13 On 13

I was joined by Billy Kirschbaum at The Studio Around the Corner in Brewster, NY to talk about working in the trades, the different ways people can feel smart, and finding a community in hobbies.

Frankie Becerra: So this is the last (interview) I got, so we’re wrapping it up nicely and it should be ready to go by Thursday because Thursday is not only this year’s Brewster High School graduation, but it’s also ten years to the day from when we graduated.

Billy Kirschbaum: Wow. That’s still wild to me.

FB: It’s crazy.

BK: It’s been ten years. I was talking to my little brother about it the other day and he was like “How does it feel to be out of high school ten years?” I go “honestly it feels like it’s been like two, but also it does feel like ten in certain ways”. It’s just wild. Your conception of time goes so quick once you don’t have that routine of going to school.

FB: Especially because as you get older years become less of your life if that makes sense. Like when you’re twenty, ten years is half your life. But we’re getting to thirty, it’s still ten years, but that’s a third of our life. That math makes it feel different.

BK: I said to my wife the other day “I’m turning 29, and honestly if someone asked me right now I’d say I’m like 24, 25”.

FB: Yeah and we also had those years kind of taken away a little bit. I was 25 when covid hit and you get kind of stunted a little bit.

BK: That definitely changed a lot of things because you miss the time where you were religiously hanging out with people whether it was family or friends. I was actually talking to Fernando, we go out a lot.

FB: He was telling me, he was my Saturday interview (laughs).

BK: We go out a lot, as much as we can you know? But you lose track of how fast things go by. It’s very scary because you don’t realize how much you’re actually missing and how quick- you think you’re gonna talk to somebody and make plans and then three months goes by.

FB: So much goes on you just forget about it to an extent.

BK: Yeah.

FB: You alright jumping into some of these questions I’ve got for you?

BK: Yeah, let’s do it.

FB: What’s one way you’ve changed since high school?

BK: One way I’ve changed since high school I think it I’ve definitely looked at other people’s life choices and what they’re going through and I look at it through their perspective instead of just putting an overall judgement of like “well why wouldn’t they have done it this way? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to go this way?” Because I think everybody has their own reasonings for doing things and their own reasonings that they justify or that maybe in their mind they think is the right way to go about something, or that will benefit them in the long run. So I think I’ve definitely changed my attitude towards certain people’s way of life I would say.

FB: Nice. I like that a lot because that is one of those things that you realize with age. When you’re younger you kind of think like “my way or the highway” kind of vibes where what you think is right is what’s right.

BK: Or like a lot of times you see what works for you and you think it’s like a one size fits all for everybody but that’s really not how things go.

FB: Yeah because you really have no idea what anyone else is-

BK: Going through.

FB: Exactly and dealing with on like a day-to-day basis. Yeah that’s really important.

BK: I’d say that’s probably the biggest things I’ve changed and kind of opened my eyes to.

FB: Nice. So what’s something you’ve accomplished in the last ten years that you’re proud of?

BK: Creating my own family. I’d say that is the biggest pride and joy I have. I mean I do have my company, and that’s something that I’ve been building on since I was in middle school with my dad, always working with him, so that’s something I definitely take a lot of pride in, but creating my family, my wife and my daughter, is definitely the biggest blessing and the biggest pride I have because that’s something that I pulled together, it’s something that I didn’t give up on, and it’s something that I put together and can hold on to. It’s something I can look at everyday and give myself a reason to do better each day.

FB: That’s beautiful. Now what’s something you hope to accomplish in the next ten years?

BK: In the next ten years I really hope to become a little more financially stable and be able to provide something that people can look at and appreciate the work that was put into it and the long days, the long hours, stuff like that. Not even just with my business, I always wanted to do something bigger, you know? I just don’t know what that plan is yet, but I want to do something that touches other people, that they can look at and say “yo this really helped me in a tough time”, “this really helped me when I was struggling”, whether it’s some sort of open space or something where I can help somebody like do a free service for them if they’re really hurting for money… Something that people will look back at and say “he had good intentions”. I think that’s something I’d really like to do in the next ten years.

FB: I like that. I mean you get to that certain age where it’s like, especially because I know you’ve been grinding and hustling for so long and putting in the work, which is something I’ve always admired about you, but it does kind of get to that point where it’s like “Ok I’ve been doing this for me for so long, but I also want to have something to say I’ve been able to do this for others”.

