Hey there folks, welcome to episode 7 of A Pebble in a Pond Podcast.
John Steinbeck once said, if a story is not about the hearer, he or she will not listen.
A great lasting story is about everyone, or it will not last.
The strange and foreign is not interesting, only the deeply personal and familiar.
I always planned on making multiple episodes like this one.
When I thought about the podcast, this is kind of what I originally envisioned.
At some point in time I'd like to do entire episodes of listener submitted stories.
We're still not there yet.
They're still trickling in, but I really would like to be able to just sit here and tell
people's stories.
And anyone that heard the podcast would start to get a feel for the kind of people that
were listening and the stories that they all had to tell.
We're not there yet, but I am going to tell a few of my own stories of things that have
happened in my life and moments that changed me and the people involved forever.
I also have a short story that was submitted by somebody that listens to the podcast apparently.
And I'm going to give that a quick read as well.
Now let me be really clear about this.
I had a lot to think about for this episode.
And I was really, even now I'm kind of going back and forth in my mind over the order that
I want to tell these in and how exactly I want to do this.
Because it really does matter how you format these stories.
But what I've decided to do is I'm going to start with a more serious and honestly kind
of a disturbing story.
That's not one that I'm thinking about that I don't think I've ever told anybody the entire
story.
And part of that is because I had kind of blocked out parts of it.
And it wasn't until a conversation just a few months ago that I started to remember
like key pieces of it.
And now I feel like I have the whole story.
There may be some stuff that I'm still not able to remember.
But I'm going to do my best to tell this story because I know that it is a disturbing and
unhappy story that ends in the best way possible.
So I'm going to warn everybody now that there could be or there probably should be a trigger
warning for the first story that I'm going to tell.
And that story will involve some violence and an attempted I guess I can say it on the podcast,
right?
Attempted rape and some underage drinking and possible drug use.
Now that all sounds horrible when I say it all like that.
But trust me when I tell you this is not a story that ends badly for everybody.
So just trust me when I tell you, you know, just suffer through the bad parts to get to
the good part.
It's all important.
And honestly I feel good about telling the story.
So then like I said I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to read a user submitted story.
It's a short one but it does have some meat to it.
So I'll go ahead and read that and then we'll talk about it real briefly and then we'll
finish up with a positive story, a happy story.
And that's what we have.
We're just going to do story time and that's why the episode is called Story Time.
So let's get started.
Okay.
So how do we start the first story?
I guess we start near the beginning.
If some of you have arrived here from TikTok then you'll know that I've told a story that
kind of ties into this on TikTok.
This is about a particular point in my life that I am at the same time very proud of but
also very regretful of.
And you're going to understand that pretty quickly here.
When I was, I don't even really know the particular age range but let's just say 20ish or young
20, early 20.
My friend and I, well actually my two friends and I were very very much driven by thoughts
of justice and stopping crime and things like that.
Now part of it was we were still coming out of our kid phase where we had all wanted to
be superheroes but other parts of it were where we grew up and how we grew up.
It wasn't hard.
We grew up in the suburbs but we saw a lot of the kind of, the way that some people would
just get away with so much and other people would have their entire lives ruined by a
simple mistake.
And it just didn't sit right.
We went to a relatively affluent high school and there were kids that would literally walk
through the high school halls selling drugs to teachers and nobody would say anything
and nobody would stop them.
And then at the same time there would be a kid that would be caught with a bag of pot
and he would be expelled.
And it just didn't make sense.
It really, at the time it really bothered us a lot.
It still bothers me to this day to just see how unfair the system seemed to be to a lot
of people and how some people just got away with whatever they wanted to.
So this all kind of culminated, there were a lot of things that we did.
I have stories that I could tell for days about that and different things that we did
to try to I guess meet out our own justice if you will.
But it ends with us joining the Guardian Angels in the city that we live in.
There was a downtown chapter of the Guardian Angels.
For those that aren't aware of what the Guardian Angels are, and I don't know if too many people
listening to this are painfully unaware of that, but the Guardian Angels are a group
of, they call this visual deterrence.
That's what we were.
We were a group of people that started in New York City and I would say the name of
the guy that started it and all that stuff, but there's just no reason to get into that
because he's kind of a jerk.
I mean, allegedly, obviously.
But I had joined this group because I had seen them out in the streets and I had heard
about them and I read about them and I decided that if I couldn't go put on a mask and be
a superhero that at the very least I could go help somebody.
And I knew that that's what they were trying to do.
They were trying to weed out some of the drug problems.
They were trying to help people that needed it.
They were trying to, in general, just clean up the city a little bit and do it in a way
that was positive.
It was not a, I guess you could say it was a little bit of a shock once my friends and
I joined because in your head you get this kind of romanticized idea of what these crime
stoppers are like and when you get into, when the first time you roll up to meet them all
is the middle of a park and they've got literal just a rope on the ground set up as your sparring
area and there's just, it was literally the most rag tag collection of people you could
imagine.
And one thing that I would like to point out is that when we trained, the man that trained
us was a former Marine and he took it very seriously.
And at the time I didn't really understand it.
Now just as a side note here before I continue with that, it's important to understand that
when I was, I want to say 10, 10 or 11, I started taking Kung Fu.
Now the particular form of Kung Fu that I took was not one that could be competitive.
You couldn't enter into tournaments because you didn't learn how to fight for points.
You learned how to fight for real.
So a lot of the stuff that I learned to do were throat strikes and eye strikes and sweeping
people's legs out and things like that.
Like it's just not stuff that you did in tournaments.
So I never really got into that part of the martial arts community.
I was just learning how to fight.
And then we moved away a couple of years later and when I moved, the interest was still there.
The desire was still there, but I was nervous and anxious about meeting new people and things
like that.
So it took me some years after that to kind of get my bearings and get, you know, understood
what I was doing.
And then I started to meet some people that were doing some martial arts and some people
that I ended up hooking up with people that were actually very well known.
And I'm not going to name names here, but very well known in the martial arts community.
And I ended up going and doing some of their classes and some of their camps and things
like that.
And it really did encourage a spark in me to continue to learn to fight and to take
care of myself.
So I have a little bit of a background.
Usually I don't have the background of a Marine who's training people how to fight, which
ties us back to the original story again.
But I did know how to fight.
So when we show up at the very first meeting, I wasn't completely out of my element.
I now granted, like I said, I hadn't done tournament fighting, but I had done fighting.
I had learned to fight.
So when we get in and they give us some gloves and some headgear and we get in and we start
fighting, sparring it with each other.
This is the first time we literally show up, introduce ourselves, and just start fighting
each other.
That's how that story starts really, is just us fighting each other.
And one of the things that I learned very quickly is that I can really take a punch.
I really, really can take a punch.
And I don't mean just one.
I mean, I get into the ring, I say with quote fingers, like I said, it's just a rope on
the ground.
And I get in and we stand there and I start sparring with this Marine.
And he just obliterates me, but I don't fall down.
I mean, he hits me probably six times right across the head, but I don't fall down.
And I'm not really able, I'm not fast enough at the time to really return any punches.
I'm just guarding myself.
And so he starts to punch, he starts to try to get in and start trying to work my body
a little bit and trying to, he wants me to fall.
