I want to hear your story, your point of view, tell me what happened to you.
Hi and welcome back to Tell Me What Happened to podcast the features folks from all walks of life,
telling us of one true experience from their childhood and how that event has impacted who they are today.
I'm your host, Jay Rehak, and like you, I've had my share of childhood experiences that have impacted who I am.
But I'd like to think that everything that happened to me has maybe a better person.
It's probably not true, but that's what I'd like to think.
Tell Me What Happened is sponsored by Sightlining Publishing, publishers of quality books, including Susan Salazar's classics,
I've Got Peace in My Fingers, and One Little Act of Kindness.
All right, today I have as my guest, Harker Jones.
Harker is an author and screenwriter living in Los Angeles, California.
Welcome to the show, Harker.
Thanks for having me, Jay, and excited to be here and tell my sad little story.
I'm sorry it's sad, but I am looking forward to hearing it, Harker.
We don't know each other, but I sort of contacted you through an email.
And the story that you told me, or you suggest that you're going to tell me is something that I'm very interested in.
So take it away, Harker.
Sounds good.
All right, well, as Jay said, my name is Harker Jones.
I grew up on a dirt road in Michigan.
I was painfully, painfully shy as a child.
And my sister is two years younger than I am.
And when I was maybe six and she was four, we went, my parents took us to Mackinac Island, which if you don't know,
is a beautiful old-timey kind of island between the lower peninsula and the upper peninsula of Michigan.
So we were up there just to go, I guess, and we had our caricatures drawn by some rando guy who was making 10 bucks a pop doing it.
And so he did one of my sister and one of me.
My sister's teeth titled, Tameth of the Cutie, where mine said, Harker the Clown.
And I was like, I mean, I'm six years old, you know, when I was like, why am I not cute?
Why am I a clown?
And it was already so, so shy.
I certainly didn't have the confidence to shake that.
And I get it, especially then, you know, girls are attractive and boys are smart or athletic.
And I was a skinny, skinny child.
So I wasn't athletic and I guess he just went with funny instead of smart.
I don't know.
But it really, really stuck with me.
So these caricatures hung in our house is a constant reminder for like our whole lives.
No one knew that I was upset by this, that this had thrown me off course.
I didn't hurt or didn't help that my sister was pretty.
She was pretty, you know, she was a cutie, you know, just fine and fantastic.
Everyone wants to be beautiful.
I get it.
But I remember also, so this was my whole life.
And it was just like, I'm not the beautiful one.
I'm not beautiful.
And I didn't think I was hideous and I'm not, but and I wasn't.
But at the same time, like to get that kind of reinforcement throughout was just awful because all the boys are interested in my sister.
No one literally was interested in me.
Not that we're going for the same guys or anything like that.
I don't mean it in that way, but just like that has compounded it.
And then I remember when she was graduating from high school, a card from our kind of our God parents is said, Oh my God, Tammy looks so great.
She's growing up to be such a beautiful young lady.
Oh, and of course, Harker does too.
And afterthought.
And I know that was not the intent.
They didn't know that I would see this and that stuck with me as well.
And this shaped me like throughout my life throughout college as an adult.
Everyone was interested in my friends.
No one was interested in me.
I still shudder when someone comes up to me to say about my friend.
Hey, your friends kind of cute.
Even though I have a partner of 18 and a half years and I get attention now, it's still like I could not do that to someone because I was always the friend.
So I have never and would never go up to someone and say, Hey, can you come up with your friend because they're hot.
The implication is you were not.
And it just, oh my God, it makes my soul hurt.
So this haunted me for literally decades and affected my entire self image undermined my self confidence.
And not just the caricature.
I don't even know if that was the first thing that kicked it off, but that is the thing I remember.
Everyone watching my friends.
Everyone.
So then there's also how much of it was that people were subconsciously sensing my insecurity and not wanting to get involved in that, which is fair.
Someone's that insecure.
Do you really want to engage?
But also how much of my insecurity was fueled by everyone wanting my friends.
So I don't know where it started or how it went.
It was a vicious circle until I broke it.
I was God unless they 32, I don't know.
And I was like 115 pounds still, like I was still a really skinny person.
It was natural.
I was just naturally very big.
So I joined and committed to a gym.
And I started to see a therapist and a hit my therapist all at the same time.
And it's still going to the gym.
It's been a while, but over a years, I go to the gym.
Basically every day at lunch.
So, so I really committed to it.
I really committed to it.
And once I did make these steps, take these steps, I finally, finally started feeling good about myself.
And I don't know if it was not a moment or I was like, think like the hit my therapist or something like it, something fell into place.
Nothing specific that I remember.
I think just cumulatively, these three things really changed me.
And as I gained confidence, I started getting attention.
And of course, my body had changed. It wasn't 115 pounds anymore, which is more than that was my mindset.
