How We Met A (Mini) HIMYM Reunion

0:00Hey everybody, Craig Thomas here. I just wanted to introduce this very special bonus episode. I'm very excited about it. This is chapter one of the novel I wrote called That's Not How It Happened. You may have heard us talk about it on the podcast because there is a very big himium tie-in. The audiobook has four characters. There are four voice narrators in it. Two of them are none other than Josh Radner and Kobe Smulders, called for applause. There is also a wonderful actor named Kevin Aiyanuchi. He plays the character Emmett who has Down syndrome. Kevin was amazing in this movie Champions with Woody Harrelson. If you've seen that, he's just a fantastic actor. He's so good as Emmett in this book. And there's also a wonderful young actress named Marley Watson who does the voice of Darcy who is Emmett's younger sister. So it's all, it's the four members of this family all sharing where they are all at in these inflection points in their life. I'm so proud of this audiobook. It's done great. The book of the month club selected is one of the featured audiobooks.

1:04The month the book came out in the fall. It got a prize for an exceptional audiobook. I had to call that an earphones award from Kirkus Reviews. I'm just so proud of how this audiobook came out. This cast is amazing. I hope you will love it as much as I do. And if you do, please go find the book. Find the audiobook. It's everywhere you would buy audiobooks and we will also post a link, Harper Collins link, I think, that can take you to a bunch of different ways to buy the book or the audiobook. And I think Josh and Kobe hit it out of the park in this thing. It's such, it's so cool. There's a himium mini reunion in this in this audiobook. And we got special permission from Harper Collins and Hanover Square Press. I want to say thank you to them. They are allowing us to share this with you guys for free. This is copyrighted material that they own and they give a special permission to share this with the how we made your mother fans. I could not be more excited and happy to share it with you. And I hope you'll enjoy it and give it a listen. Chapter one, intellectual property, page, I am a special needs parent.

2:14Or at least that was the now somewhat problematic terminology when my son was born 24 years ago. You see some wonderful human beings out there took special and weaponized it into an insult meaning stupid. And that is why we can have nice things. Then again, maybe special was always a bit condescending. Nowadays, I think the preferred term would be the parent of a child with a developmental disability, which is just super catchy and rolls right off the tongue. Put it this way, I am the proud mom of a boy, well adult now still struggling to wrap my head around that one named Emmett, who has Down syndrome. He was our first. So my husband, Rob and I were thrown into the deep end of the parenting pool before we knew how to doggie paddle. Conveniently, this all happened 3000 miles away from any friend or family support, which we'd left behind in our native New York after moving to Los Angeles for Rob's screenwriting career. And then we had a baby and that baby turned out

3:18to be Emmett, who turned out to be a full-time job. Raising Emmett, who was wonderful and challenging, I became an involuntary stay-at-home mom struggling to support his numerous developmental and medical needs, which included an open heart surgery when he was just under a year old. Rob worked to support the family writing movies in Hollywood and became quite successful, which was lucky because a more accurate term than special needs might have been fucking expensive needs. Endless doctor visits, specialist occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy. My job as an investigative journalist, I'd carved out a niche exposing healthcare injustices against marginalized communities. A fire I now channeled into making sure Emmett got all the support and services he was entitled to, generated far less money than Rob's, so my career was put on hold temporarily. And by temporarily,

4:19I of course mean forever. After that, the years begin to whiz by. Rob's career catches fire. He's off pitching writing shooting movies, mostly his go-to genre romantic comedies, often in some exotic location. Meanwhile, my life is decidedly less romantic. I'm stranded in Los Angeles where I know no one. I am the sole lifeline for a complicated child who needs constant attention. Every single cell in my brain becomes devoted to this boy. That's 86 billion neurons and 85 billion non-neuronial cells, which is not even close to enough. I start to lose my mind, bit by bit, regularly leaving the house in pajamas and novelty slippers. My hair, matted down, my eyes glazed over. I'm the only pedestrian pushing a stroller on LA sidewalks may just for show. Alpha male movie studio execs rolling

5:19by and their bends is side-eye me like I'm the walking dead. Granted, they look at all women over 30 this way, but it still feels bad. At the park, I'm the only actual mother tending to my child as easier, healthier kids than mine run around unsupervised and well-paid nannies stare at their phones. One bright LA morning I accidentally brushed my teeth with my husband's back acne medication. I gag, spit it out, gargle mouthwash, dear God, I think. What is wrong with me? I brushed my teeth again to get the taste out, but I use the back acne medication. Again, I gag, spit it out, gargle again this time at the freezer with vodka and oh, I swallow it. It's 7.14 am. I have not yet had coffee. Poor little Emmett is crying with a wet diaper in his baby swing. I should get him out of there if he swings too much e-hurls, I think. Just to see hurls.

6:23The creamy breast milk puke creating a spectacular parabolic arc across the kitchen right onto my grinning cow slippers. The two cow faces smile up at me. Hey, tasty milk for a human. Also, why are you drinking vodka? 7.14 am. That seems like more than just a bad mood. That night I convinced my husband to move back east by kidnapping my own womb. If you ever want a second child, he or she will be born in New York, I say, making a dramatic, closed for business gesture over my vaginal region. I demand to go back to a place where the word season has meaning even when not preceded by the word awards. Concerned about my mental health and his future prospects for intercourse, Rob agrees. We move back east to the suburbs outside the city, backyard, picket fence, where at least I'll have some semi-helpful grandparents and a few old friends to keep me sane. We have a second

7:28child, Darcy. Also wonderful. Also challenging, who is neuro-typical. Another not at all clunky term. And with that, I fully, finally, and irretrievably become mom. More years passed. Rob continues to work in Hollywood, but now from New York, which is hard, this is all pre-zoom. He flies to LA a lot, goes missing for weeks, months at a time for shoots, and the one thing you can 100% count on, more than death or taxes or an abacus, is that the moment the wheels of Rob's plane leave the runway, one of the kids will get explosive diarrhea or headlice or both will get both at the same time. All of which I will get to, but Rob will dodge. Try umpently returning the moment it's all over. Must be nice. Which is also the inner command I repeat to myself, to avoid strangling Rob when he comes back home with a tan.

8:31It's all a little easier with family support nearby, but if I'm honest, I still feel like a single parent half the time. Even more years pass. The kids grow up. To be clear, I adore my children. But by the time they're teenagers, I'm fucking losing it. My bad-ass journalism career is fossilized in amber, like that little Jurassic Park mosquito with its robustness full of dinosaur DNA. All of the genetic blueprints for a world stomping tyrannosaurus just sitting there, collecting dust. Meanwhile, for Emmett, the end of high school and his uncertain future as an adult with developmental disabilities, despite being on the higher functioning end academically, I mix whenever a specialist says this about my son. It sounds somehow boastful and diminishing at the same time. Lume large on the horizon. Rob and I are so lucky to have a wonderful loving younger sibling

9:34for Emmett and Darcy. And yet we are so aware that she should not feel it's her job in adulthood to be responsible for her brother once we're gone. Then I have an idea. It takes me two years of excruciatingly slow progress. But I write a memoir about my journey as Emmett's mom called, Now what? The title refers to the giant cliff anyone raising a child with a disability is headed toward a cliff called adulthood. What happens after your age typical kid ages out of the school system? We fancy ourselves an advanced civilization and yet we have shockingly few good answers to this question. And then there's the other aspect of the now what question the parent part. As in you just spent the last two decades grinding to get your kid ready for a life of semi-independence so that one day you can keep the non-negotiable appointment at the end of your life where you you know die never fully confronting the fact you've still got five more decades to fill.

