The truth of matter was, stories were everything and everything was stories.

Everybody told stories. It was a way of seeing who they were in the world. It was their understanding of themselves.

I remember, holy shit, I haven't thought about this in ages.

I was at my dad's, when my parents were separated, I was at my dad's house, rooting through

stuff in his bedroom because I was being nosy.

And I'm in this, like, little walk-in closet.

And in his closet, I had found this like box. A black box sort of like what you would find you know really fancy dresses in and I

opened it up and there was all these tiny little black pouches in it and I opened one of the pouches

out and you know like shook it out and it was this is going to

sound so crazy but it was like emeralds and jewels tons of black little pouches and you know

maybe six or seven in each pouch and the ones that I remember most clear was emeralds so I put it back

and no big deal and you know a couple of weeks

later my dad had given me a ring that had an emerald in it and it was gold and I remember he had to

put tooth floss or something around it because it wouldn't fit me and I felt so proud because it was

the first jewelry my dad had ever given me, like,

real jewelry. That wasn't like a little heart or hello kitty. And so I remember being nine or

10 and for about a year or so thinking, okay, my dad's a jewelry. Maybe he imports emeralds from

Columbia, you know, and sells them to jewelry places here.

And I really couldn't tell you at that time what my parents did for work.

You know, he was the kind of dad that, like, got us, like, power wheels.

You know, like, my sister had, like, a Lamborghini power wheel, and I had a Jeep Cherokee power wheel.

We had, like, our rooms were, we had two separate rooms that were, like, decked out with everything.

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