BK: Right, yeah. I had a customer actually tell me a couple months ago that one of the biggest regrets he had in his life was living his life for someone else, and not living his own life. People don’t realize, like we were talking about earlier, how fast time really goes past you. You don’t realize how much time you’re spending away from your family or friends or other people because you’re focused on the finances, you’re focused on being busy at work, or trying to catch up on projects that you didn’t do yet. I think one of the biggest things is that you have to take that time to realize what you want out of life, what kind of legacy you want to leave behind, and how you want people to view you as. Not like the money you had or the materialistic things you had, but what you did as a person I think is very important.

FB: Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. What if anything do you miss most about high school? And it’s ok if the answer is nothing.

BK: (Laughs) I mean there’s very few things that I actually do miss about high school because high school for me really was not… Like I had friends, but most of them were just acquaintances.

FB: Right, I feel that.

BK: And aside from that I was just more focused on getting out and going to work and doing everything else, like I just didn’t wanna be there. But I would say the thing that I miss most about it is having that structured day-to-day timeline. You knew where you were going, you knew who you were going to see, you were guaranteed to see those people every day. And the freedom aspect of it, I definitely miss that. The other thing I would say too is that I miss- like throughout high school obviously you go through all the phases of different friends, who’s in a relationship, who’s not in a relationship, whose party did you get invited to, whose party did you not get invited to, did you even want to hang out with those people, you go through all the drama stuff. But one thing I did notice in like talking to a lot of the other kids, our senior year, it’s like all that shit kind of went out the window and everybody kind of came together like the last couple of months before we graduated. And I think that that was really because we realized there isn’t gonna be a lot of time and everyone’s gonna go to college, everyone’s gonna go to different states, and we’re not gonna really have that time see somebody every day. I think that also kind of show who your true friends are, like who stayed in touch and who didn’t. The thing that’s funny about it too is like you went from being in high school where everybody was judging each other based on what people had or what groups of people you hung out with, then we all got pretty close before we graduated, and now we’re all on social media judging everybody by what they have or don’t have. Who’s having kids, who’s getting married, people feeling like they’re out of place or feeling like they’re not where they should be in life. It’s just odd to me that we went from that to being close to everybody doing their own thing and kind of dramatized again but this time one social media.

FB: That’s actually a big reason why I’m doing this project. I’ve always been someone that believed that there’s no one right way to live your life-

BK: No, and that’s a good point you brought up too because I see people all the time that we went to high school with and they say like “oh you have a family, you got married young, you have a daughter now”, and I try to explain to them like we were saying earlier, it’s not a one size fits all. Some people went to the military, some people bought a house, some people went into real estate, some people got married, some people did have kids, some people are still trying to focus on finding a career, some people are struggling with addiction, like there’s no right time for anything.

FB: Exactly.

BK: Even when me and my wife discussed having a baby, obviously there’s better situations we could’ve been in, anybody could say that. They always say there’s no right time to have a kid. There’s no “right” time to do anything in life. I was just watching a podcast the other day that said Colonel Sanders didn’t start KFC until he was like sixty-something years old.

FB: Oh, wow.

BK: He was at the end of his life, he didn’t know what he wanted to do, and he was really struggling, and he always had this good chicken recipe. And he said “If I could only get other people to want this”. And apparently at the age of sixty-something that’s when he started KFC and turned his life around. So there is no right or wrong way to go about things, because for all you know- let’s say you jumped the gun and you bought a house early or you got married to somebody that you really shouldn’t be with, everything happens for a reason. There’s timing for everything.

FB: Yeah, and like I was saying about the work thing, how you were saying you have your career and family and all that, and I mentioned earlier I’ll say it again, I’ve always really admired that about you, even when we were younger.

BK: I appreciate that.

FB: Of course, because I also started working really young, my mom made me get a job two weeks before we even started high school.

BK: Wow.

FB: I was working over at Palmer Bros Hardware at fourteen, I technically wasn’t even supposed to be-

BK: I think that’s another thing too, I don’t want to speak for you, but the things that we have or the things that we’ve been through, we kind of have a different appreciation for it because we worked for it. Like you see houses all the time that are mansions and not all of those people were handed that, and I can just say from the work that I do in a lot of these houses, you can tell the difference between the people that struggled to get there and the people that were just handed things through generational wealth, and they definitely appreciate it more. I think with anything you do in life you definitely have to like what you do, and I also think that you need to work at it. Anything that’s given to you, whether it’s a promotion at work or anything, if it’s just handed to you I don’t think you respect it as much, and you don’t see the effort and time that you took away from things that you wanted to do to provide that. Focus on what you want to do, and know that nothing in life comes easy.

