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Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead QUOTES

Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead QUOTES

1 " One of the things I've noticed in Frank, and this is coming from that fear as a child that lingers, is that a kid on Tree Street, the only time Frank could eat comfortably was very late at night after John was asleep or passed out. And I've noticed now, having spent a lot of time with Frank, that he still consumes nearly half his calories in any twenty-four-hour period standing at the kitchen cupboard in the middle of the night, or if we're on the road, raiding hotel vending machines, because it's safe. "

― , Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead

2 " Every night, I wake up and I have to go downstairs and eat, because my body tells me, 'Yo, this is the time that you normally eat,' and I do - I feel comfortable eating what I want, and my wife even says she knows there's some issues there, like sometimes subconsciously I still might even hide what I ate, because when I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to go downstairs and eat, so if I ate something that came in a wrapper, I had to bury the wrapper. "

― , Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead

3 " The first letter sounded like the kind of letter a teacher would make a kid write to a guest speaker who’d had a breakdown in front of a bunch of seventh-graders. ‘Mr. Meeink, thank you for talking to our class. You were brave to share your story.’ The second letter was about the same: ‘Mr. Meeink, thank you for visiting us and talking about what happened to you.’ A few letters in, a few of the students wrote, ‘I’m going to try to be nicer from now on,’ and ‘I promise I won’t ever hate anybody.’ I remember thinking it was nice of the teacher to have some of the kids pretend they got my point. Then I hit this letter that changed everything: ‘Mr. Meeink, I bet you had a long, boring ride back to Philly.’ That’s all it said. That was exactly the kind of letter I would’ve chicken-scratched in seventh grade. That was the real deal. And if that was real, so were the others. Some of those kids had actually heard me through all the crying. My words had made a difference. "

― , Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead