Transcript
My mom noticed first.
She was the biggest worrier, I suppose.
And you know, I guess that's Mom's job.
One day, I'm recently back from Iraq, asleep
in the upstairs bedroom of my Phoenix, Arizona, home
in the summer, and it is a good 120 degrees in this room.
And for whatever reason, I am comfortable.
I don't know if it's because Iraq was so hot, or I don't know.
When she comes in, I don't stir.
But it's so hot that when she pulls the chain,
the chain bounces back and hits the globe on the ceiling fan
in such a way that it -- oh, it was a ricochet, I knew for a
fact it was a ricochet, and I was out of bed in a heartbeat.
And my mother, for some reason, drops to the floor
as if I'm going to just savagely beat her, and I was like,
"What, what's going on in here?
Something's wrong."
She goes, "I was just turning on the fan."
"The fan? Well, I thought it was something serious,"
and I go back to sleep.
And that's no big deal for me, you know,
it rolled right off my back.
But for my mom?
Oh my God, she was scared she lost her kid, "Oh, he's
changed forever now, he's a different person than I knew."
And without realizing it, I was developing
this crazy-guy persona without even trying.
All I wanted to avoid was being looked at like I was different
from everybody else just because I was in the military,
and instead, it was exactly that that makes me different.