I felt confident in people responded to that.
So years later, my sister, I don't know how this came up, but she told me that she had felt the opposite.
Everyone said like, Oh, oh, he's so smart.
So that read to her.
I'm not people don't know how the words affect others, all of us, including myself, all of us.
Especially kids, kids notice and process so much, so much, even unconsciously, and how much is conscious.
I'm so aware when I'm talking about child, like God, this could be something they remember the rest of their life.
And they don't try to be super upbeat or weird about it or anything like that.
But I'm just aware of how I speak to children because I know how sensitive they can be.
So at any rate, so I moved to LA, I became managing editor of Out Magazine.
Was there for seven years I wrote a love story called until September, which is sold 14 hundred copies.
I did two successful films on festival circuit.
I'm a member of the only drama critic circle and immense.
I have a pretty good life.
I've got really good friends. I've got a great partner, a crazy cat.
And I even incorporated the story about the caricatures into a screenplay.
It's a rom-com. The raunchy is the one I've written. It's a rom-com.
And then it's part of how I processed it, where people don't know when they read it.
So much of it is autobiographical, but I don't tell them these.
I'm embarrassed that I was treated that way, that people said those things to me, that these various things happen to me.
And while I appreciate it when people like it, it still hurts when they point out something that the lead character goes through saying,
it's really funny when this happened to Nick. It hurts my heart because all I can think is it wasn't funny that happened to me.
And that's my story.
Harker, I'm so sorry that all happened to you, man. I mean, I don't know you like to smet you, but I mean, it's a strange, strange world that we live in.
Like you said, a caricature.
The thing that bothers me most about that story is that that picture hung in the family, the house for as long as it did.
And I'm sorry that, you know, the little six year old couldn't just somehow reach up and rip it off the wall and have it accidentally break on the floor or something.
I don't know. I just, it pains me to think about it.
And I do understand. And again, that's one of the reasons that I was interested in your story is that it seemed like a small thing to others.
I'm sure that the caricature of that your sister is whatever she's pretty and you're more of a clown or whatever.
And I do think there probably was, I'm guessing, but there probably was some gender issues and all that.
I don't know, but it makes sense to me that almost always the caricature guys or whatever it's like the girls cute. They can't say the guy's cute.
Maybe they maybe that's maybe that's culturally not acceptable to some people.
Right.
Exactly.
I understood that as I continued to grow up.
It didn't help.
I got that, but it was still like, and it wasn't like a funny kid.
It wasn't cracking jokes all the time. It wasn't a joke stir like in which case it would have been appropriate.
Right. Where'd he get that from? I'm a joker. Where did the caricature get? Where'd he get that from?
My parents just sold their house. I grew up at a lake and they sold their house.
I was there two weeks ago helping close things up. It's very emotional.
I'm the only one who seems devastated by this, whatever.
But some of my sisters there and we were maybe it's because I live so far away and have for so long that it's like that was always an anchor.
I don't know.
But so as we're trying to clean things up, these caricatures are still hanging and what?
No, no, no.
I'm sending it with my sister and I told her about it.
I was just like, this is up to me up.
Not my whole life because I do feel better now.
Don't get me wrong. I still have moments and I see some people I'm just like, I can't even imagine what it's like to be beautiful.
Again, I don't think I'm hitting this and I get attention.
I'm not fine.
I'm just really about my self confidence.
But I just like looking at people like you have such a leg up just because of the way you look.
And I mean, I envy it. I don't resent it from them. It's not their fault. It's the luck of the draw.
But yeah, so I told my sister about that when I was there a couple of weeks back. I was like, this affected my life for decades because I never told anyone.
It's in my strength life.
I can't know when that was in. That's true until now.
Yes. Well, how's your sister doing? How did she handle that?
I'm, you know, you sort of, by the way, you sort of already answered the question how it impacted your life.
You did a nice job just transitioning into that.
So I kind of have a sense of that. But how does your sister take that reflection that you gave her just a couple weeks ago?
I mean, about negatively impacted me.
Was she surprised by that?
Or did she say, you know, why didn't you say something?
What did she say?
She was surprised. She was like, why didn't you say something so much as like, oh, she didn't laugh it off. Don't get me wrong.
But she was like, oh, God, seriously?
Yeah.
And it's been hanging here the whole time.
You know, so, and it doesn't bother me to see it.
Them anymore. But it's still like, I guess it does little ding every time it plucks at my heart.
I see them.
So she was just surprised and little taken aback. It's something that she probably had.
Probably she was so young like four, probably doesn't remember happening.
I don't know if I remember or if I just kind of created a memory because they've been there for so long and it affected me so much. Do I remember this happening?
Maybe kind of.
But so I think her something she doesn't even remember.
She's like, oh, that was just some illustration on the wall and that that messed you up.
