joy time continued

First off I don't want anyone thinking that I blame my mother or anyone for that matter for my addiction problems. While it may have played a part in it, I made some pretty bad decisions that I had complete control over. Anyways on with the story of my childhood. It was always pretty crazy growing up in the Johnson household. With 9 kids running around there usually was some kind of trouble going on. My older brothers were terrors of the neighborhood. I don't know if I mentioned it before but we grew up in North Minneapolis, in the heart of the ghetto of the twin cities. Police were constantly combing the area around our house looking for some riff raff. Plus the house next door was a half-way house for men coming out of prison. I remember the police coming to our door a few times looking for one of my brothers. One day my brother was shooting a b.b. gun out the window and shot out someones window while they were driving by our house. The cops came to the door and my mom said she knew one of her son's did it. But don't you think a mom would be more protective of her children? She even helped them look for the bb gun. But you see our house was huge with tons of crawl spaces every where. So it was pretty easy to hide. They never ended up finding it or my brother who was safely hiding in one of the crawl spaces under some insulation. We got picked on a lot growing up there. We were one of the few white families around the area so I got picked on quite a bit for just being a nerdy little white kid. My father thought it was important for us to grow up in a diverse area where we would see all kinds of different races and colors. All my best friends were either Asian or black it was pretty cool of my dad to do. It did teach me not to judge a person by their appearance. It's too bad that the other kids around there didn't get taught that. So for a while we got beat up a little bit until my brothers started fighting back. Soon they all realized that if they messed with one of us they might as well mess with all 9 of us. I didn't realize it until one day on the bus a kid started picking on me saying I took his seat on the bus when another kid sitting near asked him if he knew who he was messing with. The kid told him I was one of the Johnson's and needless to say he got pretty nice pretty quickly and I smiled really big. And from that day forward I kind of became a little smart ass, always running my mouth at the kids in the neighborhood knowing they all were scared. My brother chased a kid on the sidewalk with his car after he saw the kid stealing my bike from me. He thought he could just push me off my bike and steal it cause he was bigger. Luckily my bro was right there and chased him down. You should of seen his face when my bro made him apologize to me while holding him up in the air. This kid who was probably 5 years older then me would meet me at my bus stop for days stealing my trapper keeper and beating me everyday. He chased me through my yard one day and my dog bit him in the ass. He grabbed his older brother and started walking to our house and my older bro saw this and ran outside with a knife and told them not to fuck with me any more and I never saw them again. That was the last time I remember getting messed with. Not to incriminate anyone but one time some girls beat up my sister and even a guy hit her. So my brother found out who he was and went and blew up his brand new Cadillac. There's a bunch of other stories but, I don't want to get anyone in trouble and some of them are so crazy I don't know if you would believe me or not. But after 5 murders on our block alone, I did witness two of the shootings. Something a kid should never see. I had nightmares for months and I became really scared to be alone. One night two guys hid in our porch and waited for us to get home. They must of been casing out our place because my dad was always slow to enter the house. They waited till we all went in and as soon as my dad came walking up way behind they jumped him and began beating the shit out of him. They had an ice pick they were swinging at him, luckily the tip of it broke off on the house or they might have killed him with it. My dad was a big guy but older. He took the beating and refused to give up his wallet. We were all in shock when he came up to the house. My brothers were so pissed they went around the neighborhood beating up anybody that fit the description. So after all this happening my parents finally decided to put the house up for sale. My moms plan was to move us to Wisconsin. We didn't need as big of a house anymore because it was just 5 of us left and my older brothers that were twins were in their senior year of high school so they were set to move out. It wasn't easy selling that house but finally they took a low offer so we could get out of there. We ended up moving the night of the crazy Halloween snow storm in 1991. I'm sure you all remember that one. I was so scarred riding in that U-Haul in that storm. When we all got there we had to quickly unload the one my dad was driving so he could go back and get the last load along with my dog. It took him all night and my mom was so nervous and we were all so worried. It was before cell phones so there was no way we could check up on him and I don't think we even had a phone in our new house yet. At the time I didn't know it but my dad was going through some serious health problems. They kept it secret from us kids. I had no idea that he was having heart problems. So we were in a new town just a small fraction the size of Minneapolis called Amery WI. It wasn't even a month since we had been there and my dad had to go in for some surgery to unblock a clogged artery. I was told that it was a simple procedure and it should only take a day or to and he would be home safe and sound. He left on a Monday after I hugged him and told him to hurry home. I knew something was wrong when my mother had come home in a daze that night. I didn't find out what until I overheard a phone conversation she had with her friend. I guess there were complications in the procedure they were trying to do and they ended up having to do an emergency triple bypass. So there I was new to a small town, starting over at a new school, trying to meet new friends all while things were going wrong with my dad....Oh this is getting long again so I will keep you on the edge of your seat till tomorrow where I will finish the story of me growing up and tie it into my recovery.

Josh