10:40Even though you no longer remember who the hell you are what the hell you want or what the hell you did before all this. So now you're just left stumbling around in the dark wondering now what? To answer that question I open a local business called Cafe Everyone or my son and other young adults with disabilities can work have some structure and hopefully find meaning in community. Despite my not knowing what the hell I'm doing even a little the damn thing works. Not a smash but a viable business with me as the manager. The catch the better things go at Cafe Everyone the less Emmett needs me there which is the whole point for me not to be there and so I step back it's odd pouring so much into an endeavor whose ultimate success depends entirely on your absence but I guess that's no different than parenthood in general. We also buy Emmett a

11:41group home to live in with three high school friends now co-workers so they can be as independent as possible which is to say still not all the way. Emmett is the most verbal and social roomy but they all have different challenges we employ a rotating staff of direct support professionals to help them run their lives all week. Each night one of the staffer sleeps over to be on hand for emergencies. The other roomies parents chip in what they can but the real money comes from me and Rob and really from Rob so he deserves a lot of credit. He took on extra rewrite gigs to pay for it punching up some truly crappy movie scripts but it all works. Emmett is happy and my young adult with a disability has a place in the world no easy feat and with that I have the happy ending of my little memoir. Now I have zero expectations for this book it's mainly an excuse to sit and think to have a small thing that's mine amid the daily avalanche of my family's needs.

12:44From my old life as a journalist I know a small publisher I send them my manuscript they like it enough to publish it. The book comes out and it does okay a few nice mentions and publications aimed at the disability community. A couple warm reviews and magazines appreciative notes from other parents like me. Doesn't sell too many copies though. The publisher sends me a polite nice work note with some flowers but my phone doesn't exactly start ringing about a follow-up and that's that which is fine. A little disappointing maybe I'd fantasize the book might spark a new chapter in my life or at least defibrillate my dormant journalism career. But in a desert of career unfulfillment a small drop of water is better than none. I go back to my day job supporting everybody else while vaguely resenting how much of my adult life has been devoted to supporting everybody else. My book somehow gets into the hands of world famous actress Merritt Berkshire who as you may know created the largest celebrity book club

13:51on the planet. Her millions of fans would devour the 1994 Toleta phone book if she said it was a page-turner. Out of nowhere Merritt finds my memoir and loves it. She even shoots a weepy video of herself finishing reading it. Apparently the final page selfie is a meme Merritt invented. Crying equals by this book. Noes Crinkle equals don't bother. My book's final page has her ugly crying in the least ugly most charming way possible. If you've ever seen her rom coms one of which Rob even punched up you know exactly what I'm talking about. Through Sobs Merritt announces I have never been more moved by another human beings journey than my page McConnell's memoir. Now what guys I'll tell you now what go by this book right now. Merritt posts this across all her socials as the kids say I guess and that is when my tiny little book explodes.

14:56shoots up all the lists becomes a number one New York Times best seller stays there for 28 weeks. Suddenly my phone won't stop ringing interviews magazine features an invitation to be honored at the National Down syndrome society's annual gala surreal but by far the most bonkers call of all comes from none other than Merritt Berkshire herself. She wants to meet me. Rob I met my wife at a Metz game. We were both recent college grads living in NYC barely employed at the bottom rung of our respective career ladders while also juggling the far more important gig of getting day drunk with our friends at a Metz game on a random Tuesday afternoon. Page was the most beautiful woman in the stadium which is damning with faint praise since the stadium was 20% full for an inconsequential late April contest against the Milwaukee brewers.

15:56But she was beautiful I mean. My buddies were as ever talking shit loudly heckling the brewers right fielder from our cheap seats beneath the Pepsi sign. From the row behind us page in her friends joined in. This poor outfielder Jeremy Burnitz had done absolutely nothing wrong but we were all tearing him a new one anyway. After she accidentally spilled half a beer on my head page and I started bonding over some clever Burnitz word play Jeremy burnt tits Jeremy burn shits eventually page got the whole section singing the diarrhea song when you're standing in right field and the poop starts to congeal diarrhea a diarrhea a a who was this magical woman at this point Jeremy Burnitz a solid journeyman player who again had done nothing wrong looked up at us shrugged his shoulders and called out plaintively why page and I just burst out laughing turned out she had the greatest laugh of all time by the seventh inning stretch I was a goner as with most days that

