I’ll bet you’d never guess how old I am. 87 years old. I walk Troy every day, down to the river and back.
So what's your secret?
You’ve got to stay active! That's it: pray, trust the Lord, and stay active.
No matter what happens, I just have to keep reminding myself: "It'll be okay ... whatever is going on, it'll be alright."
What's your greatest piece of advice about life?
You're asking the wrong person... I've got a pretty negative view of life. As someone with a learning disability, I can say that life isn't fair. Doesn't the Bible say something about children suffering for the sins of their fathers? I've definitely experienced that. But you've gotta give it your best, no matter what that best looks like.
Three years ago my mother passed away, and my family separated. My sister, her boyfriend, and two kids — and my struggle is making sure they have what they need. Once they’re on their feet, I’m gonna get my own apartment, get my life together, maybe go back to school. I want to do art. I want to paint. I want to draw.
I had a very unusual life. My dad died of a heart attack when I was two, my mom was mentally ill, I was raised in foster homes. I had a really painful childhood, and then I went to college and met up with kids who didn’t get me—and I didn’t get them because they were all Long Island Republicans. And I didn’t know at the time that I’d eventually meet my tribe, that eccentric people were out there (especially in Troy) and that I’d eventually be okay.
In fact, just the other day, a college friend reached out to me on Facebook. We had been best friends in college—we both met because we were both in theater, but then we had a falling out and I hadn’t seen her in twenty years. Turns out she just worked on a documentary about foster kids. She wrote me, "I feel like I owe you an apology because I didn’t understand you. I didn’t understand how most foster kids don’t graduate high school much less college. I didn’t realize how accomplished you were. Even though I thought you were amazing, a lot of your behaviors didn’t make sense to me before, and now I just feel like I wasn’t as understanding as I am now."
And I told her that I had come to realize that just because I had this Dickensonian upbringing didn’t mean that I’m the only one walking around in pain. Just because people were raised in suburbia or whatever doesn’t mean there’s not alcoholism, mental illness, incest, sibling rivalry, all kinds of difficult things. And people from backgrounds much less difficult on paper than mine kill themselves. You just don’t know. But thanks to her I’m a lot less self-absorbed than I used to be.
There’s this common core of humanity in us all, which is important to keep in mind—especially in this election cycle. Because it’s easy to demonize people, but when you get where people are coming from, what they’re willing to overlook and what they’re afraid of, you start to realize that those people fell in love, they got their heart broken, their parents may be sick, they may be a single parent, they don’t have money. People are struggling. Our common humanity holds us all together. Everyone has pain and needs love.
I just barely missed ‘Nam. If I'd been another year or two earlier, I might have gotten into it. I signed all the stuff they sent me... you know when you’re 18 you’re supposed to fill that stuff out? I’m glad I missed it, though. I didn’t want to go there. I would have went, but frankly, I thought it was a waste of lives. I wasn’t no draft dodger, though. I got a letter from the government, basically, "if we need you, we’ll call you." I was like, okay, good to go. Now here I am.
I’m on DSS and I don’t like it. I’ve been looking for work for quite a long time, but it’s hard. I’m over 60 years old, I’m a construction worker, and—common sense—who are you going to hire? A twenty year old or me? I need cataract surgery, too, so it’s hard for me to get around. I’m trying to get that taken care of, but that’s like pulling hens teeth. Other than that, I’m glad to be alive.
I’m not complaining. I’ve been lucky. I just think everybody digs their own graves...
Right now—and I think a lot of people probably feel the same way coming off this election—it’s a bit of a struggle to see what direction this country is going and where am I going to go along with it and what decisions do I have to make? We’re all facing those questions. I hope we move toward a more equitable society where everyone’s voice is truly heard and represented. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the case, and I don’t think it’s what we saw during the election.
Now is the time we need to find those voices. We don’t have an election coming up again any time soon. We have to find those voices, listen and talk and engage more often in conversations. And hopefully through a groundswell we’ll see more significant change and something that represents the society that we want.
My greatest struggle is definitely school.
I’m in night school right now. I can’t be in day school because I don’t have enough credits. I used to live in the city and didn’t do school at all.
But since my mom passed, school’s real important to me now. That’s why I came up here to Troy. Me and my brothers are trying to get an apartment together. We just gotta make it work.