Brad Yule

I looked at him and was like, oh, that's what I look like when I'm 70.

Okay, got it.

Cool.

I stood up, held onto the table to keep myself standing and watched as he walked towards me and ran through all the things you do when you meet your father for the first time.

Do you hug him?

Do you kiss him?

Do you shake his hand?

Do you just say hello?

He didn't know about me until I knew about him.

My mom kept her pregnancy secret from him and my parents kept...

my biological family secret from me.

He walked up, we did the dude handshake and hug thing, and both sat down, and he started off our conversation with, son, it's good to meet you, and I want to start out by being honest.

Well, all the alarm bells went off in my head, because all these years of work, when you say, I want to be honest with you, that's usually the last thing that's going to happen the rest of the conversation.

So all my defenses went up, and I thought, okay, here we go.

Let's see what this is.

And he said, I could tell you that I'm in prison because of drugs and alcohol because I was doing both of those when I committed my crime.

But the truth is, I did a horrible thing that I can never take back or fix.

And that's why I'm here today.

From the moment he said that, I was hooked because he was suddenly an adult, even though I'm an adult now, being honest with me.

And after that, instead of dropping that subject, he continued on about his life prior to prison and his life in prison that didn't paint him in a better picture.