17:01changed your life I wasn't expecting it this was just supposed to be some silly forgettable Tuesday in my 20s but an amazing girl named page happened to be skipping work for her friends birthday and fate happened to sit her right behind me and then fate spilled a beer on my head just to make sure I didn't miss what was happening here which was me meeting my wife after we got married page and I moved from New York to LA where I eaked out a living for a couple years selling scripts that never got produced then a game changer I wrote a script about two hardcore baseball fans who meet and fall in love during a world series in New York between the Mets and Yankees a baseball romcom called subway series the man a diehard meds fan and the woman a diehard Yankees fan meet at game one trash talk each other's teams spar and flirt throughout the seven game barn burner and ultimately spoilers fall in love it's basically when Harry met Sally meets major league meets

18:02Romeo and Juliet the stark cross lovers from warring factions part not the tragic doubles suicide part the studio made me cut that cowards the movie was inspired by page since baseball was a huge part of our own origin story the script sparked a bidding war between several major studios and sold for a life-altering amount of money back when that could still happen in Hollywood the up-and-coming romcom director Nigel dogged a saucy Brit hopped aboard Nigel put me through many rewrites changed the story a bit cast big movie stars that were nothing like me or page movie me was way more handsome movie page was not quite as pretty as the real thing but the script got shot with its spirit mostly intact rare and became a bonafide hit rarer I wasn't yet 30 and suddenly I was an in-demand screenwriter who'd written a movie everybody had seen it led to years of writing gigs mostly rewriting other people scripts are adapting a video game comic book or even a product into a movie no shame in it that's the bread and butter

19:04of a working screenwriter good money which it turned out we really needed because around the time subway series was born so was Emmett and everything changed again our baby boy had down syndrome and would need open heart surgery over the next few years life and Los Angeles became too hard especially for page my job was to make stuff up for a living her job was to keep our son alive so we moved back east to be near family for the extra support but also because New York felt like home to page in a way LA never would she didn't want to have another baby in that city and I understood that but there was a cost to leaving Hollywood my career steadily cooled off I forced all it for a while by flying back and forth a ton you should see my frequent flyer miles but out of sight out of mind I was three thousand miles away from every coffee breakfast lunch dinner cocktails jobs come from those sad but true I still landed rewrite gigs on big studio movies

20:08although I rarely received screen credit even with a sweeping page one rewrite a writer usually gets cash but no credit your ghost writer paid to save the day then disappear I sold original spec scripts to some of which I loved but none got made I was still known mostly for subway series which ran on basic cable constantly years passed the phone stopped ringing and I slowly became what I'd always dreaded that guy who wrote that thing once today subway series feels like an old movie the characters talk on cell phones that look gigantic and they actually call each other who the fuck calls anybody anymore the characters don't text they don't use social media or dating apps why because none of that shit existed some of the dialogue is dated the characters tell jokes that aren't always politically correct the whole thing plays as a period piece now a portrait of an era that has passed I'm still proud of it it's not exactly what I wanted it to be but it's cute

21:15and it works is it a bit cheesy yes but then again so am I my grand unified theory is this deep down people want cheesy my father passed away very young while I was still in high school and it made no sense I spent my teen years disappearing into movies the kind that let you escape into something good I love a happy ending I'm not a fan of messy I like it when things make sense we all go to the movies to see a world where things make sense I write movies like that some of subway series memorable moments get meamed online nowadays especially the climactic line delivered by movie me to movie page right before their big kiss you can't hit a home run if there's no home to run to as with anything popular debates rage online about whether that line is a romcom classic or absolute flaming shit but that's how I felt about page right away she was home

22:17subway series became a part of our story an iconic commemoration of our meet cute whenever page and I hit a rough patch I always had subway series in my back pocket my get out of jail free card a love letter to my wife that somehow became a big hit movie page I hate subway series I've never told this to anyone how could I what woman wouldn't want their partner to write a hit romcom inspired by her look I love Rob I love his enthusiasm even when it flirts with cheesiness and I love the idea of this movie being for me which is why I've kept my mouth shut for two decades but the truth is I can barely sit through it rob likes to say it's a love letter to me but is it if you look closely subway series is not really for or about me at all sure rob and I are both big meds fans and baseball is a part of how