FB: Yeah and that’s another thing too where, again bringing it back to you, I remember feeling jealous of you because I knew you did like what you were doing, and I didn’t like what I was doing. I remember working at that hardware store, no disrespect to them, I still love those guys, but I remember being like “Damn, I can’t wait to not be doing this anymore” and obviously I needed the money, I needed to work, but it was like I was able to cross that off the list, it was a “no” for me.

BK: I guess in a certain sense I was lucky that I started working with my dad at a young age because I wanted to know my dad. He was always working, he was never home. So that’s how I started, and I actually enjoyed doing what I still do now because for me I wasn’t really good at school with test taking and stuff like that. I learn differently. So for me like I can put pipes together and learn different angles, and I can do the math on it, I can do the science on it, I can look at blueprints, and look at all that and I understand that, that makes sense to me. But regular test taking didn’t make sense to me. Actually for a while Brewster schools were really good with me, my senior year I was gonna end up dropping out because my dad got hurt at work and was the only source of income. And they actually worked with me so that I could work with my parents’ company and still go to school because I had enough credits. And I actually was able to come back like four years after that and speak to some of the students in the auditorium and tell them if they don’t know what they want to do in life they can go take online classes, they can go to WCC and get some of the smaller classes out of the way.

FB: That’s really great.

BK: But right now the trades are really hurting because there’s not a lot of people being pushed from the school districts saying that’s an option. Like I know for me personally, most of the teachers were very helpful and understanding of me wanting to go into the trades and not go to college, but there was a handful of teachers that really made it seem like if you want to go into the trades and not go to college you’re gonna be unsuccessful in life. And I’d say for me and a couple of the other people that we went to school with that did go into the more blue-collar work, it was quite embarrassing a couple times to have a staff member “Oh you could do that if you want but you’re probably not gonna be successful because you’re not going to college, there’s no stability there”. Trying to get people, young people, into the trades now is very difficult because it’s not even the concept of money you could make, the money’s good, but aside from it you can’t chase a dream just for the money because you’ll be miserable at some point. I think you need to follow something that, it’s an art, and it’s something that if you get nothing else out of it you can at least fix things at your own house, you could always do side work, there’s a lot of benefits to getting involved with a trade. It’s like any other job that you have, there’s pros and cons, there’s give and take. But for me I got really lucky in the sense- I also can’t really say that it’s full luck either because I did miss out on a lot of things. Like getting back to the whole high school aspect, I, and I’m sure most people remember, I didn’t go to a lot of parties, I didn’t hang out with a lot of people outside of school aside from like talking on the phone or casually meeting up on the weekend, because most of the time I was working. I got out of school and went to work, weekends went to work, the whole summer I went to work. That’s why I say like all the people we went to high school with I was very friendly with, they were very friendly with me, but I didn’t have too many strong close friends because I was just in a different mindset at that time. I was focused on other things. Which like, some people are jealous of my situation, and say they wish they had like a steady job or something they knew they were going to do before graduating, and I also look back at a lot of the stuff like, we’re turning thirty, and I look back at a lot of the stuff that I can’t- it wouldn’t be fair or appropriate at thirty-years-old to do the stuff I missed out on (laughs).

FB: No I feel that, I’m the same way. It’s like now that I’m 28 I finally feel like I’m ready to be eighteen.

BK: Right!

FB: But I can’t pull that shit now.

BK: Right, so that’s something that I definitely struggle with and definitely am jealous of I’d say. There’s no perfect timing for everything, but like you said I missed out on that aspect of growing up. Which has its pros and cons. It’s good in a lot of sense because yeah I could’ve threw my whole life away. I could’ve did something really stupid or I could’ve gotten my name put out in something that could’ve had problems later on in life. But a balance in anything is good, everything in moderation I think is good. Now I get to hang out with certain people from high school, kick back, have a couple drinks, maybe watch a game. So yeah, I enjoyed my time in high school, I do miss like I said the structural aspect of it and the freedom definitely because now there’s just, as you grow up there’s no timeframe. Everything just goes. You wake up, birds are chirping, and you get home and the sun’s down. It’s on to the next day.