He wants me to fall down.
He's trying to, I guess that's the Marine in him trying to break me, trying to make
me fall down.
And he just couldn't do it.
And I just sat there and I took every punch that he had.
And I couldn't, like I said, I couldn't really return.
I couldn't really counterpunch because he was just too fast for me.
But I knew that, I also knew that he couldn't knock me down.
I knew that he was never going to get me down.
So that was kind of the start of what people started to know about me.
Like that was, nobody had ever stood in the ring with him.
Nobody had ever stayed up.
Nobody.
And that goes back to his, when he was active military, this is a guy that knew how to fight.
This was a guy that knew how to kill.
And even he said afterwards, nobody's ever stood up for as long as you did against me.
He's like, I don't know what you did.
I don't know if your head gear was on wrong and you just couldn't feel the punches, but
nobody's ever stayed up.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I don't feel pain.
Getting hit by that guy hurt.
But I just knew that if I fell, that people would, I guess you shouldn't say knew that.
I thought that.
I thought that if I fell, that people would think less of me.
And the idea that these people that I just met and these people that I was trying to
be on their team and join up, the idea that they would think less of me was enough to
just, I would have ran through a wall at that point in time.
And there wasn't going to be much of anything that was going to stop me.
So that's the start of the story.
And the reason I wanted to bring that up, you'll see.
I've always been pretty resilient.
I've always had a decent amount of endurance.
And not endurance in the sense that I can run far distances for a long period of time,
not that kind of endurance, but endurance in the sense that I can really take a punishment.
So as time goes on, we end up patrolling and joining and patrolling and doing all the things.
And at first we just went downtown and we just wandered around on the streets on nights
like Fridays and Saturday nights and things like that.
But as we kind of branched out, people started to recognize us, people started to know us.
So as we branched out, we started to go into some of the worst and worst parts of the city.
One particular patrol point that we would have is my partner and I, which everybody
had a partner.
Now, my partner was not one of my friends.
My friends partnered up on their own.
The other two guys that joined with me, they have their own stories.
And I joined up with one of the other guys.
Now, the guy that was my partner, I won't say his name because his, we all had street
names, we all had call signs basically.
And his call sign was actually his last name.
So I'm not going to say his name, but I will tell you that his name was Mike.
So Mike and I, we were partners.
And we were in pretty much constant contact with each other.
This was when beepers were really popular.
He had a cell phone, but I did not.
And so I just had a pager.
And he used to hit me on that pager like multiple times a day with like all sorts of cryptic
number messages and things like that that I'd have to decipher.
But he and I used to patrol out at a club.
Now this was not a club that was downtown.
This club was a little ways removed from downtown, but it had become synonymous with sexual assault
cases and rapes.
And what would happen was these club organizers would have a, they had a night where it was
17 and up with ID, but nobody ever checked the ID.
And so you'd get these girls that were 15 and 16 that were showing up and going to this
club.
You know, obviously for a lot of girls that are 15, they look 17, they look 25.
You know, it's just, it's just a matter of, you know, how they do their makeup and how
time has affected them.
So a lot of, a lot of those situations ended really badly because these were young, young
girls that were showing up to go to a club and didn't have the, the wherewithal and the
understanding of what they were walking into.
Now you do that a couple of nights and sooner or later, that's going to start to draw the
predators, the men that are there to take advantage of that.
Now those men, you know, some of those men were there all the time, but, but a lot of
them, when they, when, when they started to realize what the club was doing and what the
club was promoting, it, it proliferated in a way that was not just disturbing, but, um,
you know, the quote from Star Wars, you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and
villainy.
That's kind of what this club was like.
So with that in mind, um, I want to say that we patrolled on, uh, Tuesdays and Thursdays
primarily.
They had, uh, the club had a, did a decent job of keeping off duty police people there,
um, on like Friday and Saturday, which those are the big like normal club nights.
So they did a good job of keeping that patrolled there.
But during those weekdays where they would have, and these are school nights too, keep
that in mind.
So you've got 15, 16 year old girls going out on school nights.
Um, not that, you know, I care that much about school nights, but I'm just saying that's
something, you know, something to keep in mind is how scummy these promoters were.
But uh, Mike and I, we used to go out there on, of our own volition.
This was not something that was like a, a guardian angel sanctioned patrol necessarily.
I mean, it was because our leader knew that we were doing it, but it was also not like,
like the whole team wasn't out there.
It was just Mike and I, and we did it kind of as, you know, volunteer service.
Really?
We were just going out there because the cops weren't out there.
So uh, in that period of time, it was probably a, uh, I want to say 10 month period of time
that we patrolled there.
Um, I saw, I saw a lot, I experienced a lot.
I am not going to lie to you and tell you that, uh, most of mo let's, let's put it this
way.
Most of the memories of that, uh, those interactions are, um, disturbing to me.
Uh, I saw women at their absolutely most terrified at the worst point in of their life.
And the only thing that stopped it from, for at least nine women, the only thing that stopped
it from becoming the actual worst moment of their entire existence was me and my partner.
And I know that, um, now the story I'm going to tell you here is, um, I guess you could
say nine and a half, and this is the story of the half.
And it's like I said, this is not a great story to tell, uh, but it is a story that
has a happy ending.
So just, just stay with me.
I know I've had a long intro to this, but I wanted to make sure that you had context
for what I was doing and why I was there.
So we're going to, I'm going to set this up here and then we'll get to the part that I,
I know is going to be a little disturbing.
So this was a Thursday night and, uh, Mike and I had been out on patrol.
Now, when I say we'd been out on patrol, uh, at this place, basically the club was set
inside of a strip mall and the, the nights that they would do their big events and, you
know, the weekends, things like that, this, this, the parking lot of the strip mall would
fill with cars.
And I mean, this is a large parking lot and it was completely full of cars.
This place was, was just killing it.
They just were making so much money because they were the only club in town that was doing
these like underage nights, basically.
Now I, you know, just saying that, uh, especially now in today's world gives me a like visceral
ick feeling.
Um, but this was, you know, this was back then and that's what people did.
Uh, that's what some, you know, some clubs at least thought it was a good idea to have
an underage night.
So Mike and I had been out patrolling for, I would say probably about an hour.
Um, we got there right around, I think it was about 9 PM.
It could have been a little bit earlier because we, we wanted to get set up and, uh, usually
we would get there and we would set up a, uh, a patrol point.
We would start, um, from basically just outside of the entrance of the club.
The club owners knew we were out there.
So we would start just outside the entrance of the club and we would keep like, we had
a couple of radios and we had like bottles of water and stuff like that, like refills
and stuff that we would set up there so that we could, you know, we would basically do
a couple of laps and then we would, uh, go there and replenish or take a break or whatever
for a few minutes.
Uh, so we would set up our, our, our patrol point and then we would, um, we would basically
just start patrolling.
Now what was interesting about this, and I know that this is, you know, maybe this is
too much information for some folks, but what's interesting about it is that we would like,
if we were patrolling in a city street, we would just walk down the sidewalk.
And the whole point was for us to be visually there and people see us and know that we were
essentially as they call us vigilantes and not to, you know, not to do stuff.
Don't do the crime, right?