23:24we met and fell in love for our first anniversary he bought me a customized burn shits brewers jersey which is still to this day my single favorite possession and we both hated the Yankees meds fans are legally required to hit the Yankees look it up it's in the constitution the meds have won a grand total of two world series the Yankees have won 27 we get to be better it's all we have but in the movie rob made the me character a Yankees fan what the fuck to a meds fan that's sacrilege plus rob never even showed me the script until after it was sold when I finally read it I asked wait why am I a Yankees fan oh I needed to do that he said to add conflict oh well you succeeded I found why couldn't you be the Yankees fan of course we both knew the real answer because Yankees fans are assholes sorry but they are Yankees fans are the

24:30lazy entitled nobility to meds fans humble hardworking peasantry the Yankees are Maria and Twinnett the meds are Joan of Arc all ask Nigel if we can switch it Rob said no big deal but guess what happened have you guessed yet it never got switched he later said Nigel preferred the woman as a Yankees fan why you ask I never got an explanation because there isn't one the truth is I'm not convinced Rob ever even pitched the idea of switching it the most quoted line from Subway series is you can't head a home run if there's no home to run to so in this formulation the woman is home plate and her whole job is to just wait there for the man to complete his victory trot then step on her because that's not great when the movie came out the tagline on the poster was

25:33she was a catch but there was a catch yeah the catch is she's a damn Yankees fan also the character is nothing like me she's much nicer than me and I don't mean that as a compliment she feels less like an actual woman and more like a woman written by a man I'll do respect to Rob I know he meant well everything she does is in reaction to the man being charmed rolling her eyes getting mad forgiving all reactive based on a true love story the poster claimed so then the whole world started asking me how does it feel to see yourself on the big screen and I wanted to say I have no idea it's not really me I don't even like that chick but I couldn't by the time the movie came out and it was born so simultaneously Rob had two babies one sparkly hit rom com that made him the toast of Hollywood the other a complicated mystery with an uncertain

26:36future it should come as no surprise which one he leaned into more rob Nigel and the cast traveled the globe to promote subway series at every press junk at rob said I was his inspiration and the reporters and screening audiences would all go oh but I did not feel like an inspiration I was the new mother of a baby I did not fully understand living in a city in which I felt all alone watching my husband's fever for success burn hotter than ever now that we had a special needs child rob felt he had to become a super provider to support Emmett for his entire life the thing is rob was a full on workaholic even before Emmett's birth but now our babies needs gave him a free pass to not only continue working nonstop obsessively but to do it all under this cloak of nobility he was the hero the breadwinner rob loved Emmett but he also wanted to be off having

27:44immersive adventures in imaginary lands escaping the hard day-to-day realities I had to confront mostly on my own at such a lost lonely moment for me watching subway series this shiny happy rom com populated by beautiful young actors with fake accents none of them were real New Yorkers felt like seeing a mirage in the desert a strange hallucination born of thirst none of it resembled my real life not anymore it felt like the funhouse mirror version of a life I'd left behind a fairy tale about two young people with no responsibilities no crushing parental weight on their shoulders nothing but free time to obsess over baseball and drink beer and eat hot dogs and never gain weight this is why rom coms are such an irresponsible genre they make us

28:44chase illusions then feel bored and sad once we catch them god bless them rob is the gooey dreamer in our relationship I'm the pragmatist the rom com era of my life if I'd ever had one was over no the movie I wanted to see now was the one that happens after the credits after the big proposal on the center field jumbo tron after the charming lighthearted characters get hit by a real life wrecking ball shattered pulverized forced to gather up the tiny pieces of their former selves and glue them into something new letting go forever of the perfect lives they'd planned on having that's the movie I wanted to see but Hollywood doesn't make that kind of movie so I wrote it as a book instead Darcy I'm barely in my mom's book that should tell you everything I hate to