FB: You said something earlier that I really liked which was when you started working with your dad things started to click a little bit more. You realized that you were able to do certain things that hadn’t been presented to you in school, and I really love that because I think that there’s a lot of people who have that experience in school where maybe they’re struggling, maybe they’re not doing as well as they’re expected to, and it really hurts their self esteem, and it really hurts what they think they can do. But then they try a completely unrelated field and it just clicks. And there’s that gratification of knowing “Oh it’s not that I was dumb, it’s just that I was putting too much time and energy into something that wasn’t right for me”. Then when you find that right thing, you’re able to get this level of success and this level of self esteem where it’s like “Oh, I can do this”.

BK: Right, yeah and that’s a huge problem I think. Going back to when I was talking about in the next ten years I want to figure something out to help other people in some way, something like that is also a big eye opener because you never know what somebody’s dealing with or struggling with, or mental health-wise you never know what they’re dealing with. Going back to something as simple as high school, you don’t realize, you know they say all the time the whole bullying stuff, you don’t realize how much it affects you to have adults try to tell you “Oh, well you don’t understand this so obviously you should be put in a smaller class” or “You should be staying after school every day to try to learn something”. One, if you’re not interested in it, it’s gonna be difficult to learn it, and two, if you’re separated from everyone else and told that you have something specific that is going to kind of slow you down in life, it’s going to have long-lasting effects.

FB: Yeah, that gets to you.

BK: So yeah I would definitely say that’s an important factor too, knowing that just because you’re not good at one thing, doesn’t mean you won’t prosper in something else. I think a lot of people in life get stuck on- like one of the biggest things for me that I’ve always told my father, even with the business too, he was always nervous to get too big or invest in equipment that was too expensive because it might not work out. And I always told him the worst place to be in life is comfortable. If you’re comfortable, you’re just settling. Not even just successful when it comes to being financially successful, but if you don’t take risks, then you’re never gonna jump to the next level. You can’t learn unless you fail from things. People are always too scared to fail or try, but at the end of the day we only have one life, and you don’t know when that’s gonna be taken, you don’t know how long anybody’s life actually is going to be. So if you don’t take the chances now, or you just keep saying “I’ll just wait until tomorrow”, you don’t know when that tomorrow is gonna end. Obviously you don’t just drop all your responsibilities and try something outrageous because you never know, that’s kind of ridiculous.

FB: Yeah you have to have some kind of limits.

BK: You have to have a balance there that’s sustainable. But you definitely need to be able to go out and try new things that you might enjoy or something that you can do as a hobby. The biggest thing for me is when I’m home and I’m bored and I have nothing else to do I’ll lose my mind because I’m just so used to always being on the go. I mean everybody always has responsibilities, you can find something to do. For me that’s bowling, which has been phenomenal for me. It’s a good stress reliever, it’s a good community thing, you get to go with people, you can go on tournaments in different states. It’s a very good thing, but to me it is a sport. Some people say it’s not, just like cheerleading or any other thing. It’s something that you have to work at to get better.

FB: Of course.

BK: So for me anything that you have to work at to get better, that there’s a score, is a sport.

FB: Yeah that’s valid.

BK: That’s just my opinion on it. I call it a sport, but to me it’s a hobby as well because it’s something I enjoy, something that I can do whenever I have too many things on my mind, if I just wanna practice to get a little better. I think that’s important too, people need to do something, whether it’s drawing, whether it’s art, whether running, going to the gym, all that stuff is a hobby and can take you away from whatever’s going on in life.

FB: Yeah you’ve got that outlet.

BK: Yeah, so I think that’s an importance piece too that people should get involved with. Whatever it is, just something outside of work, bills, responsibility. And also if you do something like that you can bring along friends or you could meet new friends. I think that’s important.

FB: So as you mentioned a little bit earlier, you had a very different experience than most of us towards the end of high school, and that might’ve set you up for a little bit of a different answer to this question than I’ve been getting lately. Do you think that you left high school prepared for the next phase of your life?

BK: I do in some aspects, but to be real about it I think none of us left high school in a way that was going to sustain us for what was to come. In reality we learn the things to get us to the next level of school, or the next level of like somewhat of a career we want to get involved with. Like the whole junior year is about college career and what do you want to do, that’s like three quarters of the year.

FB: Yeah, pretty much.