Like you see the people there to stop the crime, don't do the crime.
But, uh, we were, um, in this case we weren't, we weren't necessarily trying to be visual
deterrents.
Um, we, we understood the people that we were dealing with, right?
Like they're, these are, these are men that are, you know, they're not, they're not going
to stop their behavior because they see a couple of dudes in red berets walking around.
That's just not how these, these kind of men work.
So we weren't so much there to be visual deterrents.
We were still wearing our, you know, our shirts and our berets and everything, and we were
still there to be prominent.
Um, but we weren't, we also weren't trying to be prominent.
We knew that, uh, these men were, you know, scumbags.
They were sneaky and, uh, they would get these girls out in their cars and, you know, do
whatever they wanted with them.
So, um, we, we were actively trying to, you know, essentially hunt.
I mean, I hate to use that word, but that's what we were doing.
We were trying to find these people.
We're trying to find these men that were doing these things.
And so we would oftentimes, we would split up, but we would always maintain visual contact.
We would, we would see each other and we would basically comb through rows of cars.
And you know, there were plenty of nights.
We did this for, like I said, like 10 months.
Uh, there were plenty of nights where we never found anything.
Uh, there was, you know, it was everything for the most part was on the up and up or
we just had really poor timing.
Uh, but there were also plenty of nights where we, we did find stuff.
And this particular night, um, like I said, we got there around nine 30, uh, we'd been
there about an hour.
The underage stuff, uh, usually went for about two and a half hours.
They usually wrapped it up, uh, around 11, 11 30.
Um, so, uh, people would, you know, start to file out into the parking lot around, well,
I guess not all people, but a good portion of the people, the, the underage crowd and
stuff like that, uh, would, would file out, um, around midnight.
They'd all be going to their cars.
Now here's one of the really scummy things about these promoters that I actually just
thought of is that these were underage nights, but they were only underage for girls.
So if you were 17, which meant 15 or 16, um, if you were 17 and a girl, you could get in
for free.
Obviously they didn't serve you drinks.
Um, I don't think they even served alcohol those nights, which is one of the ways that
guys would get girls into their cars.
They would tell them, Oh, I've got some, something to drink in the car.
And the girls would go out there to drink with them.
But, um, they, you, it wasn't, it wasn't open for young men, right?
Like, so you had to be 21 and up to be a man to get in.
It wasn't, it wasn't even 18 and up.
It was 21 and up to go hang out with 15 year old girls.
That's how scummy these people were.
And what, what's so disturbing about it was, like I said already, these parking lots were
full of cars.
And what's even worse about it now that I really am thinking about it is what kind of
parent drops your daughter off there?
Like, who thinks that's okay?
Like, I know that this was a different time, but even, even like I lived through it.
I don't know.
Maybe it's just me.
I, I, I couldn't have done that.
Uh, if it, if it had been my daughter, I couldn't have dropped her off there.
But then I kind of saw what was happening there.
So, so anyway, we had been there about an hour.
We knew that they were going to be, people were going to start filing out.
You know, we had about an hour and a half or so before people started filing out.
So we were midway through a patrol.
Now it's hard for me to really describe the parking lot and the way it was set up this
way.
I would have to draw it out and that's not really worth it.
But there was basically a building that was in the middle of the parking lot.
And at the time it was, I think it was a, I want to say like a auto shop of some sort.
But anyway, the behind the building was one of the places where we would most often find
people fooling around.
Now here's a little insight into the mind of some of these sickos.
They intentionally would go to this place because they knew the people that were legitimately
like adults would go fool around behind this building.
And they knew that if they were just back there with these girls and they could get
the girls high enough or drunk enough that the girls wouldn't, you know, any of their
protestations would not be necessarily thought of as anything out of the ordinary because
that's where people were going to fool around.
So these guys, these were like, I mean, these weren't smart guys, but they were literal
predators, right?
Like they knew what they were doing.
They were going there to take advantage of young girls in, you know, a situation that
these girls should never have been in because of these promoters.
So as we get through this particular night on the patrol, we start to get back to where
this area is behind this building.
Now it's really important to understand the reason I tell you all that is because we knew
that people legitimately went back there to fool around after going to the club, you know,
everybody's dressed sexy, everybody's, and you know, we're not trying to stop people
from having a good time.
That's not what we were there for.
We were there to protect people.
And so we had to be very careful in this particular area because it would have been just catastrophic
if we would have busted up people that were legitimately just doing the do and, you know,
started to rough up some guy that was, you know, him and his girlfriend were just having
a good time.
Like that would have been catastrophic for us.
That's not something that we could have ever allowed.
So we had to be very careful.
And not only that, but, you know, we also didn't want to be creeps.
These are people that are making out in their cars that are getting pretty hot and heavy
in their cars.
And we didn't want to be the guys that were like creeping around the cars, like looking
in windows and stuff.
So we had to be very careful in this scenario.
So what we would often do is Mike would go around one way and I would go around the other
way and we would just stand on the corners of the building.
We could still see each other, but it was, you know, it was probably, I would say, 50
yards maybe wide.
And we would stand and we would just kind of, you know, scan the cars that were parked
there.
And obviously, you know, without getting too graphic, you know, some cars were a rockin'.
So we didn't, you know, just like I said, this happened multiple nights and this wasn't
a big deal to us.
This was something that we were used to seeing and something that we knew we had to tread
carefully with.
One of the things that we had learned, and this was after a few other scenarios that
I won't get into now, but one of the things that we had learned was in general, couples
used the back seat, people that didn't know each other used the front seat.
So I know that's kind of a weird thing to think about, but if you're comfortable and
you know you're going to go back there and do what you're going to do, you want to be
as, you know, you want to have as much room as you possibly can, I guess.
And so couples would just be like, all right, let's jump in the back seat.
And people that didn't know each other, people that were uncomfortable with each other, they
would sit in the front seat.
And that's one of the ways that we had kind of figured out to tell like what to look for.
So on this night, I'm standing on the right side of the building.
I look over and Mike motions to me that he thinks he sees something.
So I'm sorry, if I stammer a little bit, this is kind of like, it rushes back to me when
I start talking about it.
So he motions that he sees something and I start to head towards him.
But like I said, being careful not to intimidate or scare anybody that may be, you know, legitimately
there to just have a good time.
And I see the car that he's pointing to.
And it's, I'm really not good with cars.
I'm really not.
I know that it was a red, like with chipped paint on the front end.
I'll say like a Pontiac of some sort.
I mean, don't be mad at me car makers.
I don't remember.
But you could see this girl in the front seat and there was a dude in the driver's side.
And she was, I want to say, she wasn't completely out cold, but she was not, she was not aware.
She was not, you know, she didn't have her awareness and her faculties about her.
She was obviously very messed up and he was leaning over towards her.
You couldn't see what he was doing, but he was obviously touching her in some way.
So we sat for a few moments, not even a minute, but it seemed like a long time to us.
And we sat and we just observed because once again, we didn't want to bust in on anybody
that was legitimately having a good time.
And what was really surreal about this moment was that he was parked at the end of this
row of cars and right next to him, the car literally right next to him was shaking.
It was bouncing.
It was really funny now that I think about it, just the image of it.