Tell me, tell me that you destroyed it when you were there.
What did you do? You didn't put into a box that you did.
I did not. I don't know what happened with them.
I'll ask at some point.
Throw it away.
What?
You don't want to ask me to throw it away?
No, I don't know. I didn't think about it till now. You're saying I don't know.
I don't know. It's theirs.
And if they said, oh, you should take this with you because it's yours.
I know.
I took photos of them at one point.
Okay.
I don't, in some ways, I don't want to forget that they exist because it did affect me so much pretending that it never happened.
Doesn't help anyone. I mean, I guess just me.
It doesn't help.
So to remember that this there and how that affected me, I think also kind of going to your general question of how this is impacted me.
It reminds me of how I was six. Can you be insecure at six? I guess so. How sensitive I was and how much I changed and how much I've grown.
And it's a good, it's good to have markers to see how far you've come.
I like it. I like it. Well, listen, you know, disrespect to the person you're with for 18 and a half years, but you seem like a very handsome person to me.
You know, just so you know, I mean, you know, I think you look fine.
Whenever it's fine.
I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, say the wrong thing myself in terms of, you know, like I said, have your, have your lover come after me or something.
But you look fine to me.
And I, you know, I want you to, I hear you so much in terms of just the notion of what we say to young people or various memories like this can be more devastating than we realize.
And I do, I wish your parents would just hear this and then make sure they throw that away or burn whatever it was or write you a note and say, hey, look, sorry about that.
We had no idea because
they had no clue.
That's what I say.
I know it's nice.
I did meet a girl really quick at an event years ago now she was maybe 11, I don't know.
And we're up on a rooftop. I don't know some art event downtown.
And I ended up talking to her.
Her parents came over to make sure I wasn't a creep and I was glad they did because I'm not.
Like, they need to make sure I'm not, but she was talking about how she had issues at school and various issues I don't remember specifically.
And I just remember telling her I didn't want to talk down to her.
She was like, oh, you'll be fine. It gets better.
People don't remember what it's like to be a child. I think it's weird.
So I just told her I was just like, it gets better than it gets worse than it gets better than it gets worse.
So this is terrible. You're in seventh grade is the worst seven and eighth of the worst years.
And again, it gets bad again. These are the worst years.
And I think about her, she was so lovely and just loved me so much.
I've never seen her again. Don't know her name could not find her now.
She's probably at least 22, 23 now. There's no way to know.
But like, I was really conscious and about what it is saying to her because I didn't want to undermine what she was going through, which I think most adults would just not meaning to, you know, right.
Trying to make people feel better by saying no big deal or this or that. And that's the wrong line.
I taught seven and eighth grade for many years and I also taught high school.
I saw vulnerabilities that astounded me to a certain extent.
And then actually years later, people would say to me, students say, you know, when you said this to me, it changed really affected me.
I don't remember even saying it, but I'm glad it was a good thing.
I'm glad you remember me saying something nice and not something, you know, devastating you because I actually do believe that as we both do as writers, whatever,
that words, words matter. And as a consequence, we got to be careful what we say to young people and even old guys, older people like myself.
I mean, you know, I still don't like to hear words that are hurtful and, you know, I think I'm a little bit more bulletproof than I once was, but I still don't like to hear negativity.
And, yeah.
I still don't want to be called the clown.
Right, right, right.
All right, well, listen, I want to thank you, Harker, for being on the show.
What's happening here is really nice. Obviously, this is a way of processing and exercising the ghost that still lingers.
Somewhat someone.
I hear you, man. And I think I think Harker that I honestly believe that some of the stories that we tell help people.
And like you said, maybe the 11 year old hears this somewhere down the road and goes, I remember that man.
And he was trying to tell me a truth. He wasn't trying to sugarcoat it. He was trying to help me understand how things go.
And I do think in the end, this notion of processing and going through things and then realizing, you know, you used as many different tools as you could, you know, the hypnotherapy and the therapy and just being with someone for 18 and a half years trying to reinforce the positive elements of you.
And so that you're not trying to heal you, I guess, is the way it always goes. And I do believe in my heart that that is what storytelling is to is it's cathartic.
It's healing. And I like I look forward to seeing the movie when it comes out. I know it'll be Nick will be going through some things. I guess he's your main character.
He'll be going through some things and I feel his pain. That's all I can say.
And I won't tell you which parts are actually autobiographical because some of it's not.
I'll let people figure that out. Well, thanks again, Harker. Thank you so much for having me. All right. Well, that's our show.
Again, I thank Harker Jones for telling us that painful story. I'd also like to thank my sponsors, Sidelining Publishing Publishers Quality Books and LafSaver.com.
Remember to go to LafSaver.com and record your laughter.
So until next time, this is Jay Reagg asking you all to please stay safe out there and try not to hurt anybody.