Brad Yule

The more he talked, the more I kept thinking, man, you should stop.

I would never know this about you, and that's cool.

It's good.

You should stop telling things.

But he kept going, and he kept going.

And when he finally got done, we tried to catch up.

As you can imagine, a man in his 70s and a man in their 40s getting to know each other for the first time as father and son.

We talked about my life as a kid, his life as a kid and as an adult before he ended up in prison.

And weirdly enough, circled all the way back to my job as a cop in his life of crime before he went to prison and how cops and criminals had changed from the 60s and 70s to the now 2000s.

And we're all very different.

At the end of the visit,

I left and got out to the prison gate, still a little confused because this was my planned one-and-done visit.

I didn't intend to do more than one of these.

First person I've called, of course, was my wife.

She was excited and probably a little bit nervous because I told her I'd be in there an hour or two.

They let me stay for eight hours.

So she picked up the phone and was like, how'd it go?

And I was like, I don't know what to tell you, but I genuinely like this man.

I don't know what to do with that.

So I drove back, settled into the idea that I'm going to go visit him again soon.