But obviously what was happening was not funny, but the image of this guy and then the car
next to him just like basically lifting off its tires from its shaking.
Somebody was having a very good night that night.
Anyway, so we moved, well, kind of a pincer movement around the front of the car.
I was on the driver's side and Mike was on the passenger side.
And the guy was completely oblivious to us even existing at that point in time.
He was completely focused on this girl.
So as I moved, I was standing to where I was a little bit behind the driver's side door
to where I could open the door and get out of the way if I needed to.
So Mike used to carry large mag light flashlights.
And so Mike takes his flashlight out and taps on the window, on the passenger side window.
And the guy jumps and the girl kind of like, he tapped loud and it was right next to her
head, so she kind of starts to kind of wake up and she's blurry eyed and she starts to
cover herself.
This guy had started to take her top off and who knows what else.
So she starts to cover herself.
She wasn't showing anything, but you could tell that her top was loose.
So Mike asked the guy to roll down the window and the car was on.
So if the guy really wanted to, he could have just taken off.
I mean he could have tried.
So Mike asked the guy to roll down the window and the guy's like, who are you?
I'm not rolling down the fricking window.
So Mike's like, please sir, roll down the window.
We're just trying to check, make sure everybody's having a good time.
And then what was interesting is the car next to us that was doing all the rocking had actually
stopped.
So they got a show.
So Mike, and I'm trying to remember exactly the order of the phrasing here, but Mike basically
tells the guy, you know, you need to open the window or I'm going to break the window
in.
And the guy's like, you know, you don't you touch my car and blah, blah, blah.
Well this guy still hasn't recognized the fact that I'm there.
So I very deliberately and trying to be as careful and cautious as I can put my hand
in the door handle to lift it and the door wasn't locked.
So I'm able to just lift the door and I don't open it.
I just have the door.
So I give Mike a head nod to let him know that I have position basically.
And so Mike taps again really, really hard and almost almost hard enough to break the
glass, you know, and tells the guy, you know, you need to you need to open the window or
step out of the car.
And it's becoming very obvious.
I couldn't see her.
But according to Mike, it's becoming very obvious this girl had no idea where she was.
She was completely and totally, you know, she was grabbing clothes and like putting
things over her and was scared, like immediately scared.
I did not did not know what was going on.
So oh, sorry, I just just thinking about it just makes me so angry.
So Mike tells this guy, you know, I'm going to I'm going to bust in the window.
And the guy goes to like he's leaning, like looking out the passenger window.
And when Mike wraps on the on the window, the guy turns and starts to engage the car
like he's going to take off.
So I already had the door open.
So I open up the door.
I grabbed the guy.
He didn't have a seatbelt on, obviously.
So I just grabbed the guy and I go to pull him out.
Well, and this is where the the the training montage that you imagined earlier came in.
The guy is in a really odd position because I'm basically standing behind and to his left.
And as I grab him, he turns and starts to swing his arm.
I don't imagine he knew I was there.
And I don't know who he thought he was swinging at.
But I promise you, he didn't think it was me.
So I'm grabbing him to pull him out of the car.
And that's when I realized that it wasn't her top.
I mean, her top was off.
But she was she was basically naked from like the down from the top down.
And she had you know, this guy had been taking advantage over this whole time and she was
out.
Like she had no concept of it.
So she's, you know, trying to cover herself up and put whatever clothes she can find on.
She couldn't find her underwear and things like that.
But she was trying to cover herself because there's just two men now or assaulting them.
And so I grabbed this guy and I'm pulling him out.
And I'm I'm kind of stunned because I you know, that's not something you expect to see
when you open the car door.
So this guy hits me.
And he got me real good right across the lower my lower left jaw.
He was so with his right hand.
And he hit me right along lower left jaw.
If if I hadn't been somebody that could take a punch, this would have knocked me out.
I know it would have.
It was definitely rung my bell.
I could hear my like literally you can hear when you don't know if you've ever been punched
or not.
But when you get punched across the face or in the jaw, it makes your ears ring.
And immediately, that's what I'm hearing.
And so he starts wailing on the side of my head.
But after the first punch, I was able to get my head down.
So he's basically hitting me.
And I just I just moved my head away from the mic when I said that.
It's funny.
He's hitting me in the top of the head, which does nothing like is it doesn't there's no
point in that.
So he's just hitting him hitting his fist on my skull, which, you know, I'm sorry for
your fist, buddy.
But in general, something that you need to understand from this point is that in general,
if somebody starts striking at me or anybody that that gives me fair game.
Right.
Like I can I can respond.
Now, I'm not in a position to be able to do anything.
I'm just pulling this guy out of the car.
So I pull him out.
I finally get him out.
It's kind of tough.
He's he's not big, but he's a little bit stronger than I am.
And so he he kind of comes out of the car and and I'm his feet are still in the car,
but I'm pulling him.
So he kind of doesn't have the ability to catch his feet and he fall, fall, falls out
and actually falls into the car that was rocking.
And I don't I don't want this guy to get his bearings.
I don't want him to be able to stand on his feet.
I don't want him to be able to, you know, hit me anymore.
So realizing that he's starting to fall, I stomp on the back of his ankle.
As somebody who's dealt with a broken ankle, I from from that point on, I've always thought
of whenever I've gotten into any sort of physical altercations, I've always thought of take
their ankles, take, you know, take them out there because I know what it's like.
It's you know, there's nothing that will affect your mind more than not being able to move
your ankle.
So I stomp on his ankle.
Now, obviously, this is extremely painful.
I didn't break anything, but it you know, it hurts real bad.
And so this guy can't get up.
Now it's important to understand not only has he, you know, assaulted me multiple times.
Now granted, I was grabbing him out of his car, but I knew like I knew what had happened.
There's no way that this girl was aware of what had happened to her.
And this guy had got some sort of drug in her and was taking advantage of her.
So I didn't there was no there was not even a second of doubt.
I knew exactly what I was doing.
And I knew exactly who this guy was.
And I knew exactly what he had been doing to this girl.
And so I never I never there was never a moment where I hesitated or I thought, oh, this guy
doesn't deserve this.
So this is where it gets a little graphic.
And I want to make sure that I warn everybody because this is, you know, more graphic than
before.
So so he screams a little bit and, you know, like kind of grunts and starts to stand up.
And then he this happened all the time.
Like these guys, when you would catch them doing these things, they go from being, you
know, Billy Badass, where they're taking advantage of 15 year old girls and they think they're,
you know, Don Juan Casanova to just, you know, not really crying, but they they realize that
they're caught.
Right.
Like, like, it's kind of like the Chris Hansen, you know, stuff where these guys start, they
start like blubbering.
Well, this guy didn't quite get there yet.
He he was indignant.
And he just started saying, like, just really horrible shit.
Like, oh, this.
And I'm going to say the stuff he said, please, please don't be upset.
But he's like, oh, that bitch deserves it.
Oh, she loved it.
Oh, she, you know, and he's saying all this stuff, you know, like almost bargaining with
me.
Like, like, I don't know what saying this kind of stuff is supposed to do, like to save
his ass at that point in time.
But you know, that wasn't that wasn't the way to go.
So he started saying, you know, oh, she she loved it or she she was, you know, this and
that.