BK: But in reality once you get out of school and you move out of your parents’ house and you start paying bills and taxes and this and that, they don’t teach you any of that. And not everybody’s parents went to college, or not everybody’s parents were financially stable. Everybody we went to high school with has different backgrounds, different ways of life, so without having extra help or somebody in your life that can teach you how to invest or how to be financially smart, or to start certain accounts or even like mailing out a letter, I mean now everything is online so most people pay their bills online or CashApp, or Zelle. But there was just so much stuff that they didn’t really teach us for the real world. But I would say I was a little more financially stable coming out of high school, I had money behind me because of the work I was doing. I learned more about investing, but my parents didn’t teach me that, that was stuff I learned through research and podcasts and stuff like that. What other people are doing with their money besides their 9-5 job. Aside from that though I think I still fit in the same boat as everybody else in our grade, like the fear factor of like what’s the next step? Or, am I going to be able to provide doing this 9-5? Especially since the pandemic, everybody’s world is just upside down. Trying to buy a house is impossible now, the prices of rent is beyond skyrocketed. Everybody in our grade, right before the pandemic, they were either just finishing college and starting their real career or they finally just had enough money to start saving money, and everything just went upside down from there. So now you’re talking about a group of, I still consider us kids, we’re all adults but I don’t know. The stuff that we’re dealing with, I feel like our parents are just much older and they always seem to be calm about things. Bills are always paid, everything is always taken care of. But I feel like the other thing is, the generation before us didn’t really speak about their emotions or anything. It was just like suck it up, pay your bills, go get a second job if you need, and just bury your head in work and don’t worry about anything else. And with our generation it’s more, especially with social media, people look at what they see and think that’s what they should to have or that’s what’s normal. There was a study saying that the average homeowners now in America have less than five grand in savings.

FB: Jeez.

BK: And it blew my mind because you drive through these neighborhoods and you see those nice cars and you see these nice houses and like it doesn’t make sense. You feel like, a lot of people I talk to, a lot of kids we went to high school with, feel like they’re falling behind because they’re not where their parents were at this age. There’s so much pressure from the outside society pushing on people telling them where they should be in life right now.

FB: And that’s the thing because comparing it to our parents is just as bad as comparing it to people on social media, because the world that our parents had when they we’re our age-

BK: Is gone

FB: Doesn’t exist anymore. Just on an economic level, the way that prices have so drastically increased and wages have hardly moved at all is insane.

BK: Even the way of investing, like people bought houses for like, a mansion was going for $180,000, and now they’re selling them for like $500,000, $600,000. We don’t have that option to make that profit right now.

FB: Because there was a surplus back then and it’s so scarce where it’s like you take things just because it’s all you can.

BK: Right. And I think one of the main points too is that, how we started off the conversation when we first started, you never know what’s going on in somebody’s life, and that everybody’s dealing with some sort of stress or some sort of problem, it’s just how people deal with the pressure when they’re under it. Like how people face themselves in the mirror like “Ok, I could either look at my life like this, and I can go down this path or go down that path”. And I think the biggest thing is people just need to stop being judgmental overall over what they think they should be or what other people have or don’t have. If they took the energy into doing something more beneficial for what they need or what they want, everybody would be better off in life… In today’s society that’s how everything is based. It’s based on materialistic things or things that you feel you should have or that you’re being pulled back from.

FB: We’ve been talking a lot about the things that we’ve learned in the past ten years, so if you could change anything about your time in high school knowing what you know now, what would you change? If anything.

BK: Honestly I think I would try different things. I think I would care more about being in class and trying harder in group projects. I think I would try to make more friends and have better relationships with other people because although most of your relationships go out the door once you graduate, the close friends that you have are very important. It is hard at times with work and with everything else that everybody endures once you leave high school. I think the more friends you have during high school, it makes the experience better and easier and more fun and relatable. I think one of the biggest problems that we have in society is everybody wanting to fit in or everybody wanting to be a part of something. It doesn’t even matter what it is, just being a part of something, being a part of a club, being a part of anything.

FB: It’s that sense of community that people crave.

BK: Right, like one of the biggest regrets I have too is that I gave up on sports to work and to spend time with my dad and learn the business. Looking back at it now I think I could’ve been a really good football player. I really enjoyed it. I think I could’ve dedicated a lot of time to it and just been part of a team and felt connected to a team. I played for a little while and then I couldn’t because I couldn’t do the summers for practice. I would say definitely a little more dedication to being a part of the community, being a part of something that I could look back and say “I did this and we went to states”, or even if we didn’t go to states we had a good season, we had fun. Definitely wish I was more inclusive with that.

