundred-yard dash in 5th grade in front of the entire school with a bunch of other kids for migrating, of course come in dead last and just at the end just laughing, you know, just being which is bitterly laughing because it was so obvious that this was such a terrible idea. So many of the adults St. Louis were very tuned into me and a lot of it and wanted to work with my disability. They never had a kid like me as smart as me or with my physical challenges. So I suffered at the hands of some of those teachers and I I do forgive them, but I do remember at 2.

38:47 I think thank you. That's right. That's all really interesting. I was going to end with this one last question. I hope we can wrap it up and the time available. So there's a there's a lot of things here people not really seeing you or not giving you a choice you finding yourself into situations are not ideal for you and I wanted to ask you if you have felt like our move to Los Angeles gave you enough opportunities to make it our decision or did did it somehow feel a little like history was repeating. No, no well know. I would say it did feel a little bit like history was repeating itself and that I was going. Okay. Well, we'll see what happens here. All right you want to do this will do this and I'll make the best of it but the moment I got here that changed and the reason that it changed was

39:44 You know historically California and La is a place where you can really Define yourself to it to be whoever you want to be. And so there was there's a lot of range of how people are here and I felt that from the moment. I got here that that's true wasn't at the Historical thing or what California says about itself. I think that California is a place that you can kind of make your life the way that you want or my case the way you need it to be so I felt and have always felt a level of openness and acceptance here that has been transformative. I have been able to connect him with all sorts of interesting physical modalities alternative therapies that saved my life from the illness that you and I haven't touched on the 20 year olds that I had.

40:33 I didn't feel the psychic space to do that in New York, even or in Chicago or the Midwest or certainly not Missouri, you know, so the moment that I got here California became mind because it accepted me for who I was

40:51 Thank you.

40:56 Wow, that's a lot of a lot of ground. I guess. Did you have any moves that gave you sort of any taste of that or were they before this more involuntary to college when I went away to college and felt a lot of excitement and a lot of ability to make myself and who I wanted to be when I moved to New York after college ya know those those moves were those moves worst felt similar when I move to Seattle for a year in 1995.

41:33 Okay, I'm just interested because we talked a little bit about you know, what what our lives what are our lives? What are we doing? And I think about all the moves you had in your life and challenges you faced and I thought it would be interesting to talk about like like a like a post-mortem. What went. Well, what would you do differently? What would you do to protect your well just like facing new changes in life. Like I don't I don't know what the second half of our Lives is going to be like, but I just thought it would be interesting to talk about and he don't it does it does sound like you can

42:16 It is right. Does it sound true that you can find something in any situation? Sure sure, and I think like for example, if I were to even places that I've had felt that I haven't felt very well-liked Jefferson City if I win if I would have to move back to a small town and in rural area. I'm sure I'd find things that that I would benefit from. I mean, I'm getting to the age now where I need to be near a hospital and I need to you know be near somebody giving me in a Lyft or Uber. You know, it's been great to have the three wheel bike here because it allows me to kind of mobility and autonomy that I've never had in my life. So often times when I think about moving to someplace else it's more logistical than anything else, but I do know for myself that really what I'm interested in is people. I mean, that's what I love and there's always interesting people ever.

43:16 We should go. Yeah, definitely. So so I like it here very much.

43:25 But I know that wherever I would move I would figure out a something good about it. Yeah.

43:35 Well, that's it. Those are my questions.

43:38 I can't even do anything spurred on by those know they were all very thorough answers and and some interesting things along the way.

43:51 I don't think I remember the story. I don't think I've ever heard the story of the nurse who said hey isn't working for me. That's funny cuz I think about that all the time whenever anybody says yeah, you know.

44:07 It was

44:10 That was rough man. I I don't I don't know to what degree that those memories are informed by Yuna Wars war movies that I've seen since but when I think about it, it's been through rough stuff that there was no

44:25 That there was no alternative.

44:29 2

44:32 There was no alternative to

44:35 Turning towards Humanity in it turning towards empathy turning towards sympathy try and everybody to get to get everybody through it and kind of getting bigger than myself. It was so difficult. It was so unpleasant. It was so uncomfortable. It was so alarming that the only way to really get through it is too kind of drop your ego and drop your drop your sense of a fixed and permanent self that separate from others. Like if you put yourself in service you've said this but it's really true if you put yourself in service and look around and say who needs help.

45:18 It's much easier to get through a situation which you think I need help, you know, because you're creating a world where people help each other.

45:28 You know, it's in a powerful personality and I found that I've had that from the beginning from birth is powerful personality. I can make environment where people help each other. Well, that's a nice thing. It's a Christian thing. I'm not a Christian person, but that's the guy with the Christian thing to do but it's also selfish because that's a world. I work better into we have to stop but that was fascinating. Thank you so much for talking about this with me.