And talking about her, how she I don't want to say it.
He was saying some really crude, horrible stuff.
And so I told him, you know, at this point in time, I basically I'm I'm standing holding
him so that he's not bashing his head against the the car next to me.
And I've got him from behind, like his leg is behind me.
I've got my foot on it.
And he's just he's kind of looking up at me.
And at this point in time, Mike is starting to he has opened up the other door.
I guess she may have opened it.
I didn't see.
And he's starting to check on her and make sure she's secure and, you know, try to talk
to her.
And so I'm basically on my own with this guy.
And I don't know what's going on in this other car.
It stopped rocking.
They're just getting a front row seat to an ass whooping.
So this guy's talking to me, looking straight up at me.
And he I couldn't I saw his left hand because I had his I was on his left side and I saw
his I saw his left hand, but I couldn't see his right hand.
And I, you know, I was on his ankle, so he wasn't going anywhere.
So as I'm as he's saying this stuff, I see him kind of twist his body kind of twists
in a weird way.
And I don't know if I wouldn't say I was trained for this.
I wouldn't say that I necessarily expected it.
I just had a feeling, I guess you could say.
And in that feeling, like I said, I was I was holding his his left shoulder so I could
see his left arm and I was holding him back so that with my foot on his ankle.
So I'm trying to describe this so that you can kind of imagine it a little bit better.
But he had a knife and I don't I didn't see it.
I didn't even think about it.
But he had a knife.
I don't know if it was in his belt or if his pocket or what the situation was, but he did
have a knife.
And as I kind of anticipated it, he reaches, you know, he I see his body twist.
I anticipate whatever he's doing.
And he pulls the knife out and he kind of goes up over his like in an arching motion
over his own right shoulder.
And he's basically trying to stab me in the face with this knife.
It wasn't a big knife.
It was like a pocket knife.
And he's he's coming up in this like arching motion over his own head and shoulder.
And I don't think I knew to do was just get out of the way.
Right.
Like I don't I'm not going to try to stop him with a knife in his hand.
So I just let him go.
And because I was on his ankle and he was trying to move and get up, he couldn't.
And he just fell right into the car.
And he hits his face and that wrenches his body a little bit so he can't.
But he's he's also now moving in a way that I can't really stand on his ankle.
So I move and he starts to get up and he has this knife in his hand.
And I see him start to get up and he's like he's he's kind of on all fours, but getting
up.
So I just did the only thing I knew to do when I essentially tackled him up against
this this person's car.
And I don't know.
I don't know what happened, really.
I don't really remember the series of events after that.
I kind of blanked out.
And I do know that he still had the knife in his hand and he was trying his best to
get me with it.
And I was able to disable his his right right arm.
And I just hit him and I kept hitting him.
And it was it was the one of the only times that I remember in that entire period where
I kind of lost myself.
And that's one of the reasons why I tell you that this story is disturbing to me is because
I did I did lose my I did lose my temper.
I lost my my ability to kind of call myself a protector because at that point in time
I just wanted this guy to feel pain.
So I'm going to spare the details from this point on on what happened to this guy.
But let's I will say that he did end up having to go to the hospital.
He did end up having to have some reconstructive surgery on his face.
I'm not like I said, this is not something I'm proud of.
And this is not something that I'm telling.
I don't story I don't tell this to sound like a like I'm some sort of big bad ass.
I wish that I never had to do any of this stuff.
I never would have wanted to do that.
But I just kept thinking about the state this girl was in.
And like I said, you know, we had we'd saved a couple of different girls at that point
in time.
And we'd you know, but they were always this was always a situation where we'd walk up
on them and they were struggling.
You know, this was a fight.
And this was a situation where this was the first situation where I knew we had gotten
there too late.
Like this guy had definitely done something to this girl.
And I was just so angry.
I was so I felt like a failure because we weren't there in time.
And it's really hard to think about and to talk about because while there's nothing I
could have done to change it unnecessarily, you know, we got there when we got there and
there was nothing I could have done to be there sooner.
It's really hard to know that, you know, had I had I been there, you know, 10 minutes earlier,
it wouldn't have happened.
So anyway, Mike had been attending to her.
Her name was I don't want to say her name.
Let's call her Amber.
Let's call her.
Her name was Amber.
Let's say that.
I have to pause recording for a second.
Sorry about that.
A little weird edit there.
I just that was a little was a little rough.
Amber didn't remember any of it.
Amber doesn't.
Well, she did end up some years later.
Anyway, so Mike takes her.
We were able to get some of her clothes on.
We're able to get her.
We have some blankets that I ran back to the to the
the club.
Sorry.
And got a blanket for her.
And this actually what's crazy about it is that this spot that these guys would go to
that these couples would go to was not that far from the entrance.
It was, you know, maybe another 50 yards to the entrance.
So they didn't go very far.
I didn't have to run very far.
So I ran run over, grab a blanket, we get it wrapped up, we get her, we call the cops,
the cops come out, bring out an ambulance, end up filing multiple police reports over
multiple incidences that have happened now.
So I said this story had a happy ending, and I'm getting to that now.
So this guy ends up going to hospital.
Like I said, he had to have multiple surgeries.
The happy ending part of it is that well, there's two happy endings really, that this
guy actually had multiple warrants out for his arrest for sexual assault and for alleged
rape.
Apparently his then well, I guess she was his ex girlfriend at that point in time had
filed multiple police reports.
And I mean, if there's nothing else that infuriates you in this whole story, this should be the
thing.
She had filed multiple police reports and nothing had been done to stop this guy.
But she had she had literally complained multiple times and this guy had, you know, raped her
and had brutalized her and nobody had done anything.
Nobody had stopped him.
The cops didn't do anything.
So in this one moment, I beat the living piss out of this guy and get him where they can
catch him.
And they're like, oh, yeah, we have multiple complaints and multiple warrants out for this
guy's arrest.
So that's one one good thing.
This guy actually went to jail for life.
As far as I know, he's still in jail.
And because he had so many and they were these were all like provable offenses, like these
weren't these weren't like he said she said things.
These are like he had multiple witnesses, multiple women that came forth.
And this this actually went on for some, I want to say, like a year and a half afterwards
where they were still finding evidence of this guy.
I wouldn't say he was a serial rapist, but he was you know, this was something that he
had done multiple, multiple times.
And there were girls that that would come forth that that had actually been assaulted
by him in that parking lot that we were in.
And, you know, like before we ever started patrolling there, he was doing this.
So that's one good thing is that we were able to get this guy the life that he deserved.
And I hope that was awful.
And I don't regret I don't regret any of the pain that I caused this man.
I regret that I lost I lost my temper and that I let I let it get the best of me.
But I know that in the end, what I did is the reason why he wasn't able to hurt anybody
else.
So the other good thing about it was this girl, I almost said her name, Amber.
She stayed in contact with Mike and I, and her and Mike actually became very, very close.
They didn't it wasn't like that.
They didn't have a relationship or anything.
But he basically started to mentor her.
She was 16.
And she had gone to the club.
Her parents had dropped her and her friend off.
And her friend had left her.
Her friend, there were two guys that came up and started hitting on her friend and her
friend left her.