FB: Yeah that makes sense. So another thing we’ve kind of been touching on here and there, but as a member of the Class of 2013, do you have any advice for the current seniors, the Class of 2023, as they enter this next phase of their lives?

BK: I think the only strong advice I would say is kind of what I was saying through most of the interview is stop dwelling on the past and the what you could’ve had and what you should’ve had, and focus on the right here, right now. Get something that distracts you when you’re going through a hard time. Something that you can meet up with a group of friends and talk about whatever’s going on. Get a support group behind you I would say because no matter what everybody’s going through something. Whether it’s sickness, whether it’s health, whether it’s finances, whatever it is that’s going on in your life, everybody has something. I would just say that if you have a support group that pushes you, you can do anything. If you have people behind you that are getting you out of your comfort zone and pushing you to the next level, I would say that. And don’t be afraid to take steps, don’t be afraid to fail. You have to know what you want out of the next stage in your life… You should always have a goal. No matter what we’re all human beings, we all make mistakes, we can always improve on things, and if you have no motivation, you’re not gonna go anywhere. You’re just gonna stay stagnant.

FB: So while we have the current seniors on our mind, do you think you would rather be a high schooler right now, or in the early 2010s when we were there?

BK: Oh, definitely back then. Absolutely not now. I just feel like the rules now are just so different, and with the whole social media stuff I couldn’t- when we were in high school there was social media but I wasn’t as it is now.

FB: It was still basic.

BK: Yeah. But I don’t know, to me, social media, I’m not huge on. It’s just set for like my business stuff and my family stuff. I’m not big on checking in on everybody. The people that I want to still be friends with and want to know what’s going on in their life are the people I follow. Aside from that it’s not one of those things I sit on all day. I feel like nowadays that’s all they look forward to is coming home and going on social media or what the next trend is or whatever. I get it of course because like anybody I have TikTok, you have TikTok, we make videos, and more often that not you find yourself sitting there scrolling and then an hour or two goes by and you’re like “what am I doing?”

FB: I get so mad at myself for that.

BK: It’s an addiction, especially the For You Page is whatever you’re scrolling on it’s something you’re interested in.

FB: They know what they’re doing.

BK: You could sit there all day. Even if you’re having conversations about something, it’ll pick it up and then your next couple of videos will be what you were talking about.

FB: Yeah man, that’s crazy.

BK: That to me is wild as well. I would definitely say high school back then, like we were saying before, there was more freedom back then too. Now with society and some of these horrific things that have been happening to schools with shootings and everything. I mean even for us our last two year or senior year.

FB: Senior year is when Sandy Hook happened.

BK: When Sandy Hook happened they locked us down pretty good. We couldn’t go outside for lunch, we couldn’t go outside for gym. That was a huge change for us because we were used to our first three years if you wanted to go eat lunch in the courtyard or if you wanted to go to the football field, they really didn’t have an issue with that as long as you didn’t leave campus. There’s just so much change and not a lot of freedom, and I think that’s another reason why these kids are resorting to social media because they don’t have the interactions with the stuff we went through, it was kind of taken from them.

FB: You brought something up that I think is interesting because I had been working in Brewster High School for a while as a substitute teacher for a couple of years, and I noticed that as well with the limitations of certain freedoms, but at the same time these kids also have so much that we didn’t. There’s so many different class options, there’s so many more different electives. And it’s interesting because as I’ve been doing these interviews I’ve been hearing people say certain things that they wish we had back then, they do have those now. They have personal finance classes where you can learn to budget. They have classes where you’re using your hands more, and building more. I’ve covered some of those classes and it was really interesting to see, like you said you’re able to do the math on these blueprints, and this class is a math class. It’s these kids building shelves and stuff and getting experience. There were power tools in the back of the room, and I remember as a sub just being like “Please god tell me that’s not on the lesson plan because I do not want to have to be the finger police”.

