“My best friend killed me with this baseball bat when we were six years old. We were sword fighting and I had a metal baseball bat and he had this wood one. I hit him with the metal bat and made him mad. He hit me so hard with this bat that it killed me. I was dead for two minutes. Shut my whole system down. My dad got there and said I was dead and then started kicking. We have been best friends since we were a year old. My friend kept the bat all of this time and gave it to me last year. I now keep it in my truck. I haven’t had to use it, but I have scared the hell out of someone with it. I have had a rough life and it is all my causing. I grew up well off and my dad busted his ass to provide for us. I had every opportunity to do good but I chose not to. I like to party and I like to fight. Correction, I liked to party and I liked to fight. Now I would rather use the bat to scare somebody instead of fighting.”

“What changed?”

“I have three kids now and everything changed. I went from 90 to nothing to stop. My nickname used to be Caveman because I fought hard and held nothing back. I had long hair and a full beard at 14. When I had kids, Caveman went into a box and is buried deep inside. He comes out every once in a while to play because he can’t be locked up all of the time. I am the son and the grandson of gypsies.
One day I want to be my father’s brother. He is a paramedic and I plan on following him and becoming a paramedic. I want to experience everything I can in life. I was homeless for six months in the French Quarter because I wanted to see what that was like. I have jumped out of a plane several times. My grandfather used to say ‘more you know, the more you’ll earn’ and I try to learn every job I can. I want to be a one-person wrecking ball.”