And so she was kind of a wallflower.
And she didn't feel very pretty.
And she all of these different things that kind of are the ultimate recipe for a predator.
And he this guy saw her and knew who she was and knew what he was looking for and got her.
And you know, we know how it ended.
But I I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I ever really understood exactly
what happened to her that night.
I Mike and her were very close.
And I know I'm sure she told Mike what she could remember.
But I I don't know.
I don't know what exactly happened.
I don't know what this guy did to her.
And honestly, I don't know if I want to know.
But I do know that, you know, she went on.
She had to go through lots of therapy.
And like I said, Mike ended up mentoring her and actually teaching her how to fight.
He actually trained her for a few years.
Mike had a very serious girlfriend at the time, and they lived together.
And this girl ended up basically like coming over to Mike's house and having like his girlfriend
and him.
They would make dinner and they would train and do all this stuff.
And it's actually, you know, despite how dark that story starts, it's actually a very, very
good ending because and this is I haven't heard about any of that for literally years
now.
It's been at least 15 years since I heard from them.
But well, 12 years, 12 years.
But last I heard Mike and her were still in contact.
She had started a job at a doctor's office or a dentist's office.
I'm not sure which, but she was doing really well.
She had had a relatively high paying job and was, you know, she was still in therapy and
she was still going through.
She still had a lot of issues.
I guess her family life was not great.
And that's one of the reasons why she ended up in this club was, you know, her mom just
was an absentee mother, just did whatever.
But with Mike's help and with my help a little bit, this girl ended up having, well, last
I heard, a very, very good life and was able to take that one moment that could have turned
into the darkest thing that had ever happened to her and maybe very, quite possibly could
have been.
That was able to be transformed by the actions of my partner and I on that, in that evening.
And the last thing I'll say about this is I'm not really proud to look back on the violence
that came with what I did, but I am extremely proud of the fact that for that entire period
of my life, when these women or girls would be at their worst point, when there was not
a face that they could have seen, a man's face that they could have seen that they would
have been happy about.
I know that in those moments that my face and the actions that I took renewed some of
their faith and made them feel better.
And if I have nothing else to take with me to the grave, it's that for those nine and
a half women, I was the difference and I was the face and they found comfort knowing that
I was there to protect them.
And that means everything to me and that is the essence of what I want to do here.
I want to help people and I want to protect people.
I want the world to be a better place and I want people to be more involved and I think
that's where I'm going to end that story.
I don't know if you can tell or not, there was a hard edit there because I needed to
take a few minutes telling stories about that period of time is difficult for me because
like I said, there was a lot of fear and anger that I saw and I dealt with.
I know what I did was good and I know that in a lot of those situations I was a good
guy for those people but it's still difficult to think about.
When you've looked into the heart of evil and that's what I really do consider men like
that, it can be difficult to find your way back out of it.
I think that it's important to tell those stories as dark and as scary and horrifying
as they are.
They are a reality of our world and the reason why I want to tell those stories is because
I think that as long as we are able to stay one foot in reality and understand that these
things happen and that there are people like this in the world, that it makes it that much
more important for people to not be like that, to be the counter to that.
For every man that there is like that, that is out there willing to take advantage of
and to hurt innocent people, innocent women and innocent girls, there needs to be ten
that are willing to fight and willing to stop it.
If we can get to that point where men and women alike are willing to defend and willing
to protect each other, then we're well on our way to a better world.
We're going to shift gears now, like I said.
I'm going to read this quick story.
This is a story that was submitted online.
It was not actually an email, it was a message.
So it is relatively short but I want to read it.
I think that it's a good story.
Also just keep in mind, anybody that listens to this, you can submit stories.
They don't have to necessarily be great uplifting stories, but they can be just stories that
have lessons in them and stories of a point in your life or stories of something like
that that will let other people listen, know who you are and know something about you.
I think this is a good example of that.
This is not a story that necessarily has a ringing, uplifting message, but it is uplifting
and it is great to hear stories like this.
So here we go.
I've been listening to a pebble on a pond and when he asked listeners to share stories,
I decided to share a little of my story as it relates to his messages.
My parents had seven children.
I was the middle child.
They did the best they could with what they had.
My mother always seemed stressed raising a brood of kids, doing household work and usually
holding down a full-time job.
My father was an amazing man, but he was an alcoholic.
We never knew if he would be happy or mean when he was drunk, so when he drank, which
was every weekend, we walked on eggshells, never knowing who he would go after if he
was pissed.
I was married twice.
Both men were alcoholics, mental and physical abusers, liars and cheaters.
I've skipped a lot of details, but suffice it to say these situations left me scarred,
mostly from the husbands.
After living with them, I had absolutely no self-esteem.
I was told I was crazy, stupid, boring, ugly and worthless.
I believed it had to be true, otherwise why would they cheat on me and treat me so horribly?
I didn't cheat on them, although I was accused of it a lot.
The podcasts talking about being nice and kind, honest and empathetic got me thinking
that I was all of those things most of the time and still am.
I believe I was that way because those traits attracted attention to me, and as a middle
child and neglected wife, I really needed attention.
I didn't love myself, though.
That's a really hard one to do, even for people who portray themselves as egomaniacs.
The catalyst to get to a point of caring about myself was my children and music.
Nothing in my life has brought me as much joy as those two things.
Now I have to note here that my kids weren't always perfect angels, far from it, but we've
had some good times, like Music Sundays, where we'd play just a few notes of a song using
a turntable and actual vinyl records, and we'd see who could guess the song the fastest.
One of us would man the turntable while the others would do the guessing.
That would go on for hours.
We went to a lot of concerts and movies, we played with our dogs and cats together, and
we laughed until we cried.
That joy made me understand that I was a good person.
I was worthwhile, and I could love myself and take care of myself so I could keep enjoying
what inspires me.
I look forward to more podcasts, more inspiration, straight talk, and more love.
That is a very good thing to read for me.
I very much appreciate that.
It makes me proud and happy to know that these couple of episodes that I've done have at
least touched somebody enough that they took the time to write that and share their story.
It's difficult to hear.
We all know everybody that hears this, everybody that follows me on TikTok, everybody knows
that we're all going through some shit.
The world is not always great.
We're always going through some sort of really bad shit in our lives.
When you read that or when you hear that, you realize that a lot of times the pain and
the anguish that we feel is something that is dropped on us by other people.
There are many people in this world that go through life living...
I don't want to say the right way because that sounds pompous, but living the way that
you would hope most people would want to live.
Living a life that is peaceful and full of love and light.
Those people oftentimes are the magnets that draw the worst out of people.
That's not fair.
It certainly isn't right.
Unfortunately, they say hurt people hurt people.
It's very hard for somebody that is damaged and really fucked up in the head to hurt somebody
who's already damaged.
They need to find these good people and ruin them.
I believe that that's the situation there.
You have somebody that genuinely just had a love for life and saw the good in people.
That's what ended up allowing these two husbands to not take advantage of, but to put her in
a position to be abused really.
She just wanted to believe so much in the goodness of these men and she saw what they
could be.
She saw potential.
At some point in time, that potential got to the point where it was never going to be
realized.