BK: And I always thought it was interesting how in middle school, we took wood class (tech ed). But then when we got to high school and were older and more mature and could use the tools properly without having someone watch and make sure we don’t cut our hand off, we didn’t have those classes. Even right before we got into middle school they used to have home ec, and they would teach you how to cook and everything. My sisters did that. And then once we got there they took the class out and that wasn’t even part of the curriculum anymore. Those are other small life lessons where once you get out of high school, like how many kids our age know how to cook? Their parents always provided that for them. So now they’re in college or they just got a career out of college, they don’t have a lot of money, they’re spending it on take out which is terrible for us anyways, because we were never taught these simple things… I think all of us are still under this same umbrella of like there are some people that are wildly successful, there are some people that are still struggling, there are some people we went to high school with that are in jail, there are some people we went to high school with that unfortunately lost their life. All of us at the end of the day are just human beings trying to make whatever we’re doing good enough… We all want to be successful, we just have different ideas of what success looks like.

FB: We’re coming towards the end here, but one thing our high school didn’t do was senior quotes. Do you have one that you think you would’ve used then or one that you like now?

BK: That’s a good one.

FB: Thank you.

BK: That’s a good question… I remember seeing something a couple weeks back that said “You don’t know the violence it took to be this gentle”. I like that quote because you can interpret it in different ways. It doesn’t have to be physical violence, a lot of people put themselves through a lot of mental violence of putting too much stress on themselves and putting too much stress on the past or what they want to do or where they want to be. A lot of people don’t realize how much violence in your own head or your own self esteem you put on yourself to become that comfortable with yourself… Some of people’s worst bullies are themselves.

FB: Yeah, big time.

BK: A lot of people don’t realize that if you wake up every day in that mindset of like “I’m not good enough, I should be here, I should be there” that takes a toll on your entire outlook on life, it takes a toll on your body, it takes a toll on everything. It’s one of those thing that you can’t see. It’s not something that’s physically there with you, it’s just something that you carry all the time. I think it was a UFC fighter that said it (the quote), which obviously that makes sense.

FB: Yeah their violence is a little more specific.

BK: Right, right. But I like it because you can take the quote and turn it into something else.

FB: So before we finish up, do you have any questions for me? And it’s ok if you don’t.

BK: Yeah, I actually do. So since we have been out of high school how do you feel that you have changed? Or how do you feel you’ve improved at all?

FB: So I think one of the biggest changes that I am aware of and happy and proud of is I think I’ve become a lot more confident and comfortable with myself. And I think when I say that to people it might confuse them a little bit because the vibe I gave off in high school might’ve been confident and comfortable-

BK: I would say so, yeah.

FB: But I think, and it took me a while to realize this and come to terms with it, I think that the person who I was in high school was the way that I was because I had this deep urge to be liked by everybody.

BK: So it was kind of the environment you were put in you felt like you needed to give off a certain persona?

FB: Kind of, in my mind the easiest way to be liked by everyone was just to be nice to everyone, to try to make people laugh, cheer people up, make people feel good, try to do stuff like that. And to an extent it worked, I won’t lie about that, but also that shit gets exhausting after a while.

BK: I could understand that completely.

FB: So when I got to college I kind of realized like I can’t do this all again. I can’t still make it my goal to try to make everyone I see like me. Because a) it’s never gonna happen.

BK: No.

FB: Even as I said it “worked” in high school, I’m sure there were people that didn’t fuck with me in high school.

BK: Oh, yeah.

FB: Even if they weren’t saying it to my face, I’m sure there were people who when they saw me in the hallway were like “fuck that guy, I’ve never liked him”. And good. That makes sense. I think if no one feels that way about you it’s maybe weirder. But I’ve realized that the more important thing than getting other people to like me was to get me to like me. Because I’m the only one that’s stuck with me forever.

BK: I like that. That’s a lot of what I was saying throughout this interview is that the biggest thing is not worrying about what other people have or the way people see you. You gotta worry about the way you see yourself.

FB: Exactly.

BK: I told my little brother, he ended up dropping out early, he would’ve graduated this year, he dropped out early and got his GED and he’s been working full-time. He works for me, my father’s company, but that was what he wanted to do in life and it worked out really well for him… I try to explain to him once you get out of high school you’ll have some friends that stick around and reach out to check in on you, but for the most part everybody just does their own thing.

FB: Yeah, exactly.

BK: People worry too much in high school about things that are not gonna matter once you leave.

FB: Absolutely. Thank you again for being a part of this, I really appreciate it.

BK: I appreciate you having me, I appreciate you reaching out. I hope we do this every couple of years.

FB: I’m hoping every ten. Fingers crossed. Who knows, in fifty years maybe we’ll have a whole book of this shit.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)