Did you know at that time when you were a little kid that you were poor and this wasn't what you wanted to?

I didn't know until we moved to Sacramento.

I was in San Jose from like birth through about eight years old and I was in a very poor neighborhood and went to a pretty bad school.

So I didn't know because I didn't see nothing else.

We moved to Sacramento. We got a little better

neighborhood, but first day I went to third grade, second grade, they took me back to the kindergarten class. And I'm like Billy Madison in here, big as shit. All these other kids are tiny. The rest of my class is playing outside, and I'm writing my letters on a, like, a little chalkboard. I'm like, when I got older, I was like, oh, so we didn't really learn too much of that other school.

That was, you know, and then now I'm with them. And again, although my parents were functioning drug addicts, they always put me in predominantly white schools because I guess they wanted at the time to have me to have a chance and be able to be who I was going to be. So I hated that though, because I never got to go to school with the kids I play basketball with or the kids in my neighborhood.

It was always

the school that was 98 or 99% white. And although I'm half Italian and half black, like I was

dark, so I was never white enough and I was never black enough. So I mean, I fought my way to respect and friendship

and opportunities to play sports.

So it was tough.

But again, as I started making friends,

I realized like the first time I ate at a dinner table

was with one of my white friends' family.

First time everyone on vacation was with one of my white friends family.

What do you mean there?

You didn't have a table?

We did. It was tiny. We all couldn't sit at it, but my dad was in the streets. My mom was cooking, you know, we kind of ate as dinner was served and we would eat it. You know, and that's not to say all the time, like we wouldn't. And we never sat down at a dinner table together where there was time we'd all eat dinner at the same time.

But for the most part, sitting down, someone saying grace and all the food. Like we wouldn't, we never sat down at a dinner table together where there's time we'd all eat dinner at the same time.

But for the most part, sitting down, someone saying grace and all the food being in the center of the table and you kind of like, that's the stuff you see on TV. Like I never had that until I was with, you know, a white family or my first vacation was with a white family. So I never saw the other side and never know that I didn't have money until I

kind of moved to Sacramento and started hanging out and kind of befriending some white kids

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