All of the burden that she had bared in service of that potential just became that much heavier
because she knew that they were never going to reach that potential.
I think that a lot of people can relate to that.
I think a lot of people can speak to that and say, I really thought that this person
was going to be better.
I really thought that this person was going to be the light in my life and that they were
going to be there forever.
They were going to be there next to me on my dying day.
That's the kind of thing that you think about when you love somebody.
Even when they're mean to you and even when they hurt you and even when they cheat on
you and even when they treat you badly, you hold onto that and you try to fight through
it until you can't anymore.
The reality is that we all are trying to hold onto these people.
We're trying to make them achieve what we know they can be.
Unfortunately, especially in this case with this particular letter, those reclamation
projects of trying to bring those men into the light, that's not a one person job.
If they have no interest in getting better, if they have no interest in healing and growing
and being better people and better men, then there's nothing that any woman can do to help
them.
That goes the other way as well.
Personally, I've seen it as a man.
I have seen it up close and personal.
Women aren't exactly immune from this.
Men are just a little bit more self-absorbed usually.
A lot of times they're too stupid to realize that they're doing anything wrong and that's
why some of them can be saved.
That's why some of them can be changed and some of them, their eyes can be opened to
the damage that they're causing.
I speak from personal experience.
You can spend years hurting somebody and not even realize you're doing it as a man because
if somebody doesn't come right out and tell you that you're doing it, you'll never know.
This is coming from a man.
I am not a typical man in most regards.
I am extremely emotional and extremely in touch with the people around me and extremely
empathetic but even me, if I feel something and then I go to you and you say, are you
okay and you shrug and say, yes, I'm okay or I say, is this a problem and then you say,
yes or no, that's not a problem, then I'm going to believe you because I'm going to
always believe the person that I love over whatever this gut feeling is.
That's my fault and that's something that I've got to work on following my instincts.
That when you're with somebody like this letter describes that is a liar and a cheater and
a swindler, I can't say that because I'm kind of a swindler, but when you're talking about
people like that, the mistake that we all make at the end of the day is trusting and
believing in people that have not earned or have proven that you should not trust those
people.
So that's that story.
We're going to move into a happy one.
I know that both of those were a little weighty and I apologize for that, but sometimes storytime
is a great epic of knights and dragons and sometimes it's just a simple story of what
really happens in the real world and how we deal with it.
Before we start with this next one, and this is going to be a quick one because I'm already
way over time where I wanted to be, but before we start the next one, I do want to share
this quote because this made me feel really good about doing these storytime episodes.
I don't know this person, I don't know who she is, but this is from Lisa Kron who wrote
an article for the magazine Wired and she said,
Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution, more so than opposable thumbs.
Opposable thumbs let us hang on, but story told us what to hang on to.
I think that that's a beautifully, well if I read it better, beautifully illustrated
point about how important it is to tell these stories.
One of the reasons why I'm trying desperately to get people to send me stories is because
it's really easy to lose sight of what we've done in our lives and it's really easy to
forget that each of us is a story.
Each of us has a story to tell.
Going back to the previous episode about the main character, one of the points that I tried
to make in that episode, and I hope that if you've listened to it, you took away from
that, is that we really are all main characters in our own stories.
Now does that mean that you're the only one that matters?
Absolutely not.
Don't be like that, but it does mean that someday we're all going to die and our story
is what's going to be left of us.
So tell it.
Tell your story.
And it doesn't really matter what it is.
Sometimes it can be a 40 minute tale of having to stop sexual predators, and sometimes it
can just be a quick story detailing who you are and where you came from.
It doesn't have to be, there's no one way of doing it.
There's no one method of getting your story out into the world, but it is important to
tell it.
And it is important that people know who you are.
Even if they don't know your name, speak your story, tell your truth.
I think that that's the way that we are remembered.
And that is the thing, like she says in this quote, that's the thing that we hold onto.
That's the reason why we are who we are as a people.
We move forward.
Even was possible because of our storytelling.
It gave us a reason to keep going in the night.
So just remember that.
Now this next story is a quick one.
I'm not going to hold you up for too long, but this is a story of one of the greatest
kindnesses that anyone has ever shown me.
And I'm not going to give full details on this whole thing because some of the people,
well, one of the people involved in this story is, let's just say not happy with me.
So I'm going to try to keep it a little loosey goosey.
But let's just say that some years ago I was in a pretty dark place as detailed in my TikTok.
And I'm sure you guys have picked up on some of my stories here.
I have suffered from really, really like powerful depression for the greater part of two decades.
And while I am on the other side of it, I am not completely out of it, but I do feel
better now than I have in a long, long time.
About I want to say about 15 or 16 years ago, I had a person come into my life that was
what I needed at that point in time was a beacon of light in my life.
And one of the reasons why that person was so important to me was the fact that they
were so giving and so warm.
And like every regard just was always there with a hug or a kind of word or whatever it
was that I needed at the time.
And I was, like I said, I was extremely depressed and wasn't really getting that feeling from
anyone else in my life at the time.
So this person came into my life and for many months was this beacon of hope and inspiration
for me.
Little did I know that that emotion and that love and that warmth that I felt would end
up having a very physical representation.
And what I mean by that is I don't remember, it was in October and I don't remember the
year exactly, but it was in October and my daughter had wanted to go to the pet store
to get some fish.
We had recently got her a fish tank.
In September we had gotten her a fish tank and she wanted to get some more fish for the
fish tank.
So we went to this pet store and we basically just let her go find stuff.
And in the process of that I was just walking around the pet store.
And they had, this was a pet store that doesn't exist anymore, but they did do like the puppies
and the kittens and all that stuff.
So I would sit there and I would look at the puppies and play with the kittens and stuff.
Well I come across this one little glass box and there's, I think there were three kittens
in it.
Well, you know, they were ragdolls.
They were little baby ragdoll kittens.
And they were, when I tell you they were the most stinking adorable things on the planet,
I can't possibly.
I mean, I just wanted to kiss them.
And so I'm sitting there playing with one.
They had little holes, like little air holes in the side of the glass.
And so I'm sitting there putting my finger in playing with the one.
And then I see, I could only see two at the time.
And there was like a little blanket or something in there.
And I see this blanket kind of moving.
I'm like, oh, there's another one in there.
And I see this little head poke up and look at me.
And in that instant, it's hard to describe, there was almost more than immediate.
Instantaneously, I knew that that kitten was my kitten.
And I really do believe that that kitten knew that I was its human.
It really was that quick.
And I just, I fell, I was completely and totally in love.
There was just no, no ifs, ands or buts.
I had to have this kitten in my life.
And as I sat there looking at him, I put my finger through the little hole and he immediately
comes running up.
I mean, he's just come out of a full sleep, little kitten sleep and comes running up and
was so excited and rubbing and loving.
I couldn't have been more in love with anything or anyone at that point in time.
And that's when the reality of the situation hits me square in the face, which was, this
was a $600 cat.
Now before anybody gets upset, I am very much a, you know, don't buy pets at a pet store
person.
I have, I have very many cats, I have very many dogs and none of them were purchased.
All of them were rescues.
That being said, none of them ever meant as much to me as this cat did in that moment.
So I don't have $600.