29:48be the cliche sibling of a child with a disability but when you're a kid and you get less attention than your brother and you don't fully understand why it's hard it took me a while to realize Emmett was different around age six I noticed that kid sometimes made fun of him then I heard this weird word I didn't know before that word my brother was just my brother funny silly a bit eccentric I guess but normal to me if he was being annoying I'd say stop Emmett you're being annoying but mostly I just looked up to him he was my big bro then one day on the school bus he was a retard I asked my parents what that meant I'll never forget the looks on their faces got it but also like they'd been waiting for it they said sometimes bullies used that word to be mean to people like my brother why would anyone want to be mean to Emmett I asked because he's different

30:54they said and that's when my parents gave me an in-depth description of what it really means to have Down syndrome the medical issues the learning challenges the social differences and how it can make you a target for bullies I was so pissed Emmett was unique he was his own song if people couldn't hear it then fuck them on that day I anointed myself my brother's protector Emmett's kid sister half a decade younger this little pipsquake full of piss and vinegar fending off the bullies making a scene the louder the better once when I was eight I stood up on my seat and announced to the entire bus that Devano shields who'd been blowing spitballs out of fast asleep Emmett he always falsely been moving vehicles still does was a fascist mother fucker who must be stopped my parents beamed with pride as I regaled them with my tail of bravery they quote that line to

31:56this day to describe all kinds of people from drivers who don't use their turn signal to certain us presidents hell yeah they said hi fiving me I can still remember my mother squeezing me tight whispering in my ear Darcy we are so lucky you're our daughter and Emmett is so lucky you're his sister I finally had their attention I finally had a thing now instead of living in Emmett's shadow I was Emmett's bodyguard basking in my own glory I climbed up to my favorite spot the treehouse in our backyard it was Emmett's favorite spot too whenever we played hide and seek as kids he would announce I'm going to hide in the treehouse which kind of defeated the whole hide and seek concept but was also classic Emmett he simply couldn't lie still can't Emmett climbed up to find me hey I said still a glow hey he said climbing in next to me listen Darcy

33:03don't do that anymore okay don't do what stick up for me what I exclaimed but Devano Shields was being a dick I know but it doesn't help you're my little sister you know I could feel a lump forming in my little throat I thought I was his hero so I have to just sit there and let those assholes fuck with my brother somehow I'd been swearing like a sailor and getting away with it since age five Emmett smiled at me gently like he understood something I didn't yes I didn't want to cry but I started imagining it watching on and doing nothing as Emmett got bullied and my eyes wailed up I turned away fine I said get beat up what do I care Darcy get out Emmett just leave

34:04me alone Emmett nodded and climbed down from the treehouse he never yelled back at me not once our entire childhood things changed after that I'd gone from being jealous of Emmett to being his protector to being I didn't know what the next day when Devano Shields started picking on Emmett I kept chatting with my friends pretending I didn't notice Emmett just sat there looking out the window peacefully ignoring it civil disobedience like Gandhi admirable but not my style that day at lunch I walked by Devan seat and hopped a big juicy lugi into his Hawaiian punch when he wasn't looking then I watched from across the cafeteria as Devan drank every last drop I never told anyone and I didn't feel bad about it my lugi was the most natural ingredient in that Hawaiian punch

35:05it can be weird having a big brother whose path is so different from yours as the neuro typical at first your parents marvel at every little thing you do look at her stack those blocks so neatly you get praise for shit other parents wouldn't think twice about a miracle child just for being on track which sounds nice but is in fact weird later as you become less cute and more adolescent an even weirder thing happens your parents stop paying you any attention at all why because you've got this you've always had this your teachers love you you do your homework by yourself you don't need speech therapy or open heart surgery you're easy and there's the rub you go from miracle child to latch key kid in the blink of an eye my once anti-establishment

