Dan Rankin (aka Trials)

So landing in a place that was supposed to be home...

surrounded by kids that didn't look like me, didn't sound like me, was discombobulating, I guess.

I didn't know where I fit in at all, at home or at school or in a game of rugby, where I was constantly being targeted immediately, easily standing out amongst all those kids.

I didn't quite ever have a space there at all.

Any time you would have been introduced to anyone would have been accompanied with an explanation too, wouldn't it?

Was that the thing?

I just felt like that was always happening before I'd even walk in the room too.

And then when I walk in the room, it'd be a big record skip moment always.

The whole thing would screech and, well, you're wondering how I got here.

You know, big zoom in, close-up moment of me panned down on the camera.

It was flight or fight.

to every situation I was in, even just going to the delicatessen, you know, like they knew that I wasn't from there.

It was an interesting, combative environment to be my home.

How about school?

Were you on your own at school or were you able to forge friendships with other outsiders there?

I had...

friends who I thought were my friends until I started recounting these stories to my wife about my favorite memories you know and a lot of them would end in situations that these guys would set me up in or being beaten up quite a lot I suffered a lot of violence at the hands of my school friends most of my memories are running through those big green hills from those kids and having Cal

stuff put in my hair like my head my face it was one of my formative memories to understand that hatred is just a it is a thing that you're completely taught like you don't inherently feel the need to do that to somebody nobody does you've said that a lot of your memories from that time are of being on the ground looking up at people above you what people beating you up yep i remember just getting it done to me thinking like man i wonder what happened to them

You thought that at the time?

Yeah.