Termite TV - Life Stories

Hi, my name's Rusty. I was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Lived there for 16 years of my life. I grew up with a picture-perfect family in almost every way, my dad even smokes a pipe. I have a really unbelievable relationship with my presents, my sister, not so much my brother, and my parents are still together which I'm finding more and more is very rare. I value that a lot, I guess. Religion was never an issue in my family, I was never influenced to go one way or the other. It was never even brought up. Racism, about the same thing. It was never even brought up. I never even knew what racism was. I didn't even know that there was a difference between me and a black person until I went to school nod they taught me that was bad and that I should not judge people like that. As far as religion goes, I'm still figuring out if that was bad or good. But as far as racial aspects go, all think that was, I think I benefitted a lot from that. It's helped me keep an open mind. Guess I've always had an open mind. I started smoking in 6th grade and kind of wish I didn't now, but it's kind of seething that's become so much a part of me that it's not so much the physical addiction it's more the mental addiction thing. That's a major aspect of my life, my life would be totally changed around if I hadn't, if I quit smoking. It would just be weird. Also have done a lot of other mischievous things but I've always played it pretty safe. Not one to take risks, which is something I'm trying to get through. When I grew up in tulsa, after 16 years, my dad got a job transfer and we moved to bakersfield and that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Going to a new environment, that's in California. It's a new environment, new people, clean slate because in Tulsa in middle school and high school I was an absolute loser. It's kind of funny when I look back on it now. I pride myself on laughing at things in the past. It just frustrated me. Here in the buckle of the Bible belt you just cant', it's very frustrating, you can't really be yourself. It caused a lot of problems for me, which were all my own fault. But in any case, Bakersfield, California was the place to be for me. It was nice, but it's a shit town. It shouldn't exist. It's a pit stop on your way to San Francisco, but I grew so much there,a nod I think it's just the people that I met and what I made for myself there. Now I'm at college, I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do for the rest of my life, but I wanna design cars, i know that. The aesthetic qualities of cars appeal to me. Wanna bring back the sixties, seventies, and the fifties styling. I've always loved cars. If there's one major influence that turned me toward cars it's my dad. And me and him, we love restoring British sports cars. And that's been a great experience, it's helped me develop mechanic skills and all that stuff. I do wanna do music at some point in my life. Not 'cause I wanna be a rockstar, just because,… I don't know. I figure, it brought tears to two peoples' eyes already and people seemed to like it, my little acoustical stuff. They say that I can really express my self and they can tell that I'm really into it and I just have a fear of being rejected. So we'll see what happens, but other than that I think life is going pretty good right now. And if there's one major lesson I've learned it's that anything that comes your way just look at it and say hey, you're human.