36:06parents had settled down in a wealthy suburb full of cookie cutter homes cookie cutter families cookie cutter kids they wanted a daughter who fit that picture and then they wanted to put that picture up on the fridge and walk away all those things they were never going to take for granted if they had a non disabled child they totally took them for granted but I still had to keep stacking those blocks long after the applause stopped why because for the first five years of Emmett's life my parents feared they'd never have a kid who would go to college get married make them grandparents become a successful independent grown-up qualified to one day do the most important job of all watch over Emmett once they were gone my parents always say they don't want me to feel that pressure but it's a lie and it should be a lie of course they want me to help take care of Emmett after they die and of course I should do it and I will do it because I love him it's just a lot meanwhile

37:18now that I was applying to colleges and fulfilling their dream they didn't even ask me about it no how were the applications going dars no need a ride to a campus tour nothing nada crickets they were focused on Emmett and on their own shit and I was just supposed to keep doing what I'd always done be the little miracle they could happily ignore when my mom found out her memoir was going to be published she let Emmett and I read the manuscript to make sure we weren't embarrassed by anything what I read was far worse than embarrassing it was proof in print of what I'd always feared about my place in our family I was a side character the straight man in the comedy the innocent bystander in the tragedy the control group in the experiment I was in my mother's eyes uncomplicated who on earth wants to be thought of as uncomplicated

38:21if you look closely everybody's complicated but my parents didn't look closely in my mom's defense I didn't complain much most of my complicated feelings about Emmett my family my life I kept to myself my mother wrote a memoir about raising a child who was complicated in a way you don't have to look too hard to see Emmett is complicated in uncomplicated ways but all of our brains are little meat computers right reading my mom's book mine ran account of all the words in it devoted to me and those words excerpt it and bound wouldn't fill a Chipotle menu because I'm the easy one if you don't look too hard but if you do you might not like what you see because it's complicated Emmett my name is Emmett and I have Down syndrome

39:26but that is not the most interesting thing about me having Down syndrome is just a part of me like my elbow or being allergic to swim I'm happy it is a part of me without it I would not be and I like me Down syndrome is a genetic condition where you have an extra chromosome and what the act from chromosome does is it holds in all the extra awesome no more people can't hold in all their awesome it leaks out but my awesome it stays right in there that's why I'm such a positive dude and everybody loves me that's just facts there are lots of parts to me I love poor jam I play drums my dad used to play drums and he taught me how to play too using our 90s

40:33rock I am a better drummer than my dad now I can play along to almost all of poor jam's songs well at least the ones I like best my sister says you let dad brainwash you into liking dad rock but maybe it's just amazing music and dad was right to brainwash me I graduated from high school then I graduated from my life skills program I have a job I have a house I live in with a few of my friends from the program Cindy P.D. and Elise and our great director part piece are there a lot to help out most important I have a girlfriend Amy she is the love of my life our song is

41:39released by poor jam we listen to it all the time we kiss each other when we listen to that song even if we are not together we call each other and listen to that song all this girl stuff is because of my family they are the best my mom worked really hard to get me a job and I plays to live my dad went away for work a lot when I was a kid but I know he loves me my younger sister Darcy is always there for me sometimes it is like she is my big sister my dad says Darcy is an old so my mom says that with Darcy she gave both to a 30 year old woman then my dad always says

42:41that had to hurt that crashed me up every time because it is gross if you pixel it but funny my dad is funny like that even if sometimes it is gross my mom wrote a book about me no big deal but I guess a lot of people read it sometimes it even feels like I am kind of famous my dream is Eddie Vettel from poor jam we'll read it and love that I'm a huge poor jam fan and then I will get to me Eddie Vettel if I ever get to me Eddie Amy has to be there too because I bring was Amy into being a huge poor jam fan too we have been to five pd shows my dad takes us we don't sing along we scream along

43:48for Christmas last year I brought Amy a poor jam short with Eddie's face on it that says it doesn't get Eddie Vettel than this it is her favorite short so if I ever get to me Eddie Vettel Amy has to be there too Hanover Square Press and Harper Audio present that's not how it happened by Craig Thomas performed by Kobe Smolders Josh Radner Kevin Ionucci and Marley Watson