ARTICLE OF MY BROTHER & I…FROM 1997!!!

“WHEN JOHNNY GETS PIERCED”

Have you ever been used as “An example of a bad example”?

It’s 1997 in Downtown West Palm Beach, FL. My brother, who is a couple years younger than me, was skateboarding and hanging out on Clematis Street(IYKYK)!

He was approached by a journalist from The Palm Beach Post, who told him they were doing an article on kids who had body piercings, facial piercings, etc. They interviewed him because he was already pierced at 14. He then tells the journalist, “You should see my brother, he has way more piercings than I do!” He gave them our grandparents address, cause back in the day, I had a 6 ft Half-Pipe on an empty lot next to our grandparents house, and that’s where all of us neighborhood kids hung out! So, a day or so goes by, we’re all outside skating the Half-Pipe, and a reporter shows up!

They want to interview me, so I was like “🆒”! So I did the interview, they took some photos of me, and took off! I didn’t even think we’d end up in the paper, let alone think I’d end up on the front page.

A week later, there it was! My grandma(Cookie Monster), was coming out of the house with the newspaper in her hand. “Tony, you and Jammer are in the newspaper”, she said. Sure enough, there we were. Absolutely used as an example of a bad example. We weren’t bad kids, we just looked different and we didn’t have parents that would tell us “no”. So we did what we wanted and did whatever we had to do to survive.

I guess body and facial piercings in the 90s were equivalent to face tattoos now? We used kool-aid to dye our hair crazy colors. We used safety pins to pierce ourselves and got tattooed by randoms with homemade tattoo guns(still working on fixing those)! However, that didn’t define who we were then and it definitely doesn’t define who we are now!

We have come a long way and we don’t use the lack of supervision as an excuse to be F-ups as adults. As the oldest of 7 kids, I am proud of my younger siblings! We have and are raising amazing, compassionate, smart, accepting, loving, unique, hilarious and all around fantastic kids!

Never judge a book by its cover!

How boring would the world be if we were all the same? We’re unique for a reason!

Have you ever been judged because of the way you look, or because of the way you dress? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Much Love to you All,

DeDuke