I didn't, I, at the time I was, I was trying to run my business and it wasn't succeeding
and I was just didn't, I didn't have that money and I was heartbroken.
I just was just destroyed.
Well as I said, we were there to get fish for my daughter and this person that I had
mentioned before, she was there and she, she was actually, it was actually her idea.
She was going to buy the fish for her.
And she, you know, I went up to her and I was like, you have to see this cat, you have
to see this cat, you know, oh my God, you know, you've got to see him.
So I go over and so I bring her and everybody else over to see this cat.
And I mean, obviously they're not, they're not picking up the vibe, right?
They know that I want this kitten and they know that I, you know, I'm really excited
about him, but like they're not getting the same feeling that I am from this kitten.
But I'm, I'm desperate.
I'm like, we got to find a way.
I've got to, I've got to get this cat.
I've got to, so this person, um, she, she, I don't, I can't really say I understand it
at the time.
She wasn't, you know, rich or anything like that.
She didn't have a lot of money, but she just knew that I needed this kitten.
Like she understood what I was saying.
I don't know if she necessarily believed the way that I did, but she knew what I was saying.
She believed in what I was saying and she said, you know, well, let me see what I can
do.
Now, this is a person that at the time was like waitressing, right?
Like she didn't, she didn't have a lot of money, but, um, she, I just thinking about
it just, you know, it kind of makes me emotional just thinking about it.
But um, she basically went and talked to the people and they said, well, the, this, this
pet store, you can get, you know, a credit card for this pet store or whatever.
It was a national chain at the time.
I don't think they exist anymore, but, um, you could, you could get a credit card and
I guess she had good enough credit that she qualified.
So she actually ended up taking out, like getting a credit card for this pet store.
Um, and like putting herself in credit debt basically to be able to buy me this $600 pure
bread ragdoll kitten that I, you know, had had this religious experience with.
And I remember them coming over and being like, well, do you want to take him out of
the thing and hold him and stuff like that?
And I was like, well, yes, of course I do, but I don't need to.
Like I already know that this is my cat.
Like you don't, and they're like, okay.
And I thought it was kind of weird, but you know, they, they took him out of the little
thing and they brought him to me and he immediately curled up on my shoulder and, uh, really just
never left.
Um, so, uh, she, she goes ahead and she takes out the credit card and they end up putting
him on this line of credit that she ended up having to pay off over the course of like
a year or something like that.
She didn't, I mean, like I said, she wasn't making a whole lot of money, but this was
one of the greatest gifts that anyone has ever given me and one of the greatest kindness
that anyone has ever shown me.
She really put herself out there and in doing that, I, it's hard to, it's hard to describe
how much of a difference this made in my life.
Like it literally changed everything in my life from that point forward.
I ended up going through quite a bit, uh, over the next so, so many years and there
were plenty of times where that little cat who I ended up naming Yoda, where that little
Yoda literally saved my life over and over and over again.
And the, the, the really beautiful thing about that was that every time I would have that
moment or there would be a moment with him, which was every day, uh, because every moment
we spent together was magical for me.
Like I literally had a familiar that I, you know, he never left my side.
He was always with me.
He would be on my shoulder.
He would go get in the car with me.
I would take him to work.
Like this was a cat that was with me all the time.
This wasn't just like a pet that I kept at home.
And uh, every single time that I would have to go through something bad or there would
be a dark point, he would be there with me.
And in a way that meant that she was there with me.
And that, that really was a very, very, very special, uh, gift and a very special way of
conveying like love and, and what somebody means to you.
And I know obviously there's a dollar sign attached to that, so maybe it cheapens it
a little bit, but you're talking about a life, like literally bringing a life into my, into
my world.
I mean, Yoda was my baby.
Um, and literally was the most important thing to me, um, for a long time.
And my kids, you know, maybe that fucked them up a little bit.
My kids knew like Yoda was number one.
He was my baby.
Now, obviously that doesn't mean I would throw my kids under a bus for Yoda, but it doesn't
mean that, you know, they knew that if Yoda wasn't comfortable, nobody got to be comfortable.
So that was, that was just one of the, one of the rules.
I ended up, ended up losing Yoda some years ago.
Um, so it's not all, you know, happy endings and the loss of him echoes even now, but,
uh, the time that we did have as short as it was, um, it was beautiful and wonderful
and tragic and everything that a good love story should be.
And as much as, you know, as much as I want to say that it was just about this kitten,
when a lot of it was, it was also, you know, the story of me and this person.
Because when you show somebody that kind of kindness, when you show somebody that kind
of care and that kind of concern, it will echo for eternity.
And they'll always remember that.
So just remember that as you move through life, sometimes it's a grand gesture, like
bringing a kitten into somebody's life.
Sometimes it's as simple as holding somebody's door.
But all of these things that we do and all of these choices that we make have a long
lasting impact and will cause ripples that change everything in the world around us.
So there's a reason why we call it a pebble in a pond.
And there's a reason why I really do believe that if I can get enough people on board with
this, that we can really make a difference in this world.
And it's because I can't sit here and tell this story about my cat without getting emotional,
without tears coming to my eyes.
And when I think about the cat, I think about that person and the level of kindness and
compassion and care that goes into taking on a financial burden like that.
Just because somebody says, I feel connected to this kitten.
I need this kitten in my life.
There's not a lot of people out there that would have done that.
Actually, I don't know anybody else that would have done that.
So just remember that you don't have to have that grand gesture to make a difference in
somebody's life.
But if you can, you should.
Because you could very well be changing the course of not just that person's life, but
the course of all history.
You just don't know.
You don't know what your kindness and what your love can do.
But it will move mountains and it will change the world.
I think it was Anne Frank that said, no one has ever become poor by giving.
And I think that that's what we're going to leave this episode on.
Our next episode is actually going to come out on Christmas Eve, if everything goes right
this weekend.
And I think we're going to talk about Christmas.
I think that's going to be the topic of that episode.
Not just Christmas, but what the Christmas season means to people, both good and bad.
I do want to keep this on a positive note, but we also need to discuss, as somebody who's
dealt with depression and things like that, we do need to discuss that part of it.
So we will.
We'll touch on that.
And maybe we'll tell a couple of Christmas stories that will give some people some positive
feelings going into their Christmas day.
Anyway, that's where we are, folks.
Thanks for coming along for story time, and I really do appreciate those of you that have
listened and continue to listen to all of the episodes.
I don't necessarily see all the analytics.
I don't necessarily know who's listening to what.
But I'm building this thing from the ground up, and I'm trying to learn every step of
the way.
And so whatever feedback or criticism or words of encouragement and advice you may have, I
appreciate all of them.
If you haven't followed me on TikTok yet, it's Pebble in a Pond podcast on TikTok.
I invite you to follow me there.
We also have a link tree, which I think is posted on most of our pages.
But that should point you to any of the other socials we have.
We do have an Instagram that I'm still building.
We have a YouTube channel, which I'm still working on.
All of these things are works in progress, but we are trying to get out there.
We're trying to get the message out there of what I'm trying to build here and what
we're trying to do.
This community that I really do want to build and engage with and start to really make some
big changes.
So there you have it.
Thanks again.
And y'all, take care of yourselves and take care of each other.
Have a good day.