Steve Bunting

He was always the whipping boy, man.

Always the whipping boy where it's like I would get my fair share of whippings, but he would always drew more fire and it wasn't fair.

And it was just something about his life where he suffered greatly, man.

Jeez, dude.

more abuse more abusive male figures in your life yeah they all male all male yeah my mom just kind of you know there'd be the the guy at the gas station that would be like kind of the new the new guy and i say this with all respect to my mom i want to keep saying i love her so much she's such a good woman but she was just trying to make it right we could barely make it and it makes sense that you would do things to try and double income right and get some type of support but these guys that should bring in were just

just had their own stuff.

They were toxic human beings, right?

And, you know, this one guy that she ended up marrying that was a fellow cashier was just, he was raised in a Christian boy's home and it was, you know, spare the rod, spoil the child type mentality.

And we would be beat for any, you know, infraction in the house.

You know, one thing I am grateful about that is it gave us deep roots in church, right?

So I grew up in the South and we were at church every Wednesday and Sunday.

To be honest with you, that got me through a lot of stuff.

Just having that stability, the church supported us a lot and giving us food and helping us get clothes.

A lot of the clothes that I wore for the majority of my childhood was from either donations or the thrift store.

But once this guy came into the house, we could actually shop at Walmart.

So I remember even though he was abusive, I was like, dude, at least like we're kind of,

upgrading a little bit and i've i have walmart clothes on and not used clothes and um but it was just very abusive any infraction had to be you know disciplined he made a paddle out of like a pallet he worked at this place after he worked at chevron and he pulled a piece of wood off the pallet and he grinded out hand a handle and it wrapped it in duct tape and that's what he would hit us with and um like i said my brother just got

he got the majority of the beatings.

Yeah, it was tough, man.

It was tough.