Last week, I had the pleasure of recording with Justin Reid, the host of Nose on the Wall podcast. On each episode, he and his guests share childhood stories. Our conversation brought up many funny memories of mine. We also talk about poetry!
A Few Excerpts:
What was your favorite smell from childhood?
I’m a very smell-oriented person […] the one that comes to mind, my mom in the kitchen at Thanksgiving. My brother and I would help her make this famous stuffing. It’s my great grandma’s recipe, and ya know, she’s still alive, which is amazing, and it’s cool to have that now as an adult.
What makes the stuffing so famous?
I think it’s the sage, and I think it’s the butter.
What was your favorite series or book growing up?
I think I valued reading so much as a kid because we did it as a family at night, right before we went to bed. We all got into my parent’s bed, and they would switch off reading. We read Chronicles of Narnia, Eragon, Harry Potter, these saga-type books […]
We got to third grade, I had this awesome teacher, and we had the option to read Harry Potter as a class. But it was super scandalous, because it was a few years old, but I went to a Catholic school. […] Then you had to get a permission slip signed from your parents so you could read it in school.
That’s the thing that sticks out about that series for me […] that memory comes up, being one of the few kids who could read it at school.
What was coming to terms with your sexuality like in that religious environment (Catholic school)?
I knew pretty young, but I didn’t start thinking about it, or talking about it, until I was 15 years old. It was good, I had a lot of friends outside of my school because I played sports […] those were the first people I always talked to about everything. […] it was hard, I always felt like I was hiding this part of myself.
Being in that environment, being really respected at the school, this kind of legacy thing […] but there was this missing piece that I couldn’t share with anyone.
The people that are our age, that are still narrow-minded enough to think hatefully. Those people are few and far between
I think so too. I mean, the world has changed so much. I’m not naive enough to say that the world isn’t incredibly polarizing. If we look at politics, decisions on policy, socio-economic welfare, it’s all over the place. It seems like, at least we’ve getting to that point where it’s kind of like, “just let people life there’s lives.”
[…] My dad always says, “The young people